Event #60, the $50,000 Poker Players Championship, is still considered the most demanding in terms of skill level in all forms of poker. The event ran from June 21 to 25, and had 108 entries (just one less than last year).
- After Day 1: At the end, 66 players remained from 87 players that started the tournament. field reached 108 total entries after late reg closed on Day 2)
- After Day 2: 39 players last until the end of today, which entries reaching 108 from late reg.
- After Day 3: At the final break, 18 remained with 17 paid. After the break, three busted: Bryce Yockey as the bubble (18th, unpaid), then Dara Taherpour (17th,), then Matt Glantz (16th). 15 players left.
- After Day 4: By the end, 7 players created the official final table (Glaser, Ivey, Arieh, Tong, Mercier, Volpe, Coleman), after Nick Guagenti busted in 8th.
- After Day 5: Only 6 remain, after Jason Mercier lost to Benny in Stud High.
Day 5 Final Table Starting Stacks:
- Glaser – 8,610,000
- Ivey – 5,135,000
- Arieh – 5,265,000
- Tong – 5,180,000
- Volpe – 2,725,000
- Coleman – 5,565,000
The broadcast didn't start right away—and really, what was the rush? The cameras only rolled when Tong had already been eliminated. With two sevens, he reraised Glaser's 225,000 raise to 1,425,000 all-in. Benny thought for a long moment, but called when Tong said he always plays tournaments to win. Glaser's KQs made trips. The Brit's stack surpassed 15 million.
"Better late than never!" Ali Nejad said as he opened the long-awaited stream.
In the American poker community, Benny Glaser's victory was met with, I believe, a morbid jealousy.
Well, let's take a critical look at the final stage of the championship – we'll look for mistakes in the future champion and his opponents and try to figure out who's right.
Paul Volpe, with a stack just over two blinds, open-folds in Omaha Hi-Lo.
There are no other obvious short stacks at the table. There's no explanation for this fold either. Had he raised, he would have effectively scooped and at least tripled.
In the next hand, Volpe is eliminated.
He flops two pair and is 3/4 pot behind, but the turn and river improve Coleman to top two pair and scoop.
Omaha Hi-Lo. Coleman raises from the button, and Glaser three-bets him from the small blind with a slightly speculative but perfectly acceptable hand. Ivey cold-calls two bets in the big blind with a premium, and Coleman calls with rainbow aces and no low.
Benny doesn't even make a continuation bet. Ivey bets on his check. Coleman finds himself in a sandwich with a hand with zero visibility. Folding looks good.
He calls. Benny, closing the action, calls.
The turn brings a low, and Ivey also improves to two pair. Benny checks, and Phil bets. A fold looks good for Coleman. He calls.
I think the last time Benny Glaser could have made a call like that was when he was still playing play money.
Benny folds.
River – . Another terrible card, but Coleman is already in control, calling Ivey's bet and simply giving him a million chips.
Omaha Hi-Lo. Coleman opens from the cutoff with , Glaser calls on the button with , Arieh in the BB calls with bad aces .
On the flop Coleman bets with top pair and the nut low draw, Benny makes a slightly questionable call with a backdoor flush draw and other outs, and the action goes to Arieh. There's no hope for a low, there's a questionable backdoor draw, and hitting an eight isn't even a sure thing—it just gives him fewer outs against two pair.
Folding looks promising, but unlike the last hand, Arieh at least gets action, so he decides to see the turn and calls.
The turn is a repeat of a deuce, and in Omaha Hi-Lo, it's a key card that can be used in a huge number of playable hand combinations. Coleman checks carefully, Arieh checks, and Benny, seeing his opponents' hesitation, starts bluffing. His range is full of deuces.
Arieh finds himself in a tough spot, with four outs at best against a deuce. On the other hand, Benny will bet a lot of hands for value that Josh scoops against, so a call seems inevitable.
Coleman, of course, makes a simple call.
The river makes Arieh's life much easier – . Josh decides to lead.
Coleman makes the correct pass with a matching nine, and Benny folds easily as well.
