Daily Updates from the 2023 WSOP - July 18 - PokerListings (2024)

• PokerListings
»
• News
»
• World Series of Poker (WSOP) 2023 News
»
• Daily Updates from the 2023 WSOP – July 18

And that's a wrap, folks! The 2023 World Series of Poker is now officially complete with 95 live and 20 online events. Ian Matakis took down the Player of the Year title on the back of 22 cashes throughout the series and he trounced perennial candidate Shaun Deeb by almost 1,000 points. Ryan Miller bagged his first two bracelets this year in the final weeks of the series, joining Chad Eveslage and two others in the double-bracelet club this year. And finally, while the USA was way out in front with 59 bracelets this year, Canada came second in the counts with 6, coming on strong in the final few days of the series with two bracelets to take the lead from China, who ended on 5 wins.

Of course, this year also featured some of the biggest crowds ever at the WSOP, with the Main Event smashing the previous attendance and prize pool records. It was hardly the only record field as well, with many other events through the series crushing their previous records. It may have been 20 years since Chris Moneymaker sparked the poker boom, and 17 since the 2006 event set the previous record, but the WSOP results this year prove that live poker is alive and well post-pandemic, and frankly, doing better than it ever has before.

Event #91: $3,000 H.O.R.S.E.

The WSOP is drawing to a close and Ryan Miller picked up one of the final bracelets to be awarded in 2023 for his second hardware of the year. He previously took down the $10k Stud8 Championship so MIller is showing his chops in the mixed game side of the series this year. To get the biggest piece of the $883,770 prize pie Miller had to navigate through a big field of 331 original entries and there were 50 players to be served a slice of HORSE pie.

As was something of a theme this year, the HORSE race needed an extra length to decide a winner. Miller and runner-up Leonard August bagged up their chips late Monday night after the eliminations of Barbara Enright and Calvin Anderson. Miller came to the final day with the most chips by almost 3:1 but August came back early on Day 4 to take the lead early, but Miller came storming back in stud. There were only 20 big bets in play on Day 2, so every decision mattered.

Miller was able to wear August down with the short-stack play and it was eventually all in on a limit hold'em hand with Miller dominating and the game was over. This second bracelet for Miller brings his lifetime earnings to just under $900k and was his second-best score after he bagged $344k for his first bracelet earlier this year.

Event #93: $10,000 Short Deck No-Limit Hold'em

Short deck specialist Martin Nielsen took down one of the final bracelets in 2023 when he bested a pretty stellar field of 106 entries to take down his first bracelet. He pocketed $270,160 for the win, the biggest share of a prize pool of $985,800 that was split 16 ways.

Nielsen was in tough against some of the best in the game, including Eric Wasserson, John Juanda, Chris Brewer, Sam Soverel, Martin Zamani, Adam Friedman, Mikita Badziakouski, Shota Nakanishi, and Felip Ramos, who all cashed out in this one while Ryan Riess, Patrick Leonard, Nick Schulman, Ben Yu, David Williams, and Alex Epstein were among the players to fall before the money spots.

This win brings Nielsen's lifetime earnings to just over $600k but he said in his winner's interview that he is mostly an online player. "I am a full-time short-deck cash player, but I mostly play online on GG," he said after his first-ever live win. While this was the first time Nielsen was in the live winner's circle, it seems pretty clear he'll be back for more short-deck action next year for the 2024 series.

Event #94: $5,000 8-Handed No-Limit Hold'em

The second-last bracelet of the series was awarded on Tuesday night and Alex Keating from California was the player wearing it at the end of the action. He made it through a starting field of 813 entries to take down the big piece of the $3,739,800 total prize pool, but he shared those prizes with a total of 122 players.

Christian Harder and Massoud Eskandari were among the players Keating had to get through in this one. They cashed in seventh and ninth respectively, and were joined at the cash cage before the end of the game by Punnat Punsri, Felipe Ketzer, Pat Lyons, David Peters, Ryan Tosoc, Matt Vengrin, and Phil Laak with only Laak and Vengrin cashing out for less than $20k.

There were 60 players to return for Day 2 action on Tuesday with Peters in the lead. The eventual winner, Keating, came to the day eighth in chips with 1.06 million, almost 500k behind the leader, but he was able to chip it back up to take the win by the end. After he win, Keating admitted he was a bit stunned and unsure what to do next. When asked how he was feeling about the win, his reply was "Good… yeah, not bad actually ... I'm thinking about what I'm supposed to do right now."

Event #95: $1,000 Super Turbo No-Limit Hold'em

The 2023 World Series of Poker is now officially complete with the final bracelet awarded early Wednesday morning in an increasingly empty poker room. Event #95 was a one-day turbo affair that topped out at 1,482 entries for a prize pool of $1.318,980. There were a total of 223 players who grabbed a piece of the prizes with the earliest cashers pocketing $1,601 and the winner slated for more than $212k.

When the dust settled, it was Paul Berger from Boca Raton, Florida who was sitting with all the chips and the final bracelet of the 2023 series. This was his third cash this year, bur easily his best after what amounted to minimum cashes in Events #3 and #19. He had just shy of $80k in earnings from the WSOP and only about $150k in total earnings on Hendon Mob going into this event, so this win clearly represented his biggest score ever, by quite a margin. His previous best, according to Hendon, was about $32k from a 2017 WSOP event, so this one was more than 6 times bigger than his previous best.

He was facing down Brazilian great Yuri Dzivielevski for the bracelet in the endgame stages. The Brazilian pocketed $131,408 for second place while Canadian Santiago Plante picked up third-place money worth $95,195. As this was the final shot at a bracelet this year, the field was pretty stacked, and Gabriel Schroeder, Bryan Piccioli, Robbie Jade Lew, Eric Froehlich, Ben Yu, and Rafael Reis were all among the top-50 finishers in this one for $4,271 or more.

2023 WSOP is In the Books!

That final bracelet brings the 2023 World Series of Poker to a close with 95 live and 20 online bracelets awarded in the Vegas series. There were four double bracelet winners this year with Chad Eveslage starting things off by winning the first two Dealers Choice events. Josh Arieh, Chris Brewer, and Ryan Miller joined him in the double-winners club this year while Brian Rast earned his Hall of Fame induction with his third win in the PPC this year for his sixth bracelet and Phil Hellmuth extended his monster lead in the bracelet race with his 17th bit of wrist hardware.

Meanwhile, Ian Matakis ran away with the Player of the Year title this year, ending his series with one bracelet (Online Event #2: $500 No-Limit Hold'em Bankroll Builder for $120,686) and 22 total cashes through the series. Nine of those cashes came from online games while the other 13 came on the live felt and his biggest score of the year came from 3rd place in Event #82 for $205,696. That meant he ended up nearly 1,000 up on runner-up Shaun Deeb, who is in contention for the title nearly every year. Deeb had a solid series of his own with one bracelet and more than 20 cashes between the live and online games while Chris Brewer's double-bracelet series netted him 3rd place in the PoY list.

Finally, Canada bagged a few honors this year. Not only did the Maple Leaf grab second place (behind host USA) in the bracelet counts, but Brampton, Ontario's Jason Clarke also bagged the big prize of 30 years of free Main Event entries in celebration of the record field size in this year's big show. Canada came on strong in the final few days of the series to nip ahead of China for second in the national standings with the Asian behemoth ending the series on 5 wins while Canada bagged 6.