WSOP 2015: Christian Pham Accidentally Wins 2-7 Draw Lowball No-Limit Event

Can you imagine entering a WSOP limit hold’em event only to find you’ve accidentally registered for a $1,500 2-7 Draw Lowball No-Limit tournament, instead. Well that’s precisely the situation Christian Pham found himself in, but his discovery came too late to unregister as the cards were already in the air before he realized his mistake.
“They had started dealing already, so I couldn’t do anything. If they had not started dealing, I would have told the floorman and asked to be unregistered,” commented the 40 year-old.
However, it’s just as well he didn’t as an initially confused Pham was soon able to wrap his head around the unusual variant which rewards the best low hand, and eventually take down Event #23 of the 2015 WSOP for $81,314, earning a much sought after gold bracelet along the way. Pham said he was helped out by the advice given by some of the bemused players at the table, some of which assumed he was pretending not to know the game to put his opponents off guard.
“There was a very nice older gentleman sitting next to me, and he told me ‘2-3-4-5-7 is the nuts, and 2-3-4-6-7 is the second nuts. I put that in my phone and tried to figure out what hands I can play.”
At the end of the first day’s play, however, Pham then had time enough to brush up further on the game, and on his way to taking down the tournament saw off such formidable pros as Mohsin Charania (22nd), Dan Smith (20th), Frank Kassela (14th), Robert Mizrachi (9th), Mike Leah (7th), and Huck Seed (5th).
Following his remarkable result, Christian Pham unsurprisingly has now developed a fondness for the poker variant, and says he intends to register for the same WSOP event in 2016, except next time around it will be done intentionally.
“We don’t have this game in Minnesota. Now, I love this game,” exclaimed an elated Pham.