Phil Ivey Wins his Eighth WSOP Bracelet

25Jun

Written By ben, Poker News Correspondent

on December 30, 2011.

It’s been said time and time again that this guy is the best all-around poker player there is, and his most recent win further solidifies this fact. All eyes were on Event #37, the $3,000 HORSE event, as Phil Ivey’s name figured prominently on the leader board. The people could practically feel it in the air – the imminence of Phil Ivey’s eighth WSOP bracelet. Sure enough, the announcement of the win followed soon after the speculation began. Phil Ivey just won the sum of $329,000 – paltry compared to some of his winnings in his cash games, but then again, there’s a shiny bracelet that comes along with it, so I’m pretty sure that Ivey is happy.

“So how much is first anyway?”

It’s pretty safe to say that Phil Ivey played not for the money, but for the bracelet – at least, not for the prize money. After all, rumor has it that his first words after winning were “So how much is first anyway?” You’ve really got to hand it to a guy who can be that nonchalant about WSOP prize money when almost everyone else seems to salivate at the thought of winning the gold. Ivey was in it for the bracelet, no doubt about that. It seems as if Ivey has a couple of running bets with his fellow poker pros and high stakes players involving WSOP bracelets. Howard Lederer, Ivey’s fellow Full Tilt Poker pro, posted “…gulp” in his twitter account when Ivey’s win was announced.

Lederer apparently bet $5 million that Ivey would not win two bracelets by the end of 2011. Now, Ivey’s completed half his goal and yet he still has several events to go, not to mention all of WSOP 2011. Lederer’s not the only guy who stands to lose with Ivey’s winnings. Fellow high-stakes player Tom “durrr” Dwan and Eli Elezra also seem to have bets with Phil Ivey, and Ivey was probably thinking of those when he blazed through the felts earlier this week.

Event #37

Phil Ivey was one of the last 25 players remaining for Even #37 last Monday. He had a pretty decent chip stack and sat comfortably at 7^th place. However, by the time there were only 16 or so players left, Phil Ivey was actually the unfortunate owner of one of the shortest chip stacks. He needed to get all of the chips on one of the final two tables in order to win so that he could actually compete with the tougher opponents in the other table. As great a player as he is, he wasn’t able to do this, but he did manage to hang on to the felt until Juanda was eliminated at third.

He entered into heads up with a 3-1 disadvantage against Chen. However, things quickly took a turn for the better when he took the lead about 30 minutes into the heads up play. At that point, it was like a tug-of-war for the lead for the two players, with Ivey eventually winning when Chen pushed all in when Ivey had the better hand.