With Event #1 at the World Series of Poker Europe drawing a ton of interest, one player stood out above all of the other big names. Phil Hellmuth made it into the final 12 of the event, and looked to be on his way to taking down his 12 WSOP bracelet. Mixed with Phil there were quite a few other big names in the event as well, as players like Jason Mercier, Vanessa Selbst, and Daniel Negreanu took their shot at the €215,999 first place prize.
It looked like Hellmuth had a realistic shot at taking down his 12th gold bracelet in the No Limit Hold’em Six-Max Event, but he was unable to hold up in the end. Hellmuth got in some coin flips that didn’t hold up, and also got a bit tilted at some of the players who he was matched up against. Hellmuth’s efforts were good enough for a 7th place finish, and a nice €24,183 pay day. This finish will put him close to the current Player of the Year leader Ben Lamb, and it’ll be interesting to see how the Player of the Year race will end up.
The real story of the event came down to Guillaume Humbert, who finished in first place and took home the grand prize of €215,999. Humbert is actually a part time online poker pro, who used some of his earnings to buy-in to this event, and this was actually his first ever live poker tournament of his career. He grinded his way through the final 12 players, and got to heads up play against Azusa Maeda. When heads up play began, Humbert was about 600k in chips behind Maeda, but played aggressively for around an hour to gain a chip lead, and never actually had a hand go to showdown. Play finally came to an end with Maeda pushing all in with a straight draw and back door flush draw; but he was dominated by a flopped straight of Humbert. Maeada took home a nice consolation prize of €133,471 for an excellent run; but it was Humbert’s day in the end.
You could assume that this probably won’t be the last that we see of Guillaume Humbert at the World Series of Poker Europe.
Very impressive to take down such a prestige event against the caliber of players in the very first live event.