It’s Italy on top! After a five-day event at the InterContinental Hotel in Malta, Simone Andrian has become the champion of the PokerStars Summer Festival Malta Main Event for €153,610. It was a classic showcase of power poker from Andrian, who turned his overnight chip lead into an eventual victory.

Andrian recently won the WPT Sanremo title for €147,020, making the win his second six-figure payday in a month. Tommy Nguyen of Norway finished the event in second place for €95,850, and Marcin Lesniewski of Poland came third for €68,470. The Main Event attracted 916 entries for a total prize pool of €879,000.

Andrian mentioned that he studied a lot in the last few months, which gave him confidence at the tables. “I still make a lot of mistakes, of course, but I think my game has improved,” he said in a first response.

2023 PokerStars Summer Festival Malta Main Event Final Table Results

Final Day Action

Despite his early lead, it didn’t always look like the Main Event was Andrian’s for the taking. With eight players remaining, Lesniewski hit a set of jacks in a three-way all-in to bust both Nastasi and Talvard. Minutes later, he turned an ace to eliminate Larsen and take a dominant chip lead.

It was a lead that he couldn’t hold on to for long. Docherty doubled up through him, and then Andrian called down Lesniewski’s triple barrel bluff to slip in front. Nguyen had also been chipping up and by this point, was jostling for the chip lead.

Docherty had been gaining momentum, too, only to be knocked out by Andrian in fourth place. The following hand, Nguyen made two pair against Lesniewski’s pair of aces to bust his opponent and take the game to heads-up.

Andrian chipped away at Nguyen throughout the match before pairing his hand in an all-in confrontation on the flop to win the event.

The 2023 World Series of Poker (WSOP) Main Event is underway, and it was fitting that Jamie Gold was on-site at Horseshoe and Paris Las Vegas to announce “shuffle up and deal” at noon on Monday.

Gold famously won the 2006 world championship event for a record $12 million, beating out 8,773 players, another record that still holds to this day, although it might not in a few days.

Throughout the entirety of the Main Event, PokerNews will provide regular live updates from the floor, with hand histories, interviews, player reactions, and reports on all the top stories.

Record-Breaking Year?

Many expect this year’s prestigious $10,000 buy-in no-limit hold’em tournament to surpass the 2006 mark, if not smash it. Some have predicted upwards of 10,000 entries, and although that might seem like a lofty goal, it certainly isn’t out of the realm of possibility.

Gold, who still remains passionate about poker 17 years later, entered Monday’s Day 1a session. He told PokerNews he not only wants the record to be broken, but is “confident” that it will. The former champ said he anticipates a massive crowd, even larger than last year’s 8,663 players.

“I think a lot of people were still kind of concerned with COVID last year,” Gold said. “So, say 1,000 players stayed away because of COVID, if just half of them return to play the Main Event this year, that will break the record.”

The 2006 winner also mentioned the influx of satellite winners this year helping to spike attendance. Much like last year when Espen Jorstad took down poker’s most prestigious tournament, the 2023 Main Event will have four Day 1 sessions, one more than traditionally to accommodate demand.

Jamie Gold Talks 2006 World Series of Poker

Gold’s victory is still talked about in poker circles as it was one of the most memorable Main Event runs in history. The champ famously used speech play to talk his opponents into folding when he had junk, or to call when he was nutted. As he acknowledged, some ESPN viewers didn’t like him because of that speech play, but it certainly worked out quite well for him.

“People still think I play the way I did on television 17 years ago,” he said.

These days, Gold explained, he’s tighter but can still get paid off when he has a monster because of that memorable Main Event run. The long-time poker player said he’s enjoyed being able to say he won the largest Main Event ever, but he was more focused on winning a world championship and life-changing money at the time. Thus, he is rooting for the record to be broken this week.

One of the most memorable moments from that 2006 ESPN coverage wasn’t Gold hoisting the bracelet. It was a heated argument he had with a young and rude poker player Eric Molina (see video below).

Gold said that the TV coverage didn’t show the entire situation that led up to his contentious battle with Molina as WSOP shows were condensed and edited to fit into one-hour episodes at the time.

“It wasn’t a simple argument between Molina and I,” Gold explained. “This was going on for at least a full day before he ended up at my table. He was already known for berating players and being rude. So, when he finally landed at our table, there were some older players who were very kind. We were all being friendly. And these older players especially were excited to be there. And (Molina) just started berating them and really getting out of line.”

“After a while, he felt that he could get away with being as rude as he wanted to be, and I had had it. I made it my mission to take him out. I wasn’t the one who busted him, but I would use my massive chip stack to take advantage of him and everyone would cheer me on.”

