A Tournament of Champions
By no means an official count here, but after going back over the list of entrants for this event, the number of WSOP bracelets won by the 101 players who entered is somewhat mind-boggling.
We lost at least 10 bracelet holders yesterday, who together hold 29 WSOP bracelets. Johnny Chan, who has won 10 bracelets, and Phil Ivey, who has won seven, were both eliminated on Day 1. So were two-time bracelet winners Carlos Mortensen, Max Pescatori, J.C. Tran, and Howard Lederer. And Dario Alioto, Erick Lindgren, Phil Tom, and Dario Minieri -- all of whom have one WSOP bracelet -- also didn’t come back today.
Of today’s 72 returners, it appears nearly half of them -- 34 -- already have at least one WSOP bracelet:
10 -- Doyle Brunson
8 -- Erik Seidel
7 -- Billy Baxter
5 -- Chris Ferguson
4 -- John Juanda, Daniel Negreanu, Jeffrey Lisandro, Huck Seed
3 -- Mike Matusow, Barry Greenstein, Farzad Bonyadi
2 -- Brandon Cantu, Steve Zolotow, Daniel Alaei, Greg Mueller, David Grey, Tom Schneider, Freddy Deeb
1 -- David Williams, John Kabbaj, Jason Mercier, Eric Kesselman, Mike Wattel, Todd Brunson, Eli Elezra, Scott Seiver, Dan Heimiller, Robert Mizrachi, Michael Mizrachi, Greg Raymer, Nick Schulman, Jose-Luis Velador, Yan Chen
That’s 84 more bracelets. That means more WSOP bracelets than entrants in this field -- 101 players with 113 bracelets! Like we say, this count is unofficial -- but it is clear that this Event No. 19 is in its own way a tournament of champions.