The $500 SALUTE to Warriors tournament saw 3,937 entries. There were almost 200 million chips in play, and the dealers dealing the cards were not the most experienced, which, as often happens, led to some ridiculous mistakes. One player lost a significant part of his stack during the break, as he explained on Reddit :
WSOP Surveillance is Terrible.
– I color up I was short over $100k in the $500 Salute to warriors event. There were 6 cameras within 10 feet of my table. “Inconclusive” was their ruling. They couldn’t even confirm what my stack was post color up for me. Much less that it was pre color up. Pretty crazy. It was 1/10th of my stack.
If you’re the color up man at your table, be sure to stay and confirm everything. Never trust anyone.
Edit: I had a picture of my stack. Surveillance had to confirm my stack before color up and couldn’t. Floor said if they can’t confirm nothing they can do.
Edit edit: the floor(s) and supervisor were extremely cordial and did everything they could. I was very thankful and impressed with how they handled the situation as I’m sure they could see I was fuming. Whoever is working surveillance can eat a d***.
One commentator said that the opposite situation occurred in another tournament:
– Our guy got 100k more during the color-up, which cost the other participants about 2% chipEV each. The organizers realized their mistake an hour later, when he had already given away the entire stack and nothing could be changed 😂
The tournament was won by Joe Cuden ($187,937).
Thailand's amateur Veerachai Vongxaiburana won the Big O Championship ($784,353).
This is the most massive 10K event to date – 402 entries. There were 386 entries in the PLO8 championship. Only PLO and NLHE tournaments will have more, limit game championships rarely gather more than 150 participants.
Viktor Blom, who was making his fourth final table, managed to build himself up to the chip lead on the final day, but still busted first. He earned $181,069 for finishing fifth.
In 3-max, Veerachai was left with Marco Johnson and Philip Hui, but the mixed games giants were unable to do anything against him that day.
“It was a very tough field. I’m sure they have a lot more experience, but luckily I ran pretty good and the cards fell my way.” – the champion said.
The most expensive tournament of the series with a buy-in of $250,000 was won by Seth Davis ($4,752,551).
This win cemented his place as the top earner in MTTs this year.
Stacks at the start of the broadcast:
In the very first hand on the stream, Martin Kabrhel was dealt V Bryn Kenney, but they both played the straight on the board.
"Any complaints?" Martin asked his neighbors. "Mr. Brewer! Sorry."
In the second hand with kings against Alex Foxen's aces, Ben Tollerene was eliminated.
“Look how happy Chris is,” Martin continued commenting on what was happening.
But this time his benefit performance did not last long.
In the third hand, Kabrhel shoved 78s from second position and failed to improve against Chris' AJo.
"I try to enjoy the game," Martin said after his elimination. "I think everyone is too serious at the poker table, and it should be fun. So I try to make sure that happens."
"My summer is already successful 🌞," Martin said a couple of days after the tournament. "Jennifer Tilly followed me! Thanks to Phil Laak for pushing her👍"
Tournament hero David Peters, who pulled off a brilliant bluff against Kabrhel , finished 5th, K7s<A6о Foxen.
Chris Brewer was next to bust, after Alex Foxen hit a set on the river.
At this point Brewers poker career feels like a black mirror episode
— WIll jaffe (@dankness3) June 18, 2025
pic.twitter.com/5Lb2ohhL8u
– Holy fuck, what the fuck? Why does this happen to me every time? – Chris couldn't believe his eyes.
"Brewer's poker career is starting to resemble an episode of Black Mirror," Will Jaffe sympathized.
"Ran hot overall," Chris wrote after the tournament. "Would have been fun to win again, but oh well. My roi not 400% have to be happy with it."
Chris won this tournament in 2023, beating Artur Martirosyan in HA. A couple of weeks ago, he told Table 1 Podcast that before this victory he had a long downstreak, during which he had a reputation as the unluckiest player. For two years, he played all the expensive tournaments from backers and went to make up for an astronomical amount of $6 to $8 million. Winning the $250k tournament brought him and the backers $5.2 million.
– Now I sell shares for each tournament, and I have abandoned the make-up model, – Chris said. – Make-up is terrible, first of all, for backers. Imagine, you won $6 million in expensive tournaments, divided equally. Then you lost $5 million, as a result the backer ends up in the minus by $2 million, and the player in the plus by $1 million.