Gold ended up with the last laugh as Molina busted in 31st place for $329,865, his only World Series of Poker cash still to this day. Outside of about a dozen small scores over the years since, he hasn’t produced any live tournament results, according to Hendon Mob.

The reigning world champion, Jorstad, said he will be entering Main Event Day 1c on Wednesday where he will begin his title defense.

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Phil Hellmuth now has 17 World Series of Poker (WSOP) bracelets, seven more than anyone else. He’s won enough bracelets to likely hold onto that record throughout his lifetime. But he’ll almost certainly tack on some more before he calls it a career.

The record alone is tournament poker’s greatest accomplishment, and yet there’s so much more to his WSOP resume than perhaps you even knew. Take, for starters, the fact that he’s the only player to win bracelets in five separate decades (1980s, 1990s, 2000s, 2010s, and 2020s) and one of two players, along with Josh Arieh, to win at all three host venues (Binion’s, Rio, and Bally’s/Horseshoe).

Poker Legend Setting WSOP Records

On Sunday morning after the sun had risen above the Las Vegas desert, the “Poker Brat” took down Event #72: $10,000 Super Turbo Bounty for $803,818, extending a record he’s held, and added on to, for more than a decade.

Hellmuth beat Justin Zaki in a one-hand heads-up match, the 17th different opponent he’s defeated to cap off a bracelet run. Zaki is without a bracelet, as are seven others who fell prey to Hellmuth’s tournament-style heads-up prowess. But among his 17 victims are four Hall of Famers, a two-time world champion, and Mike Gorodinsky.

He’s done it in five different poker variants — razz, no-limit hold’em, limit hold’em, pot-limit hold’em, no-limit 2-7. To put that in perspective, there are only 35 other players all-time who’ve won five or more bracelets, total.

Hellmuth has won the Main Event in Las Vegas (1989) and the WSOP Europe Main Event (2012). In 1989, at age 24, the Wisconsin native shocked the world when he defeated two-time defending champion Johnny Chan to win poker’s most glorified annual tournament, h4is first bracelet. Even he couldn’t have known at the time that 34 years later he’d be celebrating his record-extending 17th title.

The Poker Hall of Famer’s WSOP heads-up foes have a combined 37 bracelets, barely twice as many as he’s won alone. If you take away Chan, his first victim, the opponents have just 27 bracelets among his last 16 titles. Among the legends he defeated to win a bracelet include Negreanu, Chan, T.J. Cloutier, and Tom McEvoy.

But, Wait, There’s More!

The naysayers used to say he can’t win outside of hold’em. Then he won two razz bracelets and a no-limit 2-7 event, and in 2021 set the record for most final table appearances in a single WSOP (7), most in non-hold’em games.

He was also once said to rack up bracelets in small field events, which isn’t even true as he’s won four WSOP events that had over 400 players, including a $1,500 no-limit hold’em tournament in 2007 that had 2,628 entrants.

Hellmuth is the only player in history who has dominated at the WSOP over four or more decades. Just about every tournament grinder has a shelf life on greatness at the World Series of Poker. Well, except for Phil Hellmuth, it seems.

It isn’t easy to win a bracelet. Phil Ivey, Daniel Negreanu, and Mike Matusow — three poker legends who play as many events annually as nearly anyone — have combined for exactly zero WSOP wins since 2014. Hellmuth’s won four times over that period, and he’s older than all three of those great players.

It’s not only the bracelets on Hellmuth’s WSOP resume that prove his greatness. In total, the former world champ has 197 cashes in bracelet events, trailing only Negreanu (228) and Roland Israelashvili (200). But if online bracelet event cashes were excluded, Hellmuth would top the charts (173).

Beyond holding the bracelet record, he’s also first in runner-up finishes at the WSOP with 14. And for those who say he can’t compete in the high rollers, three of those second place finishes came in $25,000 or higher buy-in tournaments. The “Poker Brat” has reached a total of 75 final tables at the WSOP in his lifetime, another record, an average of better than two per year for the past 35 years.

Hellmuth became great at a young age and has continued to dominate in the most prestigious poker series for 35 years now. There’s no one else in history who has performed at a high-level at the WSOP for longer than a 30-year span. Not even Doyle Brunson, who was mostly a cash game player this century.

Love him or despise his antics at the poker table, there’s simply no denying the greatness of Phil Hellmuth and the fact he’s the G.O.A.T. of the World Series of Poker.

Phil Hellmuth’s World Series of Poker Bracelets

The penultimate stop of the 2023 888poker LIVE season is right around the corner, which means time is running out if you want to win your way into the Main Event for as little as $0.01.

888poker LIVE Bucharest takes place between August 8-14, and features eight action-packed events for you to get your teeth into. The festival kicks off on August 8 with the first of three flights for the €220 No-Limit Hold’em Opening Event. Last year’s equivalent tournament saw Tudor Scriminti come out on top and pad his bankroll with €6,500.

