Chance Kornuth Wins 2021 WSOP $10,000 Short Deck for Third Career Gold Bracelet

Chance Kornuth is now a three-time World Series of Poker gold bracelet winner. On Saturday night in Las Vegas, under the bright lights and in front of the cameras of the PokerGO WSOP main stage, Kornuth won 2021 WSOP Event #29: $10,000 Short Deck. The win earned Kornuth his third career gold bracelet and $194,670 in prize money.

“It feels great,” Kornuth said. “You know, there’s also the fact that last WSOP I got fourth place in this. It felt really good to get a little bit of redemption.”

In 2019, Kornuth did finish fourth in this event. This time, he came in with the chip lead and left with the victory. But in Kornuth’s mind, it was never about bettering his finish from the time before. Rather, it was about winning the whole thing.

“It only crossed my mind once when there were three left and I thought, ‘Oh, I improved on last time,’ but obviously anything other than first place was going to be somewhat disappointing,” Kornuth said. “I’m not great at the game by any means, but I’m still very competitive and wanted to do my best. Fortunately, things went my way today.”

Kornuth topped a field of 66 entries in the event. At the final table, Kornuth beat Chad Campbell in heads-up play, with Dan Shak finishing in third place. The event paid the top 10 spots.

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For Kornuth, the result is the third cash in short deck on his HendonMob.com résumé. Although he considers no-limit hold’em and pot-limit Omaha to be his best games – and those are the games his other two gold bracelets are in – Kornuth is drawn to the style of play that short deck allows for, but does utilize the concepts he’s learned from the other games.

“You get to play so many hands, and you get to play aggressively,” Kornuth said of his attraction to short deck. “You always have equity, and it’s just fun. I think you can think of the concepts of no-limit hold’em and PLO, which are my best games, and a lot of them apply here, like range advantage and stuff like that where it totally changes your theory based on the situation. Even though I don’t know what optimal ranges are in short deck, my PLO and no-limit hold’em knowledge help me get through it.”

The 2021 World Series of Poker is about a third of the way through. This result is Kornuth’s second cash of the series, following his 36th-place finish in Event #25: $5,000 6-Handed No-Limit Hold’em. He said we can expect to see plenty more of him at the Rio All-Suite Hotel & Casino, saying that he’ll be putting in a full schedule and is feeling good about his game.

“I’m going to play a lot,” Kornuth said of what we’ll see from him the rest of the 2021 WSOP. “I don’t really have too much for cash games on the agenda and I really do plan on putting in a full schedule. I’m playing some of my best poker for the last six months, and I really want to continue to do so and see what else I can accomplish.”

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