While a lot of the attention has been on the bigger names in the 2011 World Series of Poker, such as Phil Hellmuth and John Juanda, there have been some very impressive first time winners of gold bracelets as well. With the first 12 events being taken down by players who had never won a bracelet before; while Juanda was taking down the $10,000 2-7 No-Limit Draw Lowball Championship, a flurry of first time winners showed up once again.
It started with Event #13 a $1,500 No Limit Hold’em Shootout, as Andrew Badecker won his first gold bracelet. This tournament format is set up so that the winner of each table moves on to the next round, and play another table until there is one winner. 1,440 players started, and every player who made day 2 was in the money. The final table featured four bracelet winners in Erik Cajelais, Dan Kelly, David Pham, and Vitaly Lunkin, but it was Badecker who outlasted and outplayed all of them to take down the gold bracelet and $369,371.
Event #14 was just another new bracelet winner in Tyler Bonkowski who took down the $3,000 Limit Hold’em event. The final table featured two fairly big names in Jeff Shulman and Shawn Keller. Bonkowski started heads up play with a chip lead, but hit a bad stretch and fell to a 2,750,000 to 250,000 chip lead. But Bonkowski battled back in what was one of the most impressive comebacks in World Series of Poker history, giving him the gold bracelet and $220,817.
Then came the Event #15 winner, a $1,500 Pot-Limit Hold’em event, which was taken down by first time winner Brian Rast. Rast actually admitted that he almost didn’t play in this event, but that Antonio Esfandiari offered to stake him in the event, with a portion of the winnings going to Esfandiari. It played out to be a good move for both Rast and Esfandiari. Rast won his first ever World Series of Poker gold bracelet, and $227,232 and Esfandiari won a portion of that for staking Brian Rast.
Since Juanda’s win was in Event #16, this made an incredible run of 15 straight first time bracelet winners, before a player who already owned a gold bracelet took one down. This should leave the remainder of the events, as well as the big Main Event, anyones game.