Other events include a €115 buy-in Pot-Limit Omaha tournament, a €230 No-Limit Hold’em Mystery Bounty event, a €55 No-Limit Hold’em Ladies Event, the €330 buy-in No-Limit Hold’em Big Shot, and the €165 No-Limit Hold’em Closer, which brings the curtain down on proceedings.

Of course, there is also an 888poker LIVE Bucharest Main Event, which is the tournament every player wants to win. Costing €888 to enter and featuring four Day 1s, including a turbo-structured flight, the Main Event should be very well attended if last year’s tournament is anything to go by.

In 2022, some 272 players created a €192,670 prize pool. The tournament ended in a heads-up deal between runner-up Alexandru Arnautu and Bulgaria’s Slaven Popov. Arnautu banked €33,000, and Popov €35,185 plus a package to another 888poker LIVE event.

Other former 888poker LIVE Bucharest Main Event champions include 2018 winner Andrei Racolta (€71,042), and 2021 champion Razvan Belea (€50,000). Will your name be listed as the 2023 winner?

888poker LIVE Bucharest Schedule

Win Your Way to 888poker LIVE Bucharest from $0.01

Satellites for the 888poker LIVE Bucharest Main Event can be found in the 888poker lobby right now, but they will not stay there forever. Those satellites come in a range of shapes and sizes, with buy-in starting at the ultra-low price of $0.01.

Eventually, the satellites feed into the $109 buy-in qualifiers, where packages worth $2,000 are guaranteed. Capture such a package, and you’ll find yourself in possession of:

• €888/$950 buy-in to the 888poker LIVE Bucharest Main Event
• $550 for four nights’ accommodation
• $500 for travel expenses
• 888poker LIVE merchandise

Download 888poker via PokerNews to ensure you are entitled to the biggest and best 888poker welcome bonus available on the internet, and so you are eligible for the PokerNews-exclusive freerolls taking place at 888poker throughout July.

After the dust settled following twelve and a half hours of play, Tom “lultaxpayers” Hall came out on top in WSOP Online Event #12: $500 No-Limit Hold’em Deepstack to net the first-place prize of $176,920 along with a coveted gold WSOP bracelet. He defeated Daniel “DurdyDan512” Marin in about a level and a half of heads-up play with “ckraiseblff” rounding out the top three.

A total of 1,754 players entered this tournament with 937 re-entries to generate a prize pool of $1,210,950 that was split amongst the top 371 finishers, each of whom secured a minimum of $848.00. David “lotsoffish” Lee was the last individual not to see a return on their investment after getting knocked out in 372nd place.

Play increased in pace as the day wore on, and the blinds became more and more expensive. As a result, it did not take long for the final table of eight to be set with the elimination of “NickLeeson” in 9th place when their king-queen fell to Marin’s pocket tens.

Final Table Results

Final Table Action

Brandon “HawkHeaven” Forbes was the first out the door at the final table when his king-queen suited could not stand up to Hall’s king-deuce offsuit when he hit a deuce on the river.

Next to go was Tyler “Tslate21” Hirschfeld, who was eliminated by “ckraiseblff” when his ace-eight was out-kicked by his opponent’s ace-ten.

Brock “ohmyguan” Wilson and “NeverGambol” were sent to the rail in sixth and fifth, respectively, followed closely by Steven “rAiseAhippie” Touitou in fourth when he lost a flip with ace-jack versus “ckraiseblff”’s pocket sevens.

Even after busting Touitou, “ckraiseblff” was still a short stack and was next to go when his king-deuce was stomped by Marin’s superior ace-nine on a jack-high board.

That elimination set up a heads-up match between Hall and Marin, with the former starting with a 2-to-1 chip lead over Marin. After about a level and a half (around 20 minutes) of heads-up play, Hall had dwindled Marin’s stack to gain a 5-to-1 chip lead over him until they got the rest of it in the middle, where Hall scooped with a flopped pair of aces to leave Marin with the runner-up consolation prize of $109,349.

With this knockout, Hall was awarded the first-place prize of $176,920, along with his first WSOP gold bracelet! Congratulations to him on his victory! This latest win will further improve his already-impressive poker resume as it will be his fourth-largest score, although it is his largest score since 2018 when he placed fourth in a $5,300 PartyPoker Millions Event for $394,965.

This concludes coverage of WSOP Online Event #6: $500 No-Limit Hold’em Turbo. Be sure to stay tuned as the PokerNews live reporting team continues to provide comprehensive coverage of all events at the 2023 World Series of Poker at the Horseshoe and Paris Las Vegas.