Experienced regular Asher Conniff won his first bracelet at the Champions Reunion, a $5,000 tournament honoring all Main Event champions.
Asher has had his fair share of successes and disappointments in recent years. In 2022, he finished 10th in the World Series Main Event, losing a coin flip. In January 2023, he won one of the biggest GGMillion$ online, even beating Brazilian Yuri Dzivielevski at the final table.
He celebrated his success in the series' opening tournament on Twitter with a short and simple, “Wow.”
First place earned Asher $408,468.
The highlight of the $500 Freezeout, played by 3,485 people, was the deep run of Daniel Negreanu, who was eliminated in 16th place.
At the 125,000/250,000 level, Daniel, with a stack of 10 million in the BB, made a cold 4-bet all-in with AKs. The player on the button called with and eliminated the Canadian.
Daniel's tormentor, Sean Smith, ended up in 3rd place, and British businessman Dan Willis won ($175,578).
Due to participating in Freezeout, Daniel was unable to play the $25,000 buy-in heads-up tournament for which he had pre-registered. Due to the 64-person limit, there was not enough room for everyone, Chance Kornuth was first on the waiting list and inherited the position from Negreanu. Kornuth beat his first opponent but was eliminated in the second round.
Artur Martirosyan reached the semi-finals. He beat Nick Marchington, Stephen Chidwick, Cary Katz, and Patrick Kennedy consecutively. But, he lost to future champion Darius Samual.
When Arthur had 35 blinds remaining, he called his opponent's all-in with ATs and was unable to beat AK.
On Telegram, he justified the call:
Sometimes he would play completely random hands, so I decided I couldn't fold ATs against that. Although the plan, of course, was not to reduce variance as much as possible. I don't know, maybe I should have folded and continued playing. I am not sure. Of course, he actually had the worst hand I could ever see. I expected him to just raise with or , and not to go all-in. As the blinds grew, I felt he started to play more carefully. Okay, let's move on. In principle, not bad for the first tournament in Las Vegas.
In the quarterfinals, Samual had beaten the main star of the WSOP heads-up tournaments, John Smith, and in the final, Faraz Jaka.
After the victory, he calmly admitted to reporters that he had invested half of his bankroll in the $25,000 tournament and that he was not at all interested in the bracelet, playing only for the money.
According to his Hendon Mob profile, Darius only started playing live poker last year, although it's possible that his previous attempts simply weren't as successful.
Faraz Jaka beat Nikolai Mamut in the semi-finals. Nikolai's father is billionaire Alexander Mamut (according to Forbes, Mamut's fortune has almost halved since the start of the war and now amounts to “only” $1.2 billion), however, according to rumors, Nikolai does not accept money from his family to play poker (he wins it himself).
Nikolai Mamut
The $1,500 Omaha Hi/Lo event was won by James Chen ($209,350).
Last year he placed 2nd in a similar $10,000 tournament, and in total, he has 12 cashes, in different types of Omaha tournaments.
“I play all variations of Omaha, but mostly cash games,” Chen said after the win. “I only come to the WSOP to play tournaments. I won because I was lucky to be dealt a lot of good hands.”
I really can’t believe like a 1k people will show up and play a 1500 dollar Omaha 8 or better event that lasts 3-4 days. If you finish like 12th that has to be top 5 worst experiences in gambling.
The Omaha specialist's namesake, James Chen, is playing in the World Series, representing Taiwan. He has yet to cash in this year's WSOP tournaments, but he has already managed to cause a heated discussion on Twitter.
At one of the tournaments, he noticed that a neighbor was using the GTO Wizard app:
Caught a guy on GTOWizard in the WSOP 1k Mystery Millions NLH Flight A.
First photo was taken at Paris white section table 194 at 17:39. Despite the privacy screen protector, you can make out the GTO Wizard login screen. Second photo is for identification.
More details below.
On level 13, I notice the player on my left input his stack into a calculator app and divide by the big blind. He then opened GTO Wizard and was about to log in when I snapped the photo and confronted him.
I ask him why he has GTO Wizard open at the table. He says he was just logging in and hasn’t done anything yet. I say that’s only because you got caught.
He then says he was only going to check his subscription. I don’t believe at all that he calculated his stack in bb and opened GTOW just to check his subscription (table agrees) and tell him so. I also tell him he’s not allowed to have GTOW open in the tournament area anyway.
