Scott Blumstein Wins the 2017 WSOP Main Event
Professional poker player Scott Blumstein added an extra $8.15 million to his bank account on Saturday by winning the World Series of Poker No Limit Hold'em Main Event in Las Vegas.
The 25-year-old from Morristown, New Jersey, USA prevailed over a field of 7,221 players - the third-largest in history. Scott Blumstein went into the final table as the chip leader before defeating fellow youngster Dan Ott on the 246th hand and 65th of heads-up play with a A♥ 2♦ hand against Ott's A♦ 8♦ with a two on the river.
Whilst Scott Blumstein is a professional poker player he had actually skipped all of the first 72 WSOP events of the year. The reason? To improve both his health and his game ahead of the richest prize in poker of the year to date.
The American had little more than €300,000 career winnings prior to Saturday. He has won more than $150,000 at Paddy Power live casinos. Dan Ott won’t need to go home too unhappy as he took home a cool $4.7m as runner-up.
Scott Blumstein is now the champion of poker’s most-prestigious tournament, joining the likes of Stu Ungar and Johnny Moss who have won this competition.
Dan Ott faced a nearly two-to-one disadvantage before he was grinded down in the early hours of Sunday morning. Blumstein eventually sealed the deal with a somewhat fortunate river card that etched his name into poker folklore.
Blumstein collapsed to the floor in celebration.
Benjamin Pollak from France took third spot, the United Kingdom’s John Hesp came in fourth and French pro Antoine Saout rounded off the top five.
The 2017 World Series of Poker Main event had started with 7,221 players, the largest field since 2010 and the third largest field of all time. After a comfortable first day, Blumstein began building a nice stack to help him advance deeper in the tournament.
The winner was down in eighth on the leaderboard by the end of day three and never fell out of the top 50 after that.
After his victory, Scott Blumstein said winning wasn’t all about the money:
"Money doesn't really motivate me, it doesn't drive me. I didn't want to win this thing for the $8 million, but with that being said it's nice to have some freedom now. The goal was to get to a point where I can do whatever I want to do. And I think I'm going to have that opportunity now, whether it's poker, business, or going back to school.
"I have the freedom to do that now. That's the American dream in my eyes and finding happiness is part of that. What a good way to get there."
