Event #26: $1,500 Omaha Hi-Lo 8 or Better

Benny Glaser is now the newest member of poker’s double-gold bracelet club.

The poker pro from Southampton, UK won the $1,500 buy-in Omaha High-Low Split tournament, which was played over three days and nights and just concluded at the Rio in Las Vegas. 

Glaser collected $244,103 in prize money, making this one of the biggest wins of his career.  His previous WSOP victory took place last year in the $1,500 buy-in Deuce-to-Seven Draw Lowball event.  He’s now cashed five times at the series, which includes three final table appearances, and two wins.

“I think the Deuce-to-Seven field and final table was tougher than this was to be honest,” Glaser said afterward, in spite of the competition he faced in this tournament.  “This is the game I put the most hands in, online.  So, perhaps I just am more used to this game since I play it all the time.”

Glaser won his latest victory by dominating much of the final table which included four gold bracelet winners – including Glaser, Max Pescatori, Brandon Shack-Harris, and Phillip Hui.  When the final nine were set, Been Glaser and Benjamin Gold appeared to be in command of the felt, as they were the two players with the biggest chip stacks.  Fittingly, they ended up finishing first and second. 

This tourney attracted 934 entrants which created a prize pool totaling $1,260,900.  The top 157 finishers collected prize money.  Attendance for yet another WSOP event was up over last year, as the same event drew 918 entries.

Aside from the winner, here’s a brief report of the other top finishers who made the final table:

Second Place:  Benjamin Gold, an attorney from Long Beach, CA finished as the runner up.  He collected a nice settlement totaling $150,828.  Gold now has eight series cashes.  This was his best WSOP performance, to date.

Third Place:  Motohiro Kondo, from Tokyo, Japan hoped to become only the second Japanese WSOP champion in history, but fell just two places short.  He collected $106,070 in his first time to cash in a series event.

Fourth Place:  Phillip Hui, from San Antonio, TX came in fourth.  He won his gold bracelet in 2014 in a $3K buy-in Eight-or-Better tourney.  Hui, who also holds four WSOP gold rings and traveled for years on the tournament trail, now has six series cashes.  He picked up $75,627 for this deep run.  Interestingly, Hui beat sixth-place finish Zach Milchman heads up when he won his bracelet.

Fifth Place:  Brandon Shack-Harris, from Chicago, IL busted out in the middle of the pack, coming in fifth place.  He previously won his gold bracelet in 2014 in the $1K Pot-Limit Omaha event.  This time, he received $54,680 in his first cash of this year’s series.  Shack-Harris also came in second in the $50K buy-in Poker Players Championship in 2014, won by John “World” Hennigan.

Sixth Place:  Zachary Milchman, from Delray Beach, FL, has a WSOP gold ring and a second-place finish at the series.  This time, he took sixth place in what was his fifth time to cash at the WSOP.  His payout came to $40,098.

Seventh Place:  Ilya Krupin, from Novosibirsk, Russia cashed for the first time this year, which paid $29,830.  Krupin came in second-place in the $1,500 buy-in Dealers Choice tourney last year. 

Eighth Place:  Max Pescatori, a four-time gold bracelet winner and Italy’s most prominent poker pro, suffered a disastrous final table after coming in with some chips and busted out early.  The Milan-born and Las Vegas-based poker pro collected $22,517 in his 56th time to cash at the WSOP.  Pescatori’s gold bracelet victories have come two at a time – with duel wins in 2006 and 2015.

Ninth Place:  Scott Packer, from Santa Ana, CA cashed for only the second time at the series and for the first time since 2010 with this final table appearance.  Packer pocketed $17,250 for a fine effort in this tournament.

This was the 26th official event on this year’s schedule.  This leaves 43 gold bracelet events still to go in 2016.