It was another super Sunday at the 2023 World Series of Poker from Horseshoe and Paris Las Vegas on June 11, with four players reeling in WSOP bracelets, and another handful of events making big strides towards awarding their poker gold.

Josh Arieh won the first bracelet of Day 13, which happened to be the fifth of his long and illustrious career. The 2021 WSOP Player of the Year, Arieh took down Event #22: $10,000 Limit Hold’em Championship for $316,226 after defeating Daniel Idema of Canada heads-up.

Leon Sturm secured a whopping $1,546,024 payday and their first gold bracelet after coming out on top of Event #23: $50,000 High Roller (8-Handed). Some of the biggest names in tournament poker were among the 124 players who started the event, but it was Sturm who shone the brightest over the course of three intense days of poker, and they became a worthy champion.

Event #24: $1,500 Razz also crowned its champion, and David “ODB” Baker is the player who will forever be known as the 2022 winner. Baker was one the ropes at one stage of the heads-up battle with Justin Liberto, but fought valiantly to claw his way back into contention, before going on a late tear and emerging with the victory and one of the greatest comeback stories in poker history.

The fourth bracelet of the evening went to Gary “SaquonNYG26” Belyalovsky in Online Event #5: $400 No-Limit Hold’em 8-Max. Belyalovsky found themselves heads-up against 2020 Domestic WSOP Main Event champion Joseph “Kolebear” Hebert, and came out on top to become a WSOP champion for the first time.

Deeb Flies High on Day 1 of the $1,500 Eight Game Mix

Five-time WSOP bracelet winner Shaun Deeb has done his chances of capturing a sixth bracelet no harm at all by bagging up the Day 1 chip lead in Event #27: $1,500 Eight Game Mix.

Deeb finished Day 1 with 311,200 chips, and was the only player to finish with more than 300,000 chips. Finland’s Sampo Ryynanen (282,000) is Deeb’s nearest rival, while Kao “Chill” Saechao (279,500) bagged up the third largest stack. Among Saechao’s stack are chips that once belonged to PokerNews’ Chad Holloway.

Among the 218 survivors are a plethora of top-tier poker players. David “Bakes” Baker (238,000), Anthony Zinno (177,800), Dario Sammartino (154,000), Allen Kessler (100,700), the legendary Phil Hellmuth (84,700), and Daniel Negreanu (63,900) to name just a few.

A certain Viktor “Isildur1” Blom (47,500) also made an appearance, but he returns on Day 2 with plenty of work to do.

Play resumes under the watchful eyes of the PokerNews live reporting team from 1:00 p.m. local time on June 12. We will see you there.

Event #27: $1,500 Eight Game Mix Top 10 Chip Counts

Only 14 Warriors Remain in the Gladiators of Poker

Event #18: $300 Gladiators of Poker is entering its final phase, with only 14 of the 23,088-field remaining. Eric Trexler is the player to catch, having finished Day 2 with 97,400,000 chips. Brazil’s Caio Sobral (94,000,000) occupies second place at the restart.

None of the remaining 14 players have captured a bracelet before, but that is set to change for one of them by the time the curtain comes down on Day 3 proceedings. Each of the returning players is guaranteed $23,298 for their efforts, with a final table appearance boosting this to $46,051, and the champion taking home a cool $499,852.

The third and final day shuffles up and deals at 12:00 p.m. local time on June 12 and play continues until only one player has all 692,640,000 chips in their stack. Stay tuned to PokerNews to find out who that champion is.

Event #18: $300 Gladiators of Poker Final Day Chip Counts

Seidel is in the Top 3 Going Into Day 3 of the Omaha Hi-Lo Championship

Erik Seidel has a realistic chance of joining an exclusive club of players that have won at least ten WSOP bracelets when he returns for Day 3 of Event #25: $10,000 Omaha Hi-Lo 8 or Better Championship. Seidel finished Day 2 with 1,010,000 chips, enough for third place out of 21 returning players.

Should Seidel get the job done, he would join Johnny Chan, Phil Ivey, and the late Doyle Brunson on ten bracelets. Of course, he’d still be some distance behind Phil Hellmuth and his haul of 16 pieces of WSOP hardware.

