The last three general event bracelets at the 2013 World Series of Poker have been claimed by Daniel Alaei, Loni Harwood and Brian Yoon prior to the Main Event, which will only be finally decided later this year.
The “mini” version of the One Drop charity fund-raiser, the $1,111 buy-in Little One for One Drop NLHE competition, saw Brian Yoon best a big field of 4,756 entrants to pick up the bracelet and $663,727 in first prize cash after he defeated Cuong Van Nguyen and sent him home with just $408,264 after a torrid heads up.
The large registration list necessitated a fourth day of play before a final table consisting of Van Nguyen and Yoon along with Roland Israelashvili, Justin Zaki, Nghi Tran, Joseph Morneau, Kevin O’Donnell, Alexander Case and Adriano Santa Ana formed, eventually shrinking to the man-on-man heads up.
This lasted a mere 11 hands as Yoon outplayed his rival to claim the honours.
The large entry field means that the One Drop charity will receive $527,916 in addition to the $553,278 donated from the Big One for One Drop, making a charitable contribution from this WSOP of over a million dollars…and that’s not counting personal donations by generous players.
Loni Harwood emerged victorious from event 54, a $1,500 buy-in NLHE contest, enabling her to claim the distinction of being only the second woman to win a bracelet in an open event this series (Dana Castaneda preceded her this year – see previous report).
After personally eliminating several of her final table opponents, Harwood entered the heads up against Yongshuo Zheng with an almost 4 to 1 chip lead, but her rival gave her a run for the money, stretching the heads up action to just on 90 minutes as the lead swung from one to the other before Harwood was able to despatch Zheng and claim the bracelet.
The final table pay-outs looked like this:
Loni Harwood $609,017
Yongshuo Zheng $378,607
Mika Paasonen $267,978
Yngve Steen $193,265
Asi Moshe $141,124
Daniel Cascado $104,282
Cy Williams $78,006
Bijon Notash $59,036
Hiren Patel $45,212
Daniel Alaei celebrated the fourth World Series of Poker bracelet in his impressive career as a poker pro, besting 385 opponents to win event 61 – the $10,000 buy-in Pot Limit Omaha competition.
His reward was that fourth bracelet and $852,692 in cash as he repeated his 2010 success in the same event.
On the final day of the event 32 survivors took over six-and-a-half hours to play down to a final table comprising Alaei and Jared Bleznick, James Weise, Tom Marchese, Numit Agrawal, Gjergj Sinishtaj, Sean Dempsey, Rory Rees Brennan and Alex Kravchenko.
The heads saw Alaei pitted against Jared Bleznick, and the fireworks started almost immediately as the two went all-in on the first hand, and Alaei came out on top to win the event, sending Bleznick home with a consolatory $526,625.