Congratulations to Simon Watt, Event #11 Champion! ($614,248)
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Well that was quite the spectacle.
In one of the more exciting and nerve-racking nights of poker we can recently remember, Simon Watt has just put Tom Dwan's final few chips into his own stack to earn himself the gold bracelet for Event #11 and more than $600,000 in cash money.
But that was only part of the story tonight. The eyes of the poker world were upon our final table for a number of reasons, all of which revolved around runner up Tom Dwan. First, there's the story itself. A 23-year-old wunderkind from the northeast who plays the richest cash games in the world breaking through to win his first bracelet. If it's possible to have a legacy by age 23, this would certainly have helped cement it.
Oh, and then there's the bracelet bets. Some of the most notable players in the world were sweating their faces off tonight, as Dwan stood to take a big chunk of money out of the poker pool should he have closed the deal. The numbers are varying and mind-boggling, making it hard to get a real feel for what Dwan had on the line tonight. Either way, as disappointed as Dwan is, there are a dozen or so high-stakes monsters that are going to sleep particularly well this evening after fading that huge bad beat.
Just as we were typing this, in fact, the rest of the media were shooting the winner's photos and preparing for interviews with Watt. Mike Matusow came wandering into the nearly-empty arena and half-yelled at Watt, "Thank you for saving us all millions of dollars! How does it feel to be every high-stakes gamblers hero? They're gonna, like, put you on the wall in Bobby's Room or some shit."
But it's not all about "durrrr" tonight. Credit must be given to Simon Watt, the Kiwi who has now added a gold bracelet to his stat sheet which already boasted an APPT title. Coming into the day third in chips, Watt was up and down and back up again, but he never flinched and just kept plugging along. He put on a fantastic show here today, and for the past three days.
So many of the bracelet winners get lost in the sea of 57, but this one stands out strong. Just before Matusow walked back to his table, he looked over his shoulder and asked, "Hey, what's your name, kid?"
It'll be a long time before people forget the name of the man who beat Tom Dwan heads up for a bracelet, and Simon Watt is the toast of the high-stakes world tonight. So with that, we send our congratulations to Simon Watt, the champion of Event #11! We know who's buying the cocktails tonight.