Seidel was one of four players to cram seven figures worth of chips into an overnight bag. Chip leader Jay Kerbel (1,065,000), two-time bracelet winner Jose Luis Velador (1,040,000), and Johannes Becker (1,010,000) are that trio.

Others still in contention include Kyle Cartwright (880,000), Ben Lamb (630,000), John Hennigan (630,000), Brad Ruben (570,000), and Sammy Farha (225,000).

The remaining 21 players return to their seats from 1:00 p.m. local time on June 12, and PokerNews will be with you every step of the way.

Event #25: $10,000 Omaha Hi-Lo 8 or Better Top 10 Chip Counts

$800 No-Limit Hold’em Field Decimated

Romania’s Cosmin Joldis (2,040,000) captured the Day 1 chip lead in Event #26: $800 No-Limit Hold’em Deepstack, as the 4,747-strong field was decimated over the course of 22 levels. Only 339 players bagged chips at the close of play.

Joldis finished as runner-up to Young Sik Eum in the 2022 Mini Main Event at the WSOP, a result that netted him $367,233. Joldis would beat that career-best score if he triumphs in this tournament because first place comes with a $402,588 payday, and the all-important WSOP bracelet.

Although Joldis bagged the only two-million stack, there are some superb poker players in the chasing pack. Thomas Boivin (1,575,000), JJ Liu (1,245,000), Ryan Riess (1,025,000), Joe Serock (810,000), Ben Yu (685,000), and Bryn Kenney (575,000) are just a handful of names to look out for on Day 2.

Cards are back in the air from 10:00 a.m. local time on June 12, and PokerNews will be providing updates from the first pitched cards to the bagging up of chips.

Event #26: $800 No-Limit Hold’em Deepstack Top 10 Chip Counts

What to Expect on Day 14 of the 2023 WSOP

Hold onto your hats because Day 14 is going to be a busy one at the Horseshoe and Paris Las Vegas. As the 2023 WSOP hits the two-week mark, Event #18: $300 Gladiators of Poker will conclude, as will Event #26: $800 No-Limit Hold’em Deepstack.

Attempts will be made to whittle the Event #25: $10,000 Omaha Hi-Lo 8 or Better Championship field as much as possible, and we will have a clearer picture of who the champion of Event #27: $1,500 Eight Game Mix will be.

Day 14 also sees three new evens shuffle up and deal! Event #28: $1,500 No-Limit Hold’em should see yet another huge field, while Event #29: $100,000 High Roller is set to bring poker’s elite players out of the woodwork. Event #30: $1,500 Limit 2-7 Triple Draw sees the first draw poker tournament event commence.

Of course, PokerNews is reporting live from all the events mentioned above, so join us on June 12 and throughout the 2023 WSOP for all of the action as it happens.

Five of poker’s best high-stakes players battled for eight hours Event #23: $50,000 High Roller (8-Handed) reached a conclusion at the 2023 World Series of Poker (WSOP) at the Horseshoe and Paris Las Vegas. Germany’s Leon Sturm came out on top for his first bracelet and $1,546,024 as he denied American businessman Bill Klein a maiden bracelet.

The age gap between Sturm, 22, and Klein, 75, may have been the biggest ever in a heads-up bracelet battle, reminiscent of then 22-year-old Adrian Mateos’ victory over 70-year-old John Smith in the 2017 $10,000 Heads-Up Championship. The audience-favorite Klein made several gutsy bluffs throughout the day but ultimately fell to the youngest player, who was making his WSOP final table debut.

“It does feel amazing,” Sturm told PokerNews in a winner’s interview. “The bracelet is something special; it means more than just a trophy, I guess. Before, I was thinking that trophies and bracelets don’t mean much to me. But I think a bracelet is special, so that’s pretty cool. The competition was really tough, so that makes it better.”

High roller regular Seth Davies was looking to remove his name from the “Best Without a Bracelet” list but fell in fifth place before Day 3 chip leader and 2022 $250,000 Super High Roller champion Alex Foxen went out in fourth, while Dutchman Jans Arends couldn’t win his second bracelet and was eliminated in third place.

