In 2019, the World Series of Poker Main Event was once again a huge deal. With a top prize of $10 million, the tournament was the biggest in WSOP history, apart from the 2006 World Championship, which was won by Jamie Gold for $12 million. There were an incredible 8,569 in the Main Event itself, as the 50th annual WSOP thrilled poker players and fans alike, with 90 events in Las Vegas – 12 more than the previous year – joined by 15 more in the WSOP Europe festival in Rozvadov.
There was so much more to the action in 2019, as controversy was featured in an unforgettable Player of the Year race, and the final, fully live World Series of Poker ended the pre-pandemic era with drama.
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Campbell Crowned as POY… Eventually
The 2019 World Series of Poker ran from May 29 to July 17. A trio of special events were introduced to celebrate the 50th annual WSOP. The $500 buy-in ‘Big 50’, a $50,000-entry High Roller (won by Danny Tang for $1.6m), and the $1,500-entry Bracelet Winners. These events all brought in massive crowds, including a world record attendance of 28,371 in the Big 50, which, as it happened, featured the most places being paid in any live event in poker history, with 4,154 making money.
The Big Blind Ante was introduced to speed up poker across all events, and for the first time, over 100 WSOP events took place across both the Las Vegas series and WSOP Europe festivals.
The biggest controversy in 2019 was the WSOP Player of the Year. Once again, it was keenly fought and eventually won by Australian player Robert Campbell, whose breakout year featured the only double-bracelet win. Campbell took down the $1,500-entry Limit 2-7 Lowball Triple Draw event for $144,027 and the $10,000 buy-in Seven-Card Stud Hi/Lo 8 or Better event for $385,763.
Campbell cashed in 13 WSOP events, reached five final tables, and won his first two gold WSOP bracelets in 2019 but was almost denied victory in the 2019 WSOP Player of the Year standings by a clerical error. Human error in the scoring of another event initially saw the WSOP announce previous two-time POY winner Daniel Negreanu as the 2019 champion, but Alexander Elenskiy, a Russian poker journalist, uncovered the mistake, and Campbell was crowned the official 2019 WSOP Player of the Year.
Negreanu had a year of close calls. John ‘Johnny World’ Hennigan beat Kid Poker heads-up to deny Negreanu the bracelet in the $10,000 Seven-Card Stud event, drawing level on six bracelets with the Canadian, who had now gone six straight years without winning. In the $100,000 High Roller event, it was the same story, as Negreanu lost heads-up again, this time to the underdog Keith Tilston.
Sexton Sets Stunning Series of Cashes
In other events, the biggest names broke through for more success, with Michael ‘The Grinder’ Mizrachi taking gold in the $1,500-entry Seven-Card Stud Hi/Lo 8 or Better event for $142,801 and a record fifth bracelet of the decade. Loren Klein won the $2,500 buy-in Mixed Big Bet event for $127,808, drawing level with Bill Boyd and Doyle Brunson’s record of winning a WSOP bracelet in four consecutive series.
A charming record was set in 2019: the longest time between bracelets. The 1993 Main Event Championship winner Jim Bechtel finally added a second bracelet to his record, winning the $10,000 No-Limit Deuce-to-Seven Lowball Draw event for $253,817, 26 years after becoming world champion.
The late, great Mike Sexton won money at the WSOP for the 32nd consecutive year, with his record of at least one WSOP cash in every year continuing. Sexton wouldn’t make it 33 years in a row due to the Coronavirus and COVID-19’s impact on the WSOP in the following year, then sadly passed in September of 2020 from cancer. Sexton was a WSOP bracelet winner, a World Poker Tour legend, and a Poker Hall of Famer. After his passing at the age of just 72, the poker world mourned a legend whose last cash came in 2019 and who reached the final table of the $2,500 Mixed Big Bet event in that final year of his career.
It was time for the Main Event of 2019, and with the second-largest field of all-time, there was to be a surprising end to the World Championship.