Time for PLO. Arieh in the small blind limp-calls with rainbow vs. Coleman and flops a set. He check-calls on a very dry board.
On the turn, Coleman, who for some unknown reason made a continuation bet, strengthens his hand, to his misfortune.
He bets 800,000. Arieh calls.
River – .
Arieh checks. The pot is 3,100,000, and Coleman has 3,800,000 behind him. He bets 1,700,000, not even bothering to think about how he's actually making money against an opponent who limped and called and paid such a terrible turn. Arieh goes all-in. Coleman throws up his hands. He's not beating anything. He throws up his hands again. Then, apparently, he comes up with some kind of combo that beats him, and calls. Really, why keep two million for yourself? We'll get going again, we'll have to play...
I even feel a bit bad for Max Coleman. Bleznik introduced him as a brilliant and balanced player, even noting that PLO is his strongest game. And somehow he built that stack, somehow he made it to the top four of the Players' Championship! But all we saw in the heavily truncated broadcast was one monstrous hand and one simply bad hand. And the beneficiaries of these mistakes were other American players.
Limit Hold'em. Ivey raises K2s from the small blind and continuation bets with top pair, but slows down on the innocent turn and check-calls.
Arieh wins the absolute minimum.
Limit hold'em time. Arieh outplays Glaser in a three-bet pot: he check-raises the flop and continues on the turn, picking up some extra equity. Benny can't take it anymore with a low hand.
Stud high-low. Ivey makes a standard complete with , gets 2-bet by Arieh with an open nine (there will almost always be a pair: either , or a pocket pair higher) and calls. The subsequent cards are dealt in such a way that Phil loses the maximum.
True, Josh doesn't try to put him in a tough decision on the river and, just in case, checks his two pair. A two-million-dollar pot that played itself out.
Ivey has only four big blinds left.
2-7 triple draw. Ivey three-bets Josh's open, draws one card against two, and immediately makes an eight. He stands and bets, and Josh draws one card on both the second and third draws.
On the river, Ivey checks and Arieh bets.
Folding an eight is practically impossible, and after the call, Ivey has 300,000 left.
In the next hand he is in the small blind with and Glaser folds. Phil has almost half his stack in the dark, his hand equity is close – let's go. Arieh calls with . Ivey has four cards to change, while Arieh only has two, but Josh's equity advantage, by the way, is only 57% to 43%.
After Ivey's first trade, he has , and Arieh has – . Here, Ivey will exchange two cards, and for Arieh it is correct to exchange one. But he also exchanges two, leaving for some reason, giving him . His decision isn't much worse than the optimal one—he lost about 1.5 percent of equity, but even against the optimal line, surprisingly, Ivey is the favorite—55% to 45%.
Before the final exchange, Josh collects and refuses to make any further attempts to improve, as Ivey changes one card – he has . Arieh is the favorite with a made ten against a draw, and he remains ahead after the draw.
Ivey takes off his microphone, doesn't shake hands with his opponents, gives an aggressive interview to Jeff Platt, who, embarrassed in front of the superstar, doesn't formulate his question very well, and leaves the tournament area.
Heads-Up Stacks:
- Josh Arieh – 19,225,000
- Benny Glaser – 13,175,000
And just like that, one of our dream Main Event winners leaves the Players Championship.
No-Limit Hold'em. Arieh raises K4o preflop, continuation bets the flop, and checks the turn and river.
Benny plays postflop exactly as the solver suggests, but Josh doesn't find the bluff the solver is required to make that would likely be successful.
Benny four-bets to 3,800,000 with a slightly weaker ace, and Arieh quickly folds.
Stud high. Arieh completes with an exposed ace.
Benny, with an exposed queen (and a hidden pair of nines), two-bets. Arieh calls. Something strange happens on the next street.
Benny gets a generally good hand, and Arieh gets a generally neutral one. Benny bets, and Arieh... raises! What? Why? Calling is a very standard play; we don't need to split our range here; it's better to do that on the first of the big streets.
Benny calls, somewhat surprised.
On 5th street, each player hits a black jack. Josh continues to attack, Benny continues to defend.
