Top Bracelet Contenders at the 2017 WSOP

The 48th World Series of Poker gets underway tomorrow at the Rio All Suite Hotel & Casino in Las Vegas, with the seven-week long tournament extravaganza drawing the game’s most talented poker players from all across the globe to the famous desert resort. This year, there will be 74 gold bracelets on offer, including three online, and while most players would be delighted to win a single event in a lifetime, a handful of other will be hoping to add further to their multiple tallies.
Currently topping the list of multiple bracelet winners is Phil Hellmuth, 52, who has amassed a total of 14 bracelets since taking down the 1989 Main Event, with his most recent victory coming in 2015 at the $10,000 Seven-Card Razz event for $271,105. Hellmuth has consistently show by his recent scores at the WSOP that he is more than capable of adding further to his record-breaking tally, but at the same time a number of other pros will be hoping to narrow the gap at this year’s Series.
Two of them will be Hellmuth’s nearest WSOP rivals, namely Doyle Brunson, 83, and Johnny Chan, 60, both with ten bracelets a piece, and both with their last win back in 2005. Phil Ivey, 40, too, has 10 bracelets to his name, but with his last victory as recent as 2014 giving him perhaps a better chance than Brunson and Chan of making it 11.
Erik Seidel (8), Men Nguyen (7), Ted Forrest (6), and Jeff Lisandro have all captured gold bracelets within the past seven years, while Daniel Negreanu on 6 will be hoping to improve upon his incredible 2013 in which he won the WSOP Asia Main Event, and a bracelet at the WSOP Europe €25,600 High Roller No Limit Hold’em event. Negreanu will have plenty of opportunity to do so, too, with his schedule including around 40 tournaments, and costing him about $1 million in entrance fees.
In the meantime, younger players such as Jason Mercier (5), Daniel Alaei (5), Robert Mizrachi (4), and George Danzer (4) will all be players to look out for after the cards go into the air, although any number of pros could very well end up winning bracelets this year. Assessing a pros odds of winning the WSOP Main Event, for instance, poker author David Sklansky explained:
“There has got to be 7,000 players in it, and some players are going to have a 1-in-500 chance, and some players are going to have a 1-in-100,000 chance. The top 100 players are all 500-1 shots.”