Remko on the Rail - Main Event Bling!

Soccer, golf, tennis, hockey, basketball, and baseball all have iconic trophies, but arguably the best bling in the game belongs to the World Series of Poker! Today, the 2018 WSOP Main Event bracelet arrived at the Rio All-Suite Hotel & Casino, and our photographer Drew Amato managed to get a few minutes with the most coveted prize in the entire game.

The WSOP Main Event kicks off this year on a Monday, and after three starting days, players will start dropping like flies on the subsequent days. While nearly everyone will take at least one good look at the bracelet, in the end only one player will hoist it skywards in celebration. Defending champion Scott Blumstein has room on his other wrist for another wrist, as he’s made it known that he’s feeling strong for another deep run in 2018.

Just three more sleeps until the biggest event of the year kicks off, and until then, sweet dreams about this bad boy of a bracelet.

Couden Outlasts a Who’s Who of Top Pros

One of the most popular non-Hold’em formats at the World Series of Poker is the Pot Limit Omaha Hi-Lo Eight-or-Better, and the $1,500 variant drew a crowd of 935 total entries. With a stacked field headed into the final day, there were five bracelet winners going for another win, most notably Bruno Fitoussi.

Fitoussi stood at the foundation of poker’s growth in France, and Europe as a whole, but he once against fell in second place. Back in 2007, Fitoussi has his most notable result at the WSOP, finishing runner-up to Freddy Deeb in the $50,000 H.O.R.S.E, and now he had to let the win to Joseph Couden. Couden got his first bracelet, along with a $244,370 payday, and the knowledge that he beat some legends of the game along the way.

Portugal Gets One

Moving into the preliminary events at the World Series of Poker, Event #54 was highly contested by top players, but in the end, it was Portugal’s Diogo Veiga who took it down. Veiga collected $522,715, his first WSOP bracelet and denied Barry Hutter his second bracelet in the process. The final table turned out to be a two-day affair, with the second day live streamed on Poker Central’s Twitch account. Relive the action, starting with just four players, right here.

The final table payouts for this event are as follows.

Bounty Brings Leng his First

The third and final winner of this recap is Ryan Leng. Leng took down the $1,500 No Limit Hold’em Bounty event, outlasting a field of 1,982 to collect the first prize of $272,765. The final table included former WSOP Main Event runner-up Jay Farber and Spanish WPT champ Javier Gomez. While it remains unknown how many bounties each player collected, here are the final table payouts.

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