The 2024 WSOP has been a successful one for Scott Seiver – we talked about his serious attitude towards this series in the first review.
The Omaha Hi-Lo tournament attracted 197 entries and Scott led it from the first to the last day. However, it was not an easy victory. The 3-max against online legend Calvin “Cal42688” Anderson and Canadian Jonathan Cohen lasted 4 hours. Each of the participants managed to be both a confident chip leader and a short one. When the average stack dropped to 10 big bets, Calvin Anderson had more than half of the chips, but he ended up finishing in third place ($197,582).
Going into the heads-up Seiver started with a three-fold advantage and did not miss the victory. As a result, he received $426,744, his opponent received $284,495.
This is Seiver's fifth career bracelet.
This time, he says the goal was maximizing the WSOP bracelets to his name.
In a year, Scott will be eligible to be nominated for the Hall of Fame, something he also keeps in mind:
– I am one of the best players in the world – I play cash games, tournaments, and heads-up in almost any known form of poker. I think it's important to remind people that I'm still fit.
Jared Bleznik was eliminated from the tournament in 8th place. He lamented that he was not drafted at all by Negreanu this year.
I'm never known for playing many tournaments, right? So it's more of a volume game. But the fact that I didn't get drafted because of my PLO game – it's just criminal okay.
The whole poker world is going to understand that, coming into next year, I'm going to be one of the most valuable players in the entire field.
The interview asked, "How many tournaments are you playing this year?"
– We'll see, I don't know yet. But I'm definitely worth more than $1.
The $1,500 6-max tournament was won by Simeon Spasov of Bulgaria ($439,815).
On the second day, a tragicomedy happened to Anson Tsang. There were 2,526 entries into the tournament, 197 participants made it past the starting day, and everyone was already in the money. Anson came through with a nice stack of 26 big blinds, but by the beginning of the day, he simply did not show up in the gaming room.
He took a seat at the table only two hours later, when the stack had 7,000 chips left from 257,000, and was eliminated in the first hand.
"I set my alarm for around 10, or 10:30. I set three alarms, actually," Anson revealed. "I missed my alarms. I overslept by about two hours, and when I woke up, it was about 1pm. I rushed to the table from my room, and I was happy to see that I was still alive, but I had only about 7,000 chips—about half of a big blind."
"This was the first time this has happened in my poker career, in the 15 years that I have been playing poker professionally. I woke up, saw the time, and said, ‘Oh my God, it’s 1pm!’ and I just ran down to the table, hoping to still have a stack. I made a couple of pay jumps, so it’s not all bad."
Anson took 100th place and received $4,067. It’s interesting that the next $500 page jump started from 99th place. Unlike Jared Bleznik, Tsang was chosen in the draft by Negreanu – Ren Lin took him to his Lady Gaga team for $1.
The World Series of Poker, WPT, EPT, and other international series may be out of reach for lots of players. It takes lots of scheduling freedom, not to mention the buy-in cost and accommodation. The next step below these major live series is the online ones, played in the largest poker rooms. Flagship events like The Venom at ACR Poker, SCOOP at PokerStars, and many others, have more reasonable buy-ins, with plenty of satellites to get in cheaper.
The $1,000 Mystery Millions tournament (18,409 entries) featured three $1,000,000 prizes.
The winner, Malcolm Trainer from Australia, became an “honest” millionaire.
Heads-up was played for almost 500 buy-ins. Carson Richards, who had $32,000 in career earnings prior to this tournament, received $536,080 for second place.
The players received another two million in envelopes. The first maximum bounty was won by Ukrainian Valentin Shabelnik. For his calm reaction and for accidentally taking away Jeff Platt's phone, Valentin became a hero on social networks.
Valentin was more worried that he might miss his big blind, so he clearly did not plan to waste energy and emotions on the ceremony. During the conflict with Russia, a rocket hit the house next door to Valentin in Kyiv – he himself was in a bomb shelter at that time. It is not surprising that after the experience, a million dollars could not make a strong impression on Shabelnik...
Daniel Buckley pulled out the second million from the envelope. He also did not celebrate very wildly, but he greatly pleased his friends.
