The emergence of Pot Limit Omaha over the past few years has brought some variety to poker, keeping things from turning into a No Limit Hold'em monopoly. The $5,000 Pot Limit Omaha Six-Handed event drew a healthy field of 452 entries, proving that the game is gaining steam and becoming ever more popular among both the pros and more casual players. Compare that field to the $5,000 No Limit Hold’em Six-Handed event which drew 541 players, and you can tell that PLO will definitely be a constant on the WSOP schedule in the future. The game has brought new faces to the spotlight, including the most recent PLO champion Michael Drummond.
"It's definitely cool to have a milestone mark," said Drummond about his new bracelet.
Drummond is relatively new to the World Series of Poker, but he did not show any weakness at the tough $5,000 PLO final table. He defeated Darius Studdard heads-up to win his first bracelet and take home the top prize of $541,147. With Pot Limit Omaha gaining popularity and momentum in the poker world, this is the perfect event for Drummond to emerge and show his star power. Drummond is a professional poker player and has become a regular at some the game's highest stakes.
The 27-year-old is originally from New Hampshire, but is now living in San Francisco playing any PLO game he can find. Drummond is mainly a cash game player, but will jump into a PLO tournament if he can find one, especially if it's six-max. Drummond said he definitely plans to play the $10,000 PLO event, which begins in just over a week.
"It's a social game," said Drummond about his love for PLO. "It's so much more about your cards, that you can just look at your cards and then have a conversations at the table. PLO is just a more fun, social, gambling game."
This is Drummond's fifth WSOP cash and first-ever final table. Last year, Drummond finished eighth in the $10K Heads-Up No Limit Hold'em event, eventually busting in his quarterfinal match to three-time bracelet winner Brock Parker. With this victory, Drummond has more than quadrupled his previous WSOP earnings.
The final table featured two bracelet winners, Phil Laak (6th) and Kory Kilpatrick (3rd), who was looking for his second win of the year after taking down the $3,000 Shootout earlier this summer. It also included two players with previous WSOP final table experience, Ryan Schmidt (4th) and Brant Hale (5th), who took seventh in the $1,500 Pot Limit Omaha event back in 2011.
This year’s $5,000 Six-Handed Pot Limit Omaha event drew 452 players and produced a $2,124,400 prize pool. The top 48 finishers each collected a payday. Some of the notables who cashed include Eoghan O’Dea (47th), Davidi Kitai (39th), Scotty Nguyen (24th), Phil Galfond (19th), David “Bakes” Baker (12th), Sorel Mizzi (9th), and bracelet winner Richard Ashby, who bubbled what would have been his third final table of the summer in seventh place. Here are the final table results for the $5,000 Six-Handed Pot Limit Omaha event:1st: Michael Drummond - $541,7472nd: Darious Studdard - $334,5933rd: Kory Kilpatrick - $217,1134th: Ryan Schmidt - $143,3975th: Brant Hale - $95,5986th: Phil Laak- $66,918