Brian Rast Wins 2nd Bracelet At 2011 WSOP
July 7, 2011 8:17 amUS pro Brian Rast has capped of an incredible 2011 WSOP after becoming the first player to win a 2nd gold bracelet at this year’s tournament series.
During WSOP Week 2, the 29 year old won Event 15: $1,500 Pot-Limit Hold’em, after overcoming a field of 765 players to collect the $227,232 top prize.
Now in Week 6, Brian Rast has triumphed in one of the most respected events at the WSOP, the $50,000 Player’s Championship. This event always attracts the finest players in the game not only because of the enormous buy-in, but also because the players must compete over eight different poker disciplines.
Demonstrating his all round skills, Brian Rast took down this event after defeating 127 of the game’s best, including Phil Hellmuth heads-up, to win his second gold bracelet and the massive $1,720,328 first place prize.
Commenting later on his remarkable achievement, Rast said:
“This bracelet means a lot. This is an event that is full of a lot of the top players, not every one, but a lot of them and it’s an event that you have to go through a lot of good players to win. The $1,500 pot-limit hold ’em was great winning, it was my first bracelet, but it’s not like I really played a whole bunch of the top professionals and beat them in order to win that bracelet. This bracelet I did that. The buy-in is $50,000, it’s just a prestigious tournament that kind of like earns respect.”
On his way to taking down the $50,000 Player’s Championship, Brian Rast outlasted an incredibly talented final table with 15 WSOP bracelets between them.
First to exit was Ben Lamb in 8th ($201,338), followed by Scott Seiver in 7th ($243,978), George Lind in 6th ($300,441), Matt Glantz in 5th ($376,750), Owais Ahmed ($482,085) in 4th and Minh Ly in 3rd ($665,763).
Eventually, Brian Rast went heads-up against poker legend Phil Hellmuth with the players fairly even in chips.
However, Hellmuth then managed to carve out a 5 to 1 chip advantage over Rast before then losing two crucial all-ins by Rast. Hellmuth had flush draws both times which failed to materialise and 12 minutes later Rast emerged the victor.
On the final hand, Hellmuth was dealt 8d-2d to Rast’s Kc-Qc with the flop then falling Jd-Ts-9d. Hellmuth then pushed all-in over the top of Rast’s raise but then failed once again to hit his flush draw, to finish the runner-up for a $1,063,034 pay-day.
In the meantime, Brian Rast collected his 2nd WSOP bracelet and has so far cashed in for an impressive $1,952,443 at WSOP 2011.