The $500k bounty went to the experienced Roberto Romanello, and he didn’t hold back.
Roberto Romanello finds the 500,000 bounty! pic.twitter.com/jwcsS83frU
— PokerGO (@PokerGO) June 4, 2024
Robert Mizrachi won his fifth bracelet in the $10,000 Dealer's Choice tournament. He joins the list of players who received additional motivation thanks to the Negreanu draft:
– You fly on a plane, follow 25kfantasy, friends who believe in you call your name for $1, but no one even fights for you. This only adds strength and desire to punish others.
Rob was heavily supported by his brothers at the final table.
Many were hoping to see Phil Ivey and Daniel Negreanu at the final table as they advanced to day three together. However, they were eliminated in 11th and 10th place.
Negreanu played the key pot in limit Omaha high. On the desk Daniel defended the big blind against eventual runner-up Michael Martinelli. Daniel check-called on the flop and turn, and his opponent bet again on the river. Negreanu had one 5,000 chip left, which he needed to use for the pot of 265,000. Daniel thought and folded , Martinelli showed .
In the blog, Daniel said that this was his worst mistake in many years.
Phil and Daniel have a lot of photographs together in their careers; one of them was posted on Twitter during the tournament.
Negreanu recalled the circumstances:
"We flew on a private plane to Sacramento to watch the Kings and Spurs in the playoffs
We sat on the floor and were flipping bottle caps for $10k a flip
Me and this cat go waaay back"
Nick Shulman took 13th place. He played at the same table with Jared Bleznik for some time and gained some impressions :
"Lol Bleznick said 👀 “Honestly, Ivey gave me the best piece of advice I have ever gotten in my entire life. He told me to start doing yoga, to help with my back.”
I said, "That’s great bro it’s helping?
👀, “I haven’t started yet”
In the NLHE tournament with a buy-in of $5,000 in three days they played to the top-7.
Despite the abundance of stars, none of them managed to make it to the final table. Shant Marashlian has the 5th stack; throughout his entire career he has never won more than $36k in live games, and in this tournament, he has already secured at least $87k. At the 2023 series, Shant pulled out a $1 million envelope in the Mystery Bounty for $1k.
Martin Stausholm became the bubble boy of the tournament. At the 4,000/8,000 level, he came out with a stack of 4,000 with vs. Alex Keating .
On the flop floor announced to the whole room into the microphone that the short stack had doubled.
“No, there are still outs,” experienced regulars corrected him.
And so it happened. The turn was a , the river a , and Keating eliminated his opponent with a full house.
Patrick Leonard explained, "There was never going to be another result after the tournament director bokked it."
A couple of days earlier, Pads himself crashed on the straight bubble in the $10k Omaha Hi-Lo tournament.
Eric Seidel took 21st place in the $5k tournament. In the last hand, he was all-in on the turn with a 98% chance of winning, but his opponent was given one out on a straight flush.
Eric philosophically commented on the elimination.
Poker gods like to have their fun https://t.co/fdWKfLfmFY
— Erik Seidel (@Erik_Seidel) June 7, 2024
The $1,500 Badugi tournament was won by David Prosiyak ($129,676), another mixed game specialist who was ignored by Negreanu fantasy players.
One-day super turbo for $1,000 played in 16 hours.
The champion was Thibault Perissat from France ($197,308).
He told reporters that his friends gave him a ticket to the tournament two years ago for his 30th birthday.
The first of the scheduled $25,000 buy-in high roller tournaments kicked off that night. On the starting day, players made 216 entries, 76 advanced, registration is open until the end of the first level of day 2.
Artur Martirosyan has the third stack.
“Things got better from the second entry,” he wrote in a telegram. – And I’ve never been all-in, I just won a lot of pots postflop, both with bluffs and draws, I opened it successfully, it went well, we’re done for today, I packed almost a million, 988k, tomorrow we’ll start 4k/8k⚡️
From June 4, before the start of each tournament, an announcement from the organizers is heard throughout the gaming hall:
– Please do not use any type of solver while you are at the table or in the tournament area. Violators will face punishment up to and including disqualification.