He says he was just checking his subscription because he was going to give it to a friend. (I’m gonna guess this is against GTOWizard terms of service.)
He tells the table that he plays poker professionally, so he always knows his exact stack and always knows the exact ranges of each spot. He claims there’s no reason for him to look up ranges.
(Later I jam from sb on his bb, covering his 14bb stack, and we had to watch him scrunch his face for nearly a minute trying to figure out if he should call.)
This all developed over a heated argument, and the floor was called. In the end he was given a warning that he would be penalized on future offenses.
However, stuff like this isn’t easy to spot, especially with privacy screen protectors. And in his next tournament, the floor person wouldn’t know that he received a prior warning. It’s too easy to get away with. Poker needs a database that tracks players’ warnings and penalties.
"Hey man. Thanks for yelling at me at the table like a psycho.”noted the “hero” of the day in the comments. "I was caught changing my subscription and wanting to give my account to my housemate… damn sorry. Mind your own business and stop taking random picture of people you’re cringe af. GL for the rest of the series ✌"
James responded by proposing a bet.
“Let’s bet on security footage who got agitated and yelled first. Or we could ask the six other players at the table.
You can’t even fold to a 3-bet without getting mad. 🤷🏻♂️”
This proposal remained unanswered and the official stance of World Series organizers on this issue remains a mystery.
Poker.org published a video from last year in which World Series head director Jack Effel explained that it is strictly prohibited to use solvers only during hands.
However, according to the players, after this uproar on social media, the hall floor warns that the use of solvers in the tournament area is prohibited, in principle.
Some players see two ways to solve the problem: ban phones from tables altogether or give the green light to use GTO Wizard and other similar software.
A similar situation happened the other day at the New Orleans casino.
There, the man simply placed the phone with the solver open on the side of the table and looked at the screen while holding his hands.
– "Imagine using GTO wizard at the Orleans 😂" – Will Jaffe said.
Matt Savage suggests discussing the phone ban at the next tournament directors meeting.
“Meanwhile while talking about phones at the table this photo taken with my phone at a table went over 5,000,000 views. 🤷🏻♂️” Matt was surprised.
The number of views continues to grow and has already exceeded 6.4 million.
At the WSOP, Ivey cashed in his first tournament, a $5,000 PLO.
Bryce Yockey won and took away ($606,654).
Bryce is one of the players selected in the $25K Draft organized by Negreanu. After the victory, he confirmed Daniel Negreanu's words that the players are closely following the draft,
“I will definitely win another bracelet this summer,” Yockey boldly told reporters. “When I saw they only paid $13 for me in fantasy, I said, “Fuck it, I’m going to win two to piss them off. And now I have one in my pocket.”
On Twitter, Bryce also couldn't keep quiet. Immediately after the tournament he wrote :
– "$13 looking like a bargain now."
6th place in the tournament went to one of the draft's most expensive picks, Portuguese João Vieira.
The Fantasy participants started the series with a bang. They already have three bracelets. In addition to Yockey, John Hennigan and Nick Guagenti also achieved victories.
Hennigan won the $1,500 Dealer's Choice tournament for ($138,296). This was his seventh bracelet, all won in different disciplines: dealer's choice, stud, stud-8, LHE, 2-7 triple draw, HORSE and 8-Game Players Championship.
4th place went to Viktor Blom, who seems to have finally changed his “role” to being a live regular.
For limit game specialist Nick Guagenti, the bracelet was clearly more important than the $121,074 he received for winning the $1,500 LHE tournament. When the tournament ended, Nick admitted that the World Series bracelet was his main goal, which he had been working towards for 20 long years. And although he's already won a bracelet online, Nick only truly recognizes gems earned in live tournaments.
Guagenti also prepared very carefully for the winner's photo shoot.
The last photo is likely a reference to the one of Josh Arieh from last year.
In one of the most popular tournaments in the series, the $1,000 buy-in Mystery Millions, players gave 18,409 buy-ins (a year ago there were 18,188). All the opening days have already been played, there are now less than 1,000 players left.
Bounty awards are listed below:
The first $10,000 tournament has also started. The Limit Omaha Hi-Lo event attracted 197 participants. Among the 26 players awarded are Jared Bleznick, Scott Seiver, Calvin Anderson, and Shaun Deeb.
Brazilian Felipe Mojave has already entered the $10K Dealer's Choice.
Nikolai Mamut
No phones on the table // Phones allowed // Don't be foolish, it's impossible