Event #23: $50,000 High Roller (8-Handed) Final Table Results

Riders on the Sturm

As it turns out, this wasn’t Sturm’s first $1.5 million poker score of the month. Just last week, the German took down a $10,000 buy-in GGPoker Super MILLION$ event for $1,518,400. To make things even sweeter, he satellited into the $50,000 High Roller for just $5,000.

“Financially, I’ve had a pretty surreal month,” he said while acknowledging that he sold significant action in both events. “It adds up. It’s nice. A lot of winnings coming together.”

Sunday’s five-handed final table displayed a battle between two camps: the European online grinders and the American live specialists. Sturm and Arends are primarily online crushers, while Davies, Foxen and Klein are all among the most recognizable faces on the live high roller circuit.

Though they hadn’t ever spoken before the tournament, Sturm and Arends shared a bond on the felt, and Arends even stuck around on the rail and hopped in Sturm’s winner’s photo.

“We haven’t really met before, but we play tons online,” said Sturm. “He’s one of the best online regulars there are, really and we’ve played tons of hands against each other. So we know each other.”

“In terms of the rest of the competition, of course, there was like Foxen, Davies, and all these people. I’d say in terms of their skill, because they don’t play that much online and don’t get that much hands in, I think I can do quite well against them, and maybe I’m even better theoretically. But it’s just their presence and their focus, and how they prepare for everything is just so insanely sick in a way that you have to have so much respect for them. Because it’s so hard to show up every day and have the same routines and be so consistent with all of that.”

Day 3 Action

As he entered the day with a sizable chip lead and over a hundred big blinds, it looked like Foxen could steamroll his four remaining opponents en route to a second bracelet. But Foxen stumbled early when he turned a straight against Arends only for “Graftekkel” to river a bigger straight. Foxen couldn’t recover and fell in a later hand against Sturm about an hour after the German sent Davies home in fifth.

“Unfortunate runout for me,” Foxen told PokerGO’s Jeff Platt. “Obviously, he hit a sweet card on the turn and about the only really bad card for me on the river. But it is what it is, not much I can do about it. Just kind of had to keep moving forward and take each hand one at a time.”

Foxen’s exit marked the start of a lengthy three-handed battle that saw the Sturn, Klein, and Arends exchanging chip leads and all managing to stay afloat. After several hours, Arends check-jammed his top pair as Sturm called with a better kicker before a brick runout send the Dutchman out in third for $694,019.

Sturm and Klein were near even in chips when heads-up play began Sturm slowly closed out against Klein, who had social media fired up as he made several epic bluffs throughout the final table.

Klein had grown restless by the time heads-up play came around and made consecutive shoves with marginal holdings. Eventually, Sturm was able to pick off the PokerGO Studio regular as Klein jammed with middle pair and Sturm called with top pair. A brick runout confirmed another runner-up bracelet finish for Klein, who took second in 2015’s $111,111 One Drop for $2,465,522.

“He played weird, of course,” said Sturm. “He went all in a couple of times in spots where you don’t expect it, so that kind of threw me off … I waited, got my top pair, and then we got it in.”

As much a philanthropist as he is a businessman and poker player, Klein vowed to donate all of his winnings to charity. Sturm, meanwhile, will surely use the seven-figure score to pad his poker bankroll as he now looks for a second bracelet.

That wraps up PokerNews’ coverage of Event #23: $50,000 High Roller (8-Handed). Be sure to check out the WSOP live reporting portal for coverage of other events here at the 2023 WSOP in Las Vegas.

It’s a less elegant turn of phrase than “a chip and a chair”, but David “ODB” Baker was down to only two big bets and a chair in World Series of Poker Event #24: $1,500 Razz at Paris and Horseshoe Las Vegas, before surging back to win his third bracelet.

Baker adds his name to a list of illustrious former winners of this event that includes Brad Ruben, Kevin Gerhart, Max Pescatori, and Phil Hellmuth.

$1,500 Razz Final Table Results

Winner’s Reaction

After the win, Baker remarked on how much winning his third bracelet meant: “If you polled poker players to find out who loved poker the most, my name would be on the top ten list. I live for this.”

