Nearly seven hours after Event #48: $1,000 Senior's No-Limit Hold’em Championship brought back as many hopefuls to the Horseshoe Event Center, the 2025 World Series of Poker (WSOP) in Las Vegas has crowned another winner. Brett Lim started the final day second in chips and overcame multiple obstacles to defeat Elan Lepovic in heads-up with both players earning the lion's share of the $6,666,000 prize pool in a gargantuan field of 7,575 entries.
During the tense heads-up duel which lasted nearly two and a half hours, Lim became visibly frustrated and even suggested to his family on the rail to move to a different state where gambling was illegal. He would later change his sunglasses because the lights of the live stream table were starting to bother him and Lim jokingly said "now I gonna win" with a smirk on the face.
Shortly thereafter, he doubled into a commanding lead and closed out the victory moments later for his first WSOP gold bracelet and top prize of $653,839.
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$1,000 Senior's NLHE Championship Final Table Results
Place
Player
Country
Prize
1
Brett Lim
United States
$653,839
2
Elan Lepovic
United States
$435,572
3
Dennis Carlson
United States
$326,508
4
Jose Boloqui
Argentina
$246,464
5
Lawrence Rabie
Canada
$187,351
6
Jason Reels
United States
$143,425
7
Manish Madan
United States
$110,581
8
Ron Fetsch
United States
$85,872
9
Peter Fellows
United States
$67,166
Winner's Reaction
“You always dream or aspire that something like this is gonna happen, but 48 hours ago this was the furthest thing from my mind,” Lim explained moments after holding his first WSOP bracelet. “I barely min-cashed. I was happy with some money jumps, and up until 20 minutes ago I thought I had lost the heads-up match. A lot of things were going pretty grim, and then two key hands just came by 'boom, boom, boom'. I didn’t think I was gonna win, to tell you the truth, but luck finds you in strange ways, and it found me this time,” he admitted with humility.
Although Lim felt like his tournament could have ended before the money, he managed to fight back and finish Day 3 as the chip leader, never straying far from the top until the end. At one point during the final table, he even held more than half the chips in play, until Elan Lepovic managed to close the gap. “I don’t really play final tables that much, so I don’t know what the heads-up dynamic is like,” Lim explained. “We were both kind of in between, passive and neutral. Not a lot of money was going in, but all it takes is a couple of big pots, and that’s what happened.”
Brett Lim
At 58 years old, Brett Lim is a relatively young competitor in a Seniors event where players must be at least 50 years of age. But behind that relative youth is a player with over three decades of experience at the tables. “I started in the ’90s, but back then all we played was Limit Hold’em. I didn’t really start playing No-Limit until maybe about seven years ago,” Lim said. “Back then, you didn’t really have to be that good to win, but now there are a lot of young people who, you know, try to solve the game.”
Talking about the different generations, this brings to the question of his feeling about the Seniors event, often described as a softer event than the others : “In general, I think it’s the kind of tournament where you don’t have to bluff too much, because people’s playing styles are quite similar, for about 80% of them. But I bluffed a lot in this tournament. I could tell that people’s impressions of me were contrary to what they expected. That helped. But there were some top-notch pros who just turned 50, and their aggressive styles can be a problem. I ran into a couple of them, but somehow, I flipped the switch. Other than that, 7,500 players, it’s a tough field no matter how good you are. And I always believe that whoever wins the poker tournament probably wasn’t the best player.”
Surrounded by his family during the entire final table, Lim now plans to “go home and celebrate or go to a nice restaurant” before heading off on a “long-scheduled cruise” tomorrow morning. “We’re leaving and coming back in about a week, and the World Series is still going on, so I’m gonna play. Maybe I’ll play the Main Event for the first time,” he said with a smile, before rejoining his family whose smiles were even bigger than his.
Final Day Action
After a short Day 4, which brought the field from 19 to 7 players, the finalists returned on Day 5 for a streamed final table. Manish Madan had the shortest stack of all with less than four big blinds and was looking for an early double-up. He took his chance on the very first hand with ace-seven against Jason Reels’ king-seven, but a king on the flop sealed his fate in seventh place for $110,581.
Reels moved all in again a few hands later, and this time he was far luckier than Madan, hitting a queen on the river for trips to crack Dennis Carlson’s kings and double up.
After the first break of the day, it was Lepovic’s turn to secure a double-up and close the gap with his opponents. Lim, however, was still in the lead, and he even extended it to hold nearly half of the chips in play by eliminating Reels in 6th place for $143,425 with ace-jack against queen-ten.
The final duel swung in Lim’s favor during the early hands, especially after the future winner jammed on the turn with aces. Lepovic correctly folded his top pair but still lost a significant pot. However, he managed to come back little by little, eventually building a two-to-one chip lead.
