Deeb and Hennigan Keep Chasing POY, Kessler Tops Day 1c
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The tables in the Pavilion room have already been folded and removed but the Brasilia room has seen one final buzz this summer as the 2018 World Series of Poker is about to wrap up. It will be in big style with the stellar $1 million event coming up next, but the closing ceremony for the low- and mid-stakes is also providing a fascinating finish to the seven-week festival as the inaugural $1,500 The Closer attracted an overwhelming 3,120 entries.
Over half of those came on Day 1c, filling Brasilia and even the Purple section of Amazon room as the final flight brought a total of 1,671 starting stacks to the table. Many of the players fired multiple shells with unlimited reentries allowed. The total prize pool surpassed $4.2 million and the champion is guaranteed to walk away with a huge chunk of money.
There's little doubt that many players have treated the tournament as their final chance to rescue a summer full of bricks, but this surely doesn't apply for Shaun Deeb and John Hennigan who have both had excellent summer campaigns. They're neck-and-neck in the Player of the Year race and neither of them seems to be willing to give up.
Deeb and Hennigan will both be back for Day 2 as they bagged advancing stacks. Just hours after winning his second bracelet of the summer, Deeb returned to the felt and secured his 16th cash. He finished with 106,000 and rushed away to join Tony Miles' rail in the heads-up of the Main Event.
"Johnny World" will have a slight advantage tomorrow as he bagged 149,000. A new member of the Poker Hall of Fame, Hennigan continues showing his prowess. While he's mostly crushing the mixed games, having won five bracelets in those, he seems to be comfortable in the vanilla discipline as well.
Deeb's and Hennigan's respective runs have been the storylines of this year's series, but there's one player who stole some of Deeb's attention yesterday. While Deeb was taking down the $10K NLH 6-Max Championship, a Twitter exchange brew between Allen Kessler and Cliff Josephy about their appearance on the same table in a $3K H.O.R.S.E. event.
Both Kessler and Josephy took to the felt in The Closer today and Kessler finished much happier. Not only did he find a bag, but he also filled it with the largest amount among all 181 survivors. Kessler managed to climb to 576,000 to secure the third place overall. As he told PokerNews after bagging, his biggest surge came after the last break. He had about 150,000 when he called three barrels with king-jack, having flopped a jack and turned king. Then he knocked out an opponent with aces over queens and a couple more pots saw him rise all the way to the top.
Kessler is yet to win a bracelet but the final day will welcome tons of players who have already triumphed at the WSOP. Some of those emerged from Day 1c as the likes of Joe Cada, Rep Porter, Mohsin Charania, Chris Moorman, Brandon Shack-Harris, Loni Harwood, and others will be in action again.
But the most decorated player of all-time, 15-time champion Phil Hellmuth won't be coming back for Day 2. Hellmuth fell just short of cashing. He returned from the last break to just 6,500 at 2,000/4,000/500 and posted a small blind. The action got folded to him and Hellmuth limp-called with queen-four suited only to see the player in the big blind peel aces. Hellmuth couldn't deliver a bad beat and departed about 15 places away from the money.
While Hellmuth won't be in the field, there are dozens of star players still chasing the title so make sure to come back to PokerNews Sunday, July 15 at 12 p.m. local time to see how the final day unfolds.