He also remarked on the experience of coming back from such a huge deficit. “In 2017, in this event I was up I think 30:1 on Jason Gola. That was the most disappointed I’ve been. That one really ate me up. It’s a lot of redemption to come back in the same event that he stole from me. Not to say he didn’t play great – he made a great comeback. But now I have a first, a second, a third, and a fifth in razz. I’ve been around a long time, and I know in these events, sometimes you just need to win that one pot. I never lost hope.”

Baker was also short-stacked three-handed and credited his turnaround there to a good read in a hand against Chris Hundley.

Baker never gave up, fought back time and time again, and truly earned his third WSOP bracelet.

Liberto’s Juggernaut Run Comes to and End

Baker’s two big bets were also all that stood between Justin Liberto and his second WSOP bracelet. Liberto had come into Day 3 second in chips and continued to accumulate them until, with four players left, he had more than half the chips in play. It is a notable achievement for Liberto, whose previous WSOP successes have mainly been in hold ‘em events.

Event #24 attracted a field of 556 razz players, the largest ever for a WSOP razz event, and generated a prize pool of $742,260.

The final day started with 15 players, with Canada’s William Burke (2,450,000) holding a sizable chip lead over Liberto (1,870,000) and Everett Carlton (1,755,000).

Day 3 action started off with a flurry of eliminations, and the final table was reached in an hour and a half.

Final Table Action

Jeff Lisandro was eliminated in fifth Place ($34,752) when he paired fours on sixth and was drawing dead to Baker’s eight-five and his quest for his seventh bracelet, and second in razz came to an end.

Takashi Ogura went out in fourth place ($66,659). The climactic hand came when his ten-low could not catch up to Chris Hundley’s eight.

Hundley himself was eliminated an hour or so later in third place ($66,659) when he put his tournament on the line and Baker caught up to beat Hundley’s jack-low with a nine-eight.

Baker started heads up with Justin Liberto down to three-to-one, and Liberto ground him down from there until finally, Baker made his last stand, tossing his 450,000 into the middle and finding a double up.

After that hand, Baker battled back relentlessly, taking small pot after small pot, betting Liberto off of hands when his boards appeared intimidating, and always seeming to have the winning hand when Liberto called. Chip by chip, he clawed back, and then when he regained the chip lead, the tables swiftly turned, and Baker moved inexorably to the win. The victory brings Baker’s WSOP bracelet total to three, and he adds the first place cash of $152,991 to his $3,558,947 in career earnings.

The WSOP has more razz action on tap on June 13, as many of the same top names will battle in Event #33: $10,000 Razz Championship, so be sure to tune in to PokerNews for all the action.

Although he came back for the fourth day of Event #22: $10,000 Limit Hold’em Championship as the short stack, 2021 WSOP Player of the Year Josh Arieh went on a bit of a run on the final table today to claim his fifth WSOP bracelet. With 134 entries in the field, the total prize pool came to $1,246,200 and Arieh claimed a first-place prize of $316,226.

Arieh defeated Daniel Idema heads-up with the Canadian taking home $195,443 with him while Nozomu Shimizu padded his bankroll with an extra $144,069.

Arieh now has over $8.5 million in WSOP cashes. His biggest cash was finishing in third place in the 2005 Main Event for $2,500,000. An even more spectacular statistic is that his first cash came back in 1999 when he also won his first bracelet in Event #10: $3,000 Limit Hold’em for $202,800.

He was visibly emotional and a bit speechless when PokerNews spoke to him: “Yeah. Euhm, yeah, I’m trying to think of the best way to say it. Like, I know I’m on the outside looking into the Hall of Fame. I look at the list of people and think I’m close. And now, with a little more success, I might get thought of. I mean, Brian Rast, Matt Savage, Isai Scheinberg. I mean, the list just goes on, and only one person gets in a year.”

“So this is just another step that will give me a chance to maybe be inducted in to the Hall of Fame. Poker players were looked at as these backroom hustlers. Like, oh, you’re a poker player, you’re a bad person. You gamble for a living; how do you do that? I’ve said it before; it just gives it a little validity. And to be thought about, the names of people that are one, it would just be insane.”

