Hellmuth Shopping for a 12-Pack
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The 2-7 Draw Championship began with 126 players each putting up the $10,000 buy-in, and two days later, we're down to our final nine. No first timers here. Each of them are well familiar with the pressure that comes along with playing deep in a WSOP event.
Just ask Phil Hellmuth, who's gunning for his astounding 41st career WSOP final table today. He's got 11 bracelets, too, and both of those numbers are good for the all-time lead. In fact, today is the four-year anniversary of Hellmuth's last WSOP title, a win in a $1,500 No-Limit Hold'em event. All of Hellmuth's bracelets are in that game, and you can just imagine the boost his ego would receive if he can conquer another game.
The rest of our final nine are no slouches, either, though. A total of 21 bracelets are owned by the players left, and only Joe Cassidy has yet to get his hands on WSOP gold. Today could well be the day he fills in that blank spot on his scorecard, though he'd still have to do this another 10 times to catch Hellmuth. The rest of the bracelets? Look at the field that's left: John Juanda has four bracelets and a WSOP-E Main Event title. Greg Raymer won the whole shebang in 2005 to snag his first bracelet and lots of millions of dollars, and Richard Ashby, David Baker, Steve Sung, Hasan Habib, and Nick Schulman also own WSOP bracelets.
It's definitely not all about Hellmuth today. At least not for now. Schulman won this event in 2009, and Baker shipped his first bracelet here last year. Both of those former champs are still in contention as well, and Baker comes into the day with a third-place chip stack and a keen eye set on repeating.
We're just 15 minutes away from our starting time, and we're over here in the Purple section of the Amazon room. Not for long, though. When we lose one more player, we're going to rack up and migrate to ESPN's main featured table. The mother ship is glowing.
Don't wander away. This is shaping up to be the most exciting finish yet at the 2011 WSOP.