Max Silver has gone wire-to-wire in Event #53: $3,000 Limit Hold’em Six-Handed to land the UK’s fourth bracelet of the summer, and Chris Bolek wins Event #50: $1,500 No-Limit Hold’em Bounty.
It was 2011, and I was preparing for hand-for-hand analysis of the €10,400 World Series of Poker Europe (WSOPE) Main Event in Cannes. There was more prime beef on the final table than an abattoir. Each of them a highly trained mercenary programmed to take shit down.
The roll call looked like this: Elio Fox, Chris Moorman, Moritz Kranich, Brian Roberts, Dermot Blain, Shawn Buchanan, Jake Cody, Patrik Antonius, and Max Silver. As they headed to the table prepared to beheaded each other I caught hold of Silver to ask him how he was feeling.
“I just hope she gets here on time,” he told me as he took his seat.
Silver was talking about his wife who was flying over to watch him attempt to win €1.4m.
She didn’t get there on time.
Silver hit the rail in eighth place.
Fast forward six years, and there is an impudent sense of Deja Vu in the air. Silver took the chip lead on Day 1 of Event #53: $3,000 Limit Hold’em Six-Handed and entered the final table with that lead still intact. Nine hours later and he had won his first gold bracelet, the pinnacle of his blossoming career, but when he looked to the rail, Mrs Silver was absent.
But there was a special reason why she missed this one.
“She’s currently six months pregnant,” Silver told PokerNews.
The first person Silver called after his KT had outlasted the 83 of Guowei Zhang was his wife.
“She was crying.” Said Silver.
But just like that time in Cannes, the pair will celebrate together. Mr and Mrs Silver are getting on a jet plane to meet in New York for a celebration before Mr Silver heads back to Las Vegas seeking more gold, and Mrs Silver heads back to Dublin seeking more cribs, bibs, and cute little stuffed pigs.
Silver’s victory places the UK on par with Russia, with four bracelets, good for a joint second place in the country rankings.
Final Table Result
1. Max Silver – $172,645
2. Geowei Zang – $106,694
3. Mickey Craft – $69,789
4. Ayman Qutami – $46,871
5. Lena Wang – $32,345
6. Georgios Kapalas – $22,952
Other notables to delve deeper than a dwarf digging a dungeon included one of the WSOP Player of the Year front-runners John Racener (13th), one of Canada’s finest Mark Radoja (14th), and the former WSOP Player of the Year Frank Kassela (16th).
Chris Bolek wins Event #50: $1,500 No-Limit Hold’em Bounty
Plenty of people have complained about the lack of live streaming at the 48th Annual WSOP, but Chris Bolek is not one of them.
After finding it a little daunting to compete underneath the bright lights of the Season XIII World Poker Tour (WPT) Main Event in Jacksonville, where he finished second, Bolek was relieved there was no stream during an unscheduled fourth day of action in Event #50: $1,500 No-Limit Hold’em Bounty.
“I was happy we didn’t have a stream yesterday, just because it allows you to concentrate on what’s going on,” Bolek told PokerNews.
Hailing from Quito, Ecuador, the highest capital city in the world, Bolek is familiar with looking down on everyone else, but this was the first time he had reached the summit of a WSOP bracelet event.
The 28-year-old, now residing in Florida, defeated 1,927 entrants, down 11% YoY, to take the $266,646 first prize, and his collection of $500 bounties, the last of which belonged to Bryan Emory.
It was Bolek’s fifth cash of the summer, and he now has the WSOP collection after winning a World Series of Poker Circuit (WSOPC) gold ring back in 2014. Despite winning the gold, this was not Bolek’s largest live score. The same year he won that gold ring he also defeated 601 entrants to win the Rock n Roll Poker Open Main Event in the Seminole Hard Rock, Hollywood for $480,200.
Final Table Results
1. Chris Bolek – $266,646
2. Bryan Emory – $164,735
3. James Gilbert – $119,479
4. Tobias Peters – $87,516
5. Zhaoxing Whag – $64,746
6. Govert Metaal – $48,386
7. Thomas Lutz – $36,530
8. Richard Dubini – $27,865
9. Dan Sindelar – $21,477
Other players who ended up deeper than a piece of Brontosaurus bone marrow was the man who always comes so close but never leaves with a cigar, Jacob Bazeley (12th), the 2017 Spring Championship of Online Poker (SCOOP) Main Event runner-up Harrison Gimbel (15th), and the British Bulldog Tom Hall (27th).
