So far, the 2016 World Series of Poker has been quite entertaining, and it hasn’t even reached the halfway point yet. Wednesday’s action at the Rio just off the Las Vegas Strip saw a bit of drama, and two more bracelet winners.
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Jason Mercier (in sunglasses) and Ray Dehkharghani battle for the bracelet in Event #20, the $10K Seven Card Razz, at the 2016 World Series of Poker. (Image: pokersites.com exclusive)
We’ll save the drama for later and start off with Sam Soverel claiming the first gold bracelet of his career. He did so in Event #19, the $1,000 Pot-Limit Omaha.
Soverel can head back to Florida with a smile on his face and an extra $185,317 to his name. Kirby Lowery, a Houston, Texas resident, finished in 2nd place and also received a nice payday of $114,486.
Persona Non Grata in Ferguson
Chris “Jesus” Ferguson doesn’t seem to care that most poker players don’t want him around. He continues his return tour at the Rio, to the dismay of many.
Ferguson showed up again on Wednesday to compete in Event #21, the $3,000 Six-Handed No-Limit Hold’em championship. Just like he’s done in his other events this summer, Jesus refused to speak to anyone in the media and received dirty looks from disgruntled poker players who dislike him wherever he turns.
Will Givens made the poker world happy by sending Ferguson to the rails without winning any money. Givens made sure everyone on Twitter knew about it, too.
“Knocked out Chris Ferguson,” he posted on Twitter, and you could almost hear the cheers across the social media universe.
Givens will be back for the tournament’s third and final day on Thursday, along with 25 other players. He has 930,000 chips. Martin Kozlov leads the way with 1,497,000.
Also of note is that Daniel Negreanu (932,000) and Doug Polk (728,000) remain in the field. Negreanu, if he can pull this one off today, will claim his seventh career WSOP gold bracelet. Cards are in the air at noon in Las Vegas.
Betting on Mercier
You probably know all about the bet between Jason Mercier and Vanessa Selbst by now. Both PokerStars Team Pros entered into a wager prior to the start of the WSOP that Selbst might have been having a few regret hangovers over.
Selbst laid 180-1 odds that Mercier wouldn’t win three bracelets this year on a $10,000 wager. So if Jason actually does come through, she’ll owe him $1.8 million, otherwise he’ll have to ship her the $10,000.
Adding to the craziness of this prop bet is that Selbst has claimed she shouldn’t have to honor the bet, based on having been liquored up at the time the bet was made. Can you imagine if poker players and casino gamblers tried that one to recoup their losses? Right.
Mercier doesn’t want to let her out of the bet. The debate on Twitter in recent days has been over whether or not the bet should be binding, due to Selbst’s apparently inebriated state at the time she decided it looked like a great plan.
On Wednesday, Mercier found himself in a heads-up match with Ray Dehkharghani in Event #20, $10,000 Seven Card Razz. Already having won an event this year in Event #16, the $10,000 2-7 Draw Lowball championship, Mercier winning another would make Selbst worry about losing the bet, and a heck of a lot of money with it.
But it wasn’t to be on this day. Dehkhargani seemed to get all the cards and defeated Mercier for the bracelet. Brian Hastings finished in 3rd place. Take a deep breath, Vanessa, he still has a long way to go in order to take your money.
$10,000 H.O.R.S.E. Underway
One of the top events of the summer, the $10,000 H.O.R.S.E. championship, kicked off on Wednesday with 171 players. After Day One, 66 players remain. This is a three-day event with the winner receiving $422,874.
Daniel Alaei leads the way at start of play today with 324,000. He’s one of the best players in the world and a five-time bracelet winner.
The remaining field is stacked with some big name pros, including Bryn Kenney, Adam Freidman, David Oppenheim, 2015 November Niner Yuval Brohnstein, Sorel Mizzi, Jason Mercier, “Johnny World” Hennigan, Jason Somerville, Nick Schulman, Todd Brunson, Mike Sexton, Brian Hastings, David Benyamine, and Maria Ho.
Holy cow, that’s quite a field to make your way through.
On Thursday, a pair of events will get started: Event #25, the $2,500 No-Limit Hold’Em and Event #26, the $1,500 Omaha Hi-Low Split-8 or Better championship.
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