Event #22: $10,000 Limit Hold’em Championship Final Table Results

Three-handed Final Day Action

From the first hand of the day when Arieh chipped up through Shimizu with a higher kicker, it seemed not much could go wrong for Arieh. He doubled up within the first fifteen minutes through Idema when he had flopped top pair while Idema had turned a lower pair and straight draw. He stayed active, played many hands, and took over the chip lead after only twenty minutes of play.

Shimizu lost a chunk of his stack to Arieh when he called a raise with a flopped pair of jacks to see his opponent had rivered a straight. From there on, the cheerful Japanese player never really recovered and ended up in third place when he lost the remainder of his stack to Idema. Still sporting a huge smile and even giggling a bit, he wished the rest good luck while making his way off the feature stage.

After a short break, the heads-up battle commenced, with the eventual champion holding almost a 2:1 chip lead. The two-hour heads-up battle went back and forth for a bit, but he was slowly chipping away at Idema’s stack. Even though the Canadian doubled up once, he kept giving chips back in other pots. Ultimately, he doubled up again before all the chips went in with ace-deuce on a trey-five-five-nine board. Arieh had turned two pair with the nine-four in his hand, and the nine on the river gave him a full house for his fifth bracelet.

Reflecting on the day, the champion added, “I had this huge rush of clarity and calmness, and I wasn’t the least bit stressed out. And I just knew that limit hold’em is a game of momentum and a game of rushes. And I was like, well, there are three people left. One of us will go on a rush, and it can very easily be me. And that’s just what happened.”

This concludes the coverage of this event, but follow along with PokerNews for all the updates on the 2023 World Series of Poker here at Horseshoe and Paris Las Vegas.

The 2022 World Series of Poker (WSOP) was, by all measures, a rousing success in the series first year at Bally’s (now Horseshoe) and Paris Las Vegas.

Through about one-fourth of the 2023 WSOP, attendance is even better than last year. A lot better. In fact, in 18 of the 20 similar events up to this point in the series, this summer has seen an uptick in turnout. And in quite a few of those tournaments, the attendance spike has been in the double-digit percentages.

Poker is Not Dead

As of June 11, there has been 20 bracelet events that were offered at the 2022 WSOP, starting with Event #1: $500 Casino Employees, a tournament open only to those who work in the casino industry.

Although only certain players are eligible to compete in the tournament, perhaps the 22% spike year-over-year was a sign of big things to come for the 2023 World Series of Poker.

There are a total of 95 bracelet events on the schedule this summer, so the party’s just getting started. We can’t make any guarantees about attendance going forward, but all signs point to not only a record-setting series, but also a record-setting Main Event, the most important tournament in poker every year.

Last year, the Main Event hit 8,663 entries, just 110 shy of the 2006 record. Entering the current series, many have anticipated the world championship event record will be broken, if not shattered. Those predictions don’t seem silly at this point given current attendance.

Only two exact events thus far — oddly enough, both $5,000 buy-in tournaments — have seen a decline in turnout compared to 2022. Those tournaments were Event #6: $5,000 Mixed No-Limit Hold’em/Pot-Limit Omaha (down 28%) and Event #12: $5,000 No-Limit Hold’em Freezeout (down 3%).

Every other similar event — all 18 of them (excluding the heads-up event, which is capped at 64 players) — have seen an uptick in attendance, and nearly half of them are up more than 10%. The biggest spike in turnout thus far, percentage-wise, was Event #19: $2,500 No-Limit Hold’em Freezeout, up 51% year-over-year (752 to 1,137 players).

The high-stakes tournaments are also experiencing increased interest this summer. Take, for example, the $25,000 High Roller, which spiked from 251 entrants in 2022 to 301 in 2023 (20% boost).

The World Series of Poker is the most prestigious annual event in the game. As such, it’s more or less the benchmark for how popular poker is worldwide in any given year. Based on attendance at the quarter pole of the 2023 WSOP, it appears that poker is as popular as it has ever been, and the Main Event is likely headed for an all-time record.

Not only has turnout been up in the same events year-over-year, the $300 buy-in Gladiators of Poker, currently on Day 2, had 23,088 entrants, making it the second largest live poker tournament in history. The largest one, you ask, was the 2019 Big 50, a $500 buy-in bracelet event that generated 28,371 entrants.

Comparing Similar Events from 2022 and 2023 WSOP