He’s BAAA-CK! Phil Ivey Snaps Tie, Wins 11th WSOP Bracelet

The last decade for Phil Ivey has been a rather tumultuous one. The dissolution of his onetime poker home Full Tilt Poker, lawsuits on both sides of the Atlantic, and a self-imposed exile from the greatest tournament series on the planet have seen Ivey’s bracelet count stay stagnant. However, that changed on Thursday night as Ivey went to overtime with two of the toughest customers in the game and emerged victorious in the $10,000 Deuce to Seven Triple Draw World Championship.

It was Bracelet Event #29 at the 55th annual World Series of Poker, going on now at the Horseshoe and Paris casinos on the Las Vegas Strip. 

Bonus Poker for the Fans

Three days was not enough for those brave souls who ventured into the Deuce to Seven Triple Draw arena. With the goal to make the worst hand possible – 7-5-4-3-2 is considered “the nuts” in the game – 149 players put up the $10,000 to vie for this World Championship. After three days of play, there were still three men left – Ivey, six-time WSOP bracelet winner Jason Mercier, and a WSOP bracelet holder in his own right, Danny Wong, and they decided to come back on Thursday to determine who would take the title.

The deck was stacked against Ivey at the start of the overtime day, though. He would return as the short stack at the table, holding 2.26 million in chips. Mercier (2.955 million) and Wong (3.73 million) were not far ahead of him as each man was under the “safe zone” of twenty big blinds. All it would take was a run by one player to take the edge, and Ivey was the one who was able to make the moves at just the right time.

Ivey would catch the Wheel against Mercier to climb out of the basement, but Wong would maintain the lead in keeping both opponents at bay. Wong would further his advantage by taking down Mercier in third place, with Mercier making a decent 9-7 hand that could not defeat Wong’s 8-6. That knockout solidified Wong’s lead (5.315 million) over Ivey (3.63 million) as the duo went to heads-up play. 

Another Wheel for Ivey allowed him to pull even with Wong during the early phases of heads-up play. What was bigger, however, was the uncanny ability of Ivey to identify when his opponent was trying to run a bluff on him. Wong would bet one hand on all three draws, and Ivey called him down with a pair of deuces; it was the right play, as Wong showed a pair of sixes (remember, the worst hand wins).

Ivey would not be denied his championship on this night. On the final hand, Ivey would raise the hand, enough to make Wong put his remaining chips in the center to call. He would do so and drew three cards, while Ivey picked up two. With all the chips in the center, there was no betting, so the second draw was performed, with each player drawing one card. On the final draw, Wong decided to draw no cards – to “stand pat” – while Ivey took one. 

With the draws complete, Wong tabled his 10-8-7-6-2 for his tournament life. Ivey had a 7-7-5-4-3 before the final draw, pitching one of the sevens, and was looking for an eight or a nine to make him a winner. It was better than that; Ivey turned up a deuce to make the Wheel again, 7-5-4-3-2, to capture the championship and his eleventh WSOP bracelet. 

1. Phil Ivey (USA), $347,440
2. Danny Wong (USA), $225,827
3. Jason Mercier (USA), $151,412
4. Benny Glaser (United Kingdom), $104,825*
5. Jonathan Cohen (USA), $75,015*
6. Philip Sternheimer (USA), $55,553*
   
   * eliminated in final table play on Wednesday

It's a Long Way to the Top

It has been a prolonged battle for Phil Ivey to return to the top of the poker mountain. In 2011, Ivey was a part of Team Full Tilt, riding high with the group and their eponymous online poker site. Then came “Black Friday,” which unveiled the ugly fact that Full Tilt Poker had mixed players’ monies with the business finances; when the federal government shut down the site, Full Tilt Poker, and Team Full Tilt, did not have cash on hand to make the players whole.

Following the collapse of Full Tilt Poker, Ivey went into another area that did not turn out well for him. Along with an alleged co-conspirator, Ivey made several visits to two different casinos, Crockford’s in London, and the Borgata in Atlantic City, where he purportedly made over $21 million. After examining their security cameras, however, both casinos said that Ivey had cheated, using an advantage play called edge sorting (knowing that cards were cut in such a manner that they could be identified), with Crockford’s refusing to pay out what Ivey won and the Borgata demanding their payout be returned. 

While this was going on, Ivey’s poker play remained excellent. He won his tenth WSOP bracelet in 2014, then would go winless in poker’s most prestigious event for the last decade. In 2019, a New Jersey court garnished the winnings of Ivey in tournament poker in the US, so Ivey played in overseas tournaments for the past five years. Once the lawsuit was settled with both Crockford’s and the Borgata, Ivey returned to the WSOP in 2022 but had been unable to break up the logjam of players with ten bracelets. 

While Phil Hellmuth is by far the leader with seventeen bracelets, Ivey was tied with the late Doyle Brunson, Johnny Chan, and a recent name that was thrown into the mix, Erik Seidel, after his Bracelet #10 victory at the inaugural WSOP Paradise in the Bahamas last December. With his victory on Thursday, Ivey now moves into possession of second place on the all-time list of WSOP bracelet champions, banks a $347,440 payday, and can cast his eyes toward Hellmuth’s place on top of the heap. 

(Image: courtesy of WSOP)