Phil Hellmuth has won his twelfth World Series of Poker (WSOP) bracelet, which is quite a significant achievement, considering the fact that this is the first WSOP bracelet Hellmuth has won while playing a Razz event.
Hellmuth had to defeat five WSOP bracelet winners before he could grab his twelfth bracelet at his forty-fifth WSOP final table. Stating that success feels good, he said that poker players are result oriented and they ought to be because a poker player has to win to be considered great in the game.
Eight poker players made it to the final table, and the game evolved into an intense competition for the position of chip leader among Scott Fischman, Brendan Taylor, and Phil Hellmuth. Although Taylor temporarily achieved this position after the sixth street, Hellmuth raced him by eliminating Michael Chow.
Although Greenstein emerged as the champion of the Razz tournament in WSOP 2008, he wasn’t able to achieve the same this year. He was off the table in the sixth place. Initially, it looked as if Taylor would win, but his chip stack rapidly diminished and he was out in the fifth place.
After dinner break, the game continued as a four-handed match, and Fischman was the first to be eliminated as he had the shortest chip stack. This left Hellmuth, Cantu, and Zewin at the final table. Cantu, however, could not continue playing for long as Hellmuth had a definite advantage over him, and ultimately, it was a heads-up between Zewin and Hellmuth. When the game had reached the fourth street, Zewin had bet all the chips in his stack and had nothing. An eight or less would have saved Zewin and got him the pot by the time the last card was dealt, but this was not to be. When he realized that he had a better hand, Hellmuth was overcome with joy because he had been pursuing his twelfth WSOP bracelet for the past five years.
The results of the WSOP Event #18 are as follows. Phil Hellmuth won the bracelet and $182,793 as the champion of the Razz event. The runner-up Don Zewin won $113,024.The players who finished third, fourth, and fifth were Brandon Cantu, Scott Fischman, and Brendan Taylor, who won $74,269, $54,248, and $40,167, respectively. The players who finished sixth, seventh, and eighth were Barry Greenstein, Michael Chow, and Jeffrey Mitseff, who won $30,150, $2,945, and $17,693, respectively.
