Action started with an open from Ben Hoy in the cutoff with A?8?. Erlend Melsom called in the small blind with A?4?.
Melsom flopped the nut flush on 10?8?2?, but checked to the preflop raiser. Hoy threw in a chip for 500,000 with his middle pair and Melsom called.
The turn came the 6?. Melsom now decided to lead for 1,300,000. Hoy called.
The river was the 4?. Melsom now bet 3,500,000 into a pot of 5,400,000. The call would be for a bit over third of Hoy’s chips. After some thinking, Hoy was able to make the fold and the chunky pot went to Melsom, who took the chip lead.
David Stamm opened from the cutoff with J?9?. Nikolay Yosifov had 10?8? in the big blind and was the only player to call.
The flop came 9?7?8?. Yosifov checked and Stamm continued for 700,000. Yosifov then decided to put Stamm all in for 3,600,000 more with his middle pair and open-ender. Stamm needed a moment but ultimately made the call with top pair and gutshot.
The turn A? and the river Q? did not improve Yosifov’s hand and Stamm doubled up.
With 14 bracelets and nearly $50 million in tournament earnings between the four of them, there's no denying that Shaun Deeb, Josh Arieh, Daniel Weinman and Matt Glantz are poker crushers. But with resumes that include a $1 million bounty pull, a body fat prop bet victory worth nearly the same amount and a win in the biggest World Series of Poker (WSOP) Main Event in history, it's clear the group of close friends also have luck on their sides.
The four American poker players have branded themselves as "Team Lucky" — a name that Deeb may have come up with, though they aren't certain — as a way of consciously embracing and owning their good fortunes while fighting back against the jaded cynicism all to common in the poker world.
But Team Lucky is about more than once-in-a-lifetime bounty binks and turned two-outers leading to $12 million scores. As PokerNews learned during brunch with its four members, is more about friendship, camaraderie, and shared values than a good run of cards.
In this first hand back on the stream, Erlend Melsom raised to 500,000 from early position with J?J?. Nikolay Yosifov made it 1,300,000 from the button holding K?9? and Melsom waited a bit before firing out a three-bet to 3,600,000.
Yosifov folded quickly and Melsom evened out the stacks at the top of the leaderboard.
Earlier this year on an ordinary Monday afternoon, a bespectacled man walked into the Gold & Silver Pawn Shop on Las Vegas Blvd. Tucked under his arm was an uninteresting box that only he knew contained something rather interesting – a pair of gold watches dating back more than 40 years.
These were not your run-of-the-mill wristwear, but rather evidence of a unique and often overlooked time of poker history, a year when the World Series of Poker (WSOP) gold bracelet, now the game’s highest accolade, was replaced in favor of watches.
1982 WSOP watches
The man holding the box was David Sklansky, who in 1978 forever changed poker by advocating a mathematical approach to the game in his groundbreaking book The Theory of Poker. Nicknamed “The Mathematician,” he proved his prowess just four years later when he won two WSOP tournaments in five days.
First, he won the 1982 WSOP Event #7: $800 Mixed Doubles Limit Seven Card Stud, a tournament that paired one man with one woman, alongside Dani Kelly, and followed that up by taking down Event #12: $1,000 Limit 5-Card Draw High. A year later, the Binions reverted back to the beloved bracelets players know today, and Sklansky captured his third piece of WSOP hardware by winning Event #11: $1,000 Limit Omaha.
It was a remarkable accomplishment, and for more than four decades he’s kept safe the evidence of his victories, both of which still worked. So, why was Sklansky carrying his 1982 WSOP gold watches, two of only 15 ever awarded, into a pawn shop? Well, he was looking to sell them of course, but not to just any of the dozens of pawn shops spread across Las Vegas. Oh no, he was walking into arguably the most famous pawn shop in the world, the home to the wildly popular television show Pawn Stars, and he was there to do it with cameras rolling.
With the field quickly getting down to five players, there is now a dinner break until 5 p.m. which is when cards will be back in the air with 7:14 left in Level 31.
The stream will start at 6 p.m. which is when the live updates will continue.
