Phil Ivey joins Brunson and Chan on 10 bracelets – now he’s got Hellmuth in his sights
Was it ever in doubt? After what had been a pretty dismal 2014 WSOP so far, Phil Ivey won his 10th bracelet in the Eight Game Mix event when he topped the 485 field in emphatic fashion. It puts Ivey in second place in the all-time bracelet table along with Doyle Brunson and Johnny Chan, and it will have Phil Hellmuth (on 13) nervously looking over his shoulder. Ivey picked up another $167,332 but also won the big bracelet bet with Daniel Negreanu for a lot more. They’d bet that one of them would win a bracelet this summer at evens, and there’ll be a lot of people groaning at the result this morning.
Once Ivey picked up momentum on the final day the result never seemed in doubt. With nine players remaining Ivey held a completely dominating chip lead, and at one stage held over 66% of the chips on his table. However, by the time the official final table had started the stacks had evened up, with the UK’s Stephen Chidwick (535k) narrowly behind Ivey (570k) in second place.
Short stack Christoph Haller was the first to go, eliminated in a hand of limit hold’em when his Nines lost a race to Bruce Yamron’s A-K. Yuebin Guo was eliminated in 6th before Stephen Chidwick was taken out by Ivey in 5th in a 2-7 triple draw hand. It’s Chidwick’s 4th cash of a decent WSOP, but he’ll be disappointed that he couldn’t go on to convert one of them into a win.
With four players remaining, Ivey had over 50% of the chips in play, but the chip lead yo-yoed and going into heads-up Ivey was narrowly behind Bruce Yamron. The anti-railers that were sweating their bracelet bets in person must have been hoping Ivey would blow it, but he retook the lead on the first hand of the heads-up battle and then proceeded to dismantle Yamron in devastating fashion.
He sealed the victory in a hand of Omaha. The money went in on the turn with the board reading A-7-5-K. Yamron tabled A-J-8-7 for two pair, but Ivey had A-K-9-8 and had him drawing thin. Yamron did have draws to a low to chop but the Queen on the river meant both Ivey and Negreanu would be celebrating the victory and maybe enjoying the rest of the WSOP a little bit more.
Event 50 – $1,500 Eight Game Mix
[table id=107 /]
Subscribe to PokerPlayer magazine today for the special price of just £12.99.