6th street gives both of them a useless, small blank. The action is the same: Arieh bets (he has 13% equity at this point), Benny calls.
On the river, Benny doesn't improve, and Josh finishes his attack and bets one last time.
No matter what you've been told, calling with a pair of nines is difficult here, though the difficulty is mostly psychological. Logically, technically, you should call—it's heads-up, the pot odds are 10 to 1... But do we really believe our opponent just suddenly backed off at such a crucial moment?
Benny passes this test and makes the call.
He's in the lead again.
Omaha Hi-Lo. Arieh 3-bets preflop with , and then he just checks three times in a row. I don't want to run the solver on this one, but logically, the river seems like a good street to bluff.
But no, that's not it. Maybe we really are too high in the range to bluff with a pair. Benny takes the pot.
Razz. Arieh makes a correct steal with an exposed four against an exposed queen, but his barreling on all subsequent streets looks like a frankly pointless, losing play.
Benny, unless he folds four, has no fold anywhere against this board, and on the river he'll only fold hands that Josh already beats, so it turns out we're just running the pot with bad equity (below 50% on all streets).
On the river, Josh improves to a jack (Benny still has a queen) and... checks.
Okay, check, check, the stacks are evened out.
Razz. Josh steals with , gets a two-bet, and calls. On 4th street, Benny gets a good card for his range, while Arieh gets a bad one. Benny bets, and Arieh calls relentlessly.
On 5th street, Josh's hand equity improves regardless. He doesn't necessarily know his opponent has two pair, but if you call with four, then call with five—you've improved!
Josh folds.
If you like this range of poker games, Phenom is your place to go. No other online site has more formats, a little like PokerStars but with an arguably softer player base.
Razz. There's no nitpicking here – Arieh has to barrel with a board like this, and Benny has to call down. On the river, Arieh double-bluffs with three pair, and Benny makes a ten and cranks the call.
PLO. Arieh raises from the button with No suits. Apparently, when you're planning on having an advantage in a game, it means you can play it any way you want.
On the flop, Josh bets a little less than half the pot and checks the turn. On the river, Benny, having made a flush, wisely checks. And Josh bluffs half the pot. Well, there's a club blocker. Okay.
Benny has the second nuts, and against a not-so-polar sizing, he should raise. Which he does – 2,000,000. Josh folds.
PLO. Benny raises a king-high draw, Arieh calls with a pair of jacks. They check to the river, and the river is an ace.
Benny bluffs with a big delayed continuation bet of half the pot, and Josh quickly folds.
The gap in stacks becomes twofold.
PLO.
Another crazy continuation bet with nothing and a spirited second barrel, and Arieh finally manages to knock off a decent hand, albeit weaker than his own.
Jared Bleznick congratulates Josh on a brilliant bluff.
2-7 single draw. Benny raises. Holding , Arieh 3-bets, and with , Benny calls. The hand equity at this point is 57% to 43% in Arieh's favor. However, his hand is unplayable after the draw.
Josh doesn't change, Benny changes the king and gets a three.
Josh checks. Benny makes a small overbet – about 110% of the pot.
Josh stares at his opponent for a long moment, trying to extract any information from the Brit, who has fallen asleep with his head down. And he finds a fold.
Stud high-low. Benny steals with an exposed queen against a ten. But Josh has a pocket ten under his exposed ten. He reraises and gets called.
On the next street, Benny gets a black jack to his red queen, and Josh gets a three out of suit. Benny checks. Josh... checks back! Scared of the jack?
On fifth street, Benny gets another red queen, Josh gets a black king. Benny with makes a bet and Josh quickly folds – a hand with 35% equity.
Stud high-low. Josh attacks with ( ) , Benny calls with ( ) . On fourth street, everyone hits a low card: Josh hits a seven, Benny hits a four. And Josh... checks.
What kind of sudden pot control is this?! Even against the top of your range, you're over 55%, and against default defense with two small cards and a blank high, you're well over 60%.
No, you can complain all you want about how Benny Glaser was going in that match, but Josh Arieh completely lost control of himself and was just randomly pressing buttons.
