What's Happened To Phil Ivey At WSOP 2014?

While poker superstars Daniel Negreanu and Phil Hellmuth are enjoying a relatively successful WSOP 2014, Phil Ivey has been conspicuously absent from the poker headlines having cashed just once on June 3rd, after finishing the $1,500 Pot Limit Hold’em (Event #12) in 22nd place for $5,030. Now, however, the 9-times WSOP bracelet winner’s efforts to win another bracelet may just be gathering momentum.
On June 24th, Ivey finished the $1,500 Pot Limit Omaha Hi/Lo (Event #48) in 30th spot for $6,836, and a few days later he has now made a deep run at Event #50 ($1.5K Eight Game Mix), where just 14 players remain of a starting field of 486. Both Ivey and Daniel Negreanu are still alive in the competition, but whereas Ivey is well placed in 3rd spot (220k) behind Dan Heimiller (227k) and Aaron Steury (226k), the Canadian superstar has a bit more work to do and is currently in 9th on a 132k stack.
Prior to the 45th Annual World Series of Poker getting underway at the end of May, Negreanu and Ivey were confident enough of their chances of success that they offered an even money prop bet that one of them would win a title. The minimum bet they offered was $5,000, with a maximum ceiling of $1 million.
However, whereas many top name pros have already won bracelets at this years WSOP, including Vanessa Selbst, Joe Cada, Robert Mizrachi, Dan Kelly, George Danzer, Dan Heimiller, Ted Forrest and Justin Bonomo, the two poker superstars have yet to get off the ground.
Having said that, Negreanu has come close a couple of times and has thus far cashed seven times this year, including a runner-up finish at the $10,000 No Limit 2-7 Draw Lowball (Event #13) for $156,674. Ivey will now be looking to not let the side down and make his own concerted effort to win a bracelet, whilst scuppering his fellow poker players’ pricey prop bets.
Incidentally, Phil Hellmuth, too, has thus far put in a good performance at WSOP 2014 and has 5 cashes to his name, including a runner-up finish at the $1,500 Seven Card Razz (Event #7) for $74,848.