Tom Boavan eliminated Bryn Kenney in 4th place (AQ<KK).
The 3-max players started with roughly equal stacks of 50BB each. Davis quickly took the lead, but then doubled up Foxen, after which Alex knocked out Boavan in 3rd place (A7>KQ).
In the very first hand of heads-up play, Davis shoved , Foxen called with . The flop came a jack. Alex was left with a stack of 6 blinds and in the next hand the tournament ended with against .
Davis technically won the tournament with aces, but chose to take the victory photo .
Davis has been playing poker for 15 years and has close to $45 million in MTT winnings, but this is his first bracelet.
Seth has been posting his results almost every day on this series. After this win, they look pretty solid :
– Day 18
Cash 250k for $4,752,551Summer totals:
Tourneys: 10
Bullets: 15
Buyins: $566,000
Avg Bullet: $37,733
# of cashes: 4
Cashes: $4,877,442
Profit: $4,311,442
In Event #47, the $2,500 Omaha-8/Stud-8 Mixed Poker, Phil Hellmuth came close to winning his 18th bracelet .
– Third place, sigh…meanwhile, WSOP Bracelet 18 and June 18th—my Moms birthday—was on my mind. I was aware that the tourney would likely end after midnight on the 17th, ie…June 18th! Thought it would legendary to win my 18th WSOP Bracelet on June 18th.
No regrets?!?
This year, Hellmuth's son is playing in the World Series for the first time , finishing 51st out of 4,481 entrants in the $800 event.
The winner of the mix was Jason Daly ($244,674).
Alexander Orlov ($41,013) was eliminated in 6th place. He sat next to Hellmuth for the entire end of the tournament.
“It was a lot of fun to play with him, I won almost all the hands against him, he complained so funny that there was no life left because of the amateurs, they move for no reason….”, said the Russian player.
Alexander Orlov is indeed an amateur, but a very unusual one. His career winnings are approaching $1.3 million, and he has never won even a $50,000 prize. Orlov prefers mixed games (this is his fourth WSOP final table!), and he almost never plays Hold'em – except for senior tournaments.
Brian Rast wins his 7th bracelet in the $10,000 Razz Championship ($306,644).
Heads-up at 120,000/240,000, Brian had 260,000 against his opponent Andrew Ye's 7,780,000. But it wasn't enough for Ye to win.
Brian got to 2.7 million, then dropped back to 500,000, but made a wheel against A3456. Rast's seventh card was a 5 to his A234x.
– “Just immense gratitude. I feel like no one ever deserves to win a tournament because it’s so crazy what has to happen to win. I was very short at least twice, if not three times. I really liked my mindset on this one. I was just telling myself, even before the final table, just focus on your play. If you bust at this point, no matter what happens, you have a great life, you’re doing well, playing good poker. And that’s all I can control. I was very happy how I played, and just these ups and downs, emotionally. That was the longest heads-up battle that I’ve ever had. Andrew made it really tough.”
Event #54 – $1,500 PLO featured a stellar final table for its buy-in.
The champion was Matthew Vengrin 'Plattsburgh' ($306,791). He has 13 WSOP final tables, three second-place finishes, multiple WCOOP and SCOOP titles, but this was his first bracelet win.
In 3-max, Matt beat out Bryce Yockey ($204,425) and Punnath Poonsri ($146,266), all three of whom were fantasy draft picks.
– “I didn’t care who was in front of me, I just wanted to win my first bracelet.”
In this hand, Matt limped in from the button and called a raise to 750,000.
On the flop Yockey check-called the 1 million bet.
Thorn , checked.
River , Yoki check-raised 3.7 million – 14.5 million and folded all-in, leaving himself 5.5 million at the 120k/250k level.
The players did not show their cards, but Bryce said he had J6xx and Wengrin had J7xx.
The $25k PLO High Roller didn't fare as well for fantasy players.
The best was Phil Ivey , who was eliminated in 6th place ($394,531), Ben Lamb took 9th place ($170,900).
The winner was Dennis Weiss ($2,292,155).
This is the second bracelet for the German cash game regular, the first one he won was in the $5k PLO in Rozvadov.
– "Of course, I've studied for it. But nothing really different, I was just playing. Let the cards fall where they may."
Talal Shakerchi was in the leading group throughout the tournament, eventually finishing in 5th place ($539,817).
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