In this hand the pot will be split.
After Benny makes a seven from the draw in triple draw, his lead becomes completely obscene – 27 million to 4.5 million.
In one of the next hands, Benny collects on the river against an opponent who didn't change cards on the last exchange and calls his bet. Josh shows and takes the pot.
At the end of the broadcast, Bleznik will say that this was Glaser's only mistake of the entire final table. I think we can agree with him on that.
No-Limit Hold'em. Josh defends the BB with deuces (the stacks are too deep for an all-in, even though Bryn Kenney does push all-ins like that). Check-check on the flop, check-call on the turn, lead on the river, where his deuces became worthless.
Benny calmly calls.
Stud High. Poor Josh resembles a punching bag, devoid of any agency:
Have to call all the way – flush draw!
The river is a blank. Benny bets, Josh folds, and seems to be one step away from crushing his cards.
Arieh goes into the first all-in with a decent advantage.
Doubles – no one succeeds in strengthening their starter hand.
Omaha Hi-Lo.
A typical Omaha hi-lo hand, except for one suit. But Josh limps with it and calls the raise.
Flop:
Benny bets, Josh calls with no matches and a very bad low draw that's only miraculously alive. A fairly obvious fold, but the World Series marathon is plenty of us crazy.
Turn:
Benny bets, Josh calls – if he had seen his opponent’s cards, he would have raised, since he’s already a favorite with a made low and a bunch of outs to high.
River:
Benny bets! He doesn't have a low, but his high is good, and if necessary, he can either make a high bet or bluff his low.
Josh sighs heavily and folds!
The fold was fine, correct. But it would have been even more correct to fold somewhere earlier. As it was, the hand turned out to be incredibly bizarre, with Josh Arieh playing incorrectly on every street (on the river, against his opponent's hand).
The second all-in is Omaha Hi-Lo.
Benny Glaser Wins the Players' Championship!
In an interview with Jeff Platt, he still can't contain his overwhelming emotions and responds literally through tears. The completely cool and phlegmatic Brit he seemed from the outside suddenly reveals a completely different face.
"Has not sunk in yet. Might take some time to. Does feel like a bit of a dream right now. I'm so happy. It is just the dream, its just like the pinnacle of mixed games achievement and it's such a special tournament for me. I'm incredibly grateful."
The Final Payouts for the Top 17:
| Place | Name | Country | Prize |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1st | Benny Glaser | England | $1,343,764 |
| 2nd | Josh Arieh | United States | $895,837 |
| 3rd | Phil Ivey | United States | $600,698 |
| 4th | Maxx Coleman | United States | $417,607 |
| 5th | Paul Volpe | United States | $301,405 |
| 6th | Kristopher Tong | United States | $226,172 |
| 7th | Jason Mercier | United States | $176,732 |
| 8th | Nick Guagenti | United States | $144,054 |
| 9th | Alexander Livingston | Canada | $144,054 |
| 10th | Jesse Lonis | United States | $122,709 |
| 11th | Chris Hunichen | United States | $122,709 |
| 12th | Christopher Brewer | United States | $109,459 |
| 13th | Roy Thung | United States | $109,459 |
| 14th | Phil Hellmuth Jr | United States | $109,459 |
| 15th | Maksim Pisarenko | Russia | $102,474 |
| 16th | Matt Glantz | United States | $102,474 |
| 17th | Dara Taherpour | United States | $100,934 |
Benny Glaser isn't some kind of poker prodigy. He played fairly reasonable cash games for a long time, at exorbitant stakes for savants and aurists, without ever moving up (and then the game died due to the rakeback ban), and made a lot of technical errors.
People tended to look down on him, and his successes at both the Stars Series and later the WSOP seemed to come a bit out of left field, almost too early. He's clearly not a genius like Matthew Ashton or Stephen Chidwick. But he's a hard-working and very dedicated poker player who hasn't stopped improving all these years.
And then there's the Players Championship final table, a live stream with his cards up, and amidst the insane tension of four hours of play, he makes just one small mistake. Respect to you, Benny! What an incredible moment.
