Galfond wins star-studded Final Table, Phan finally secures first Bracelet

Event #28

Event #28 was the $5,000 Pot-Limit Omaha w/ Rebuys. Although only 152 players registered for the event, they managed to get the total prizepool up to over $3 Million, also thanks to Daniel Negreanu who re-bought approximately 16-17 times for a total of $80,000. When the field had been reduced to the final 9, we got to see a final table that will most probably go down as the greatest of this year's WSOP.

John Juanda, Phil Hellmuth, Johnny Chan and Daniel Negreanu held a total of 28 WSOP Bracelets among them, Negreanu just having won one less than 1 week ago. Add to that the Final Table experience of players David Benyamine and Kirill Gerasimov and the skill of online

pros Brian "tsarrast" Rast and Adam "the_houdini" Hourani, and you've got yourself a final table the likes of which you won't see often in a WSOP event.

In the end, however, it was the third online pro at the table, Phil "OMGClayAiken" Galfond, who secured his first Bracelet and the $817,781 prizemoney. Galfond had started the day as the chipleader and managed to maintain his lead throughout most of the final table. When asked whether he was intimidated to sit at such a start-studded Final Table, Galfond replied "I felt blessed to be here, but I didn't feel outmatched. I wasn't afraid. I just wanted to play my best game."

The Final Table Payouts:

1 Phil "OMGClayAiken" Galfond $817,781
2 Adam Hourani $493,748
3 David Benyamine $316,307
4 Johnny Chan $246,874
5 Kirill Gerasimov $192,870
6 John Juanda $154,296
7 Daniel Negreanu $123,437
8 Phil Hellmuth $100,292
9 Brian Rast $84,863

Event #29

Event #29 was the $3,000 No-Limit Hold'em Event with a field of 716 players and a total prizepool of over $2 Million. At the end of a nerve-wrecking 6 ½ hours of heads-up play between John Pham and Johnny Neckar, the cards ended up falling in Pham's favor, giving him $434,789 in prize money and, more importantly, his first WSOP Bracelet.

After numerous tourney-cashes in the past years, including 4 WSOP Final Tables, of which he finished two in 2nd place, Pham can now finally join the exclusive club of WSOP Bracelet winners.

The Final Table Payouts:

1 John Phan $434,789
2 Johnny Neckar $277,452
3 Matt Vengrin $167,973
4 Alex Bolotin $137,343
5 David Singer $112,641
6 Stewart Newman $88,927
7 Thuyen Doan $69,165
8 Tony Dunst $54,344
9 Sebastian Segovia $39,523