Antonin Teisseire has become the fourth Frenchman to claim a 2011 World Series of Poker bracelet. The 45-year-old Teisseire outlasted 817 players to take Event #50, the $5k Triple-Chance NLHE. It’s Teisseire’s first bracelet and his biggest ever cash at $825k, which is also bigger than any of the other French 2011 prizes earned by Fabrice Soulier, Bertrand ‘ElkY’ Grospellier and Elie Payan.
Vanessa Peng made the final table, lifting ladies’ hopes of becoming the first female to take an open event title since another Vanessa (Selbst) did it in 2008, but Peng could manage no higher than sixth place. Eric Froelich’s quest for a third bracelet fell shy when he fell in fourth place. Darryl Ronconi took home $510k for being the last man to stand in Teisseire’s way. The Frenchman chalked up his country’s good fortune in 2011 to “variance. In the past, we were unlucky. Now we are running normal. It sucks that in poker that you need that little bit of luck to win (Alfred Denning was right!) and I had that today.”
Speaking of luck, try this one on for size. There’s been a deluge of rookie bracelet winners at this year’s WSOP, but none quite like David Singontiko. The 21-year-old California native won Event #51, the $1,500 PLO Hi-Low Split-8 or Better, by outlasting a 946-strong field and personally eliminating six of his final table opponents (including eventual runner-up Michael Yee after just two hands). Impressive enough; even more so when you learn that it was the first event Singontiko had ever entered. This is like a golfer hitting a hole-in-one on the first tee at his first ever PGA event. FORE!
Apparently, the self-described “dead broke college student” Singontiko earned his buy-in via a $10/hour summer job at his father’s mortgage company in exchange for Dad putting up the $1,500 buy-in. The first call he placed post-victory was to tell his father the $1,500 was now over $268k. (By the deal they made, Dad gets half.) Dad was in South America, but fortunately Mom was on hand, because her son said afterward that he “never realized how hard 10 hours of poker really is.” Let’s hope Mom got Singontiko into his jammies with a nice cup of cocoa, then safely tucked into bed when he retired that night. After all, her boy had a very busy day.