Chan and Cunningham Clinch Record
The 2019 Main Event had 8,569 players, with 1,286 of them finishing in the money. On the money bubble, Ryan Pochedly was initially thought to have burst it. However, later that week, it was discovered that an earlier elimination had not been recorded, and Pochedly was actually the 1,286th place finisher, winning the $15,000 min-cash.
Elsewhere, Johnny Chan (560th) and Allen Cunningham (586th) both recorded their 10th cash in the WSOP Main Event, tying the record previously held on his own by the 1986 world champion Berry Johnston. The $10,000-entry Main Event began on July 3 and played down to the winner 13 days later.
After players including Antonio Esfandiari (82nd for 82,365), Chris Hunichen (54th for $173,015), Sam Greenwood (45th for $211,945) and Yuri Dzivielevski (28th for $261,430) all fell short, the final table of nine was formed, with German player Hossein Ensan in the lead with a massive stack of 177,000,000, representing 34.4% of the chips in play. Amateur Garry Gates was second in chips after being partially backed by Florida’s finest poker pro, Jason Mercier.
Early Carnage as Four Fall
The final table began with the German player Hossein Ensan in control and ended the same way, but in between, three days of drama brought poker fans to their feet inside the Thunderdome at the Rio. There was a flurry of early eliminations, as Milos Skrbic left in hand #6 when his ace-jack was crushed by Garry Gates’ ace-queen, and Timothy Su busted five hands later, losing a coinflip to Ensan.
British player Nick Marchington was aiming to become the youngest-ever WSOP Main Event winner but fell short in seventh for $1.5m when his ace-seven was crushed by Hossein Ensan’s pocket kings and Zhen Cai joined him on the rail in sixth for $1.85m when his ace-king couldn’t hit against the pocket nines of Kevin Maahs. That hand was #56, meaning four players had busted in just a quarter of the time it took to complete the final table.
A day later, it was Maahs himself who busted in fifth place for $2.2m, as his ace-ten couldn’t beat Ensan’s nines, and when Garry Gates dropped short, his tournament was over too. The popular poker media professional was the amateur poker players’ choice but lost out when his pocket sixes ran into Alex Livingston’s pocket queens.
Livingston Loses His Grip
Three-handed play began with Ensan in complete control, with 326.8 million chips. Alex Livingston was second in chips, with 120 m—almost double that of Dario Sammartino. However, the Italian’s renaissance in poker terms, coupled with Livingston’s lack of luck, sent the Canadian home with $4m when his ace-jack lost to Ensan’s ace-queen.
Heads-up, Ensan was in the lead, but it was marginal, with his 279.8m edging Sammartino’s stack of 235m. Ensan built a 2:1 lead over around a hundred hands of to and fro before getting his chips in good with the biggest stack. The German’s pocket kings were well ahead of Sammartino’s flush draw from the flop, and when the Italian missed his draw, Sammartino became the runner-up for $6m, while Hossein Ensan had the second largest Main Event top prize in poker history at the time, taking home $10 million and the coveted WSOP Bracelet.
At the time, the camera bulbs popped, and the watching Thunderdome crowd went crazy, hugging and high-fiving. Over the course of the 301 hands it took to find a world champion, coughing many thousands of times. That seemingly innocuous human act of coughing would take center stage in just a few months’ time as COVID-19 was about to become a bigger player in the game of poker than anyone could ever have predicted.
The 2020 WSOP Main Event was a year like no other in history and perhaps no other ever to come.
| Player | Country | Prize | |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1st | Hossein Ensan | Germany | $10,000,000 |
| 2nd | Dario Sammartino | Italy | $6,000,000 |
| 3rd | Alex Livingston | Canada | $4,000,000 |
| 4th | Garry Gates | United States | $3,000,000 |
| 5th | Kevin Maahs | United States | $2,200,000 |
| 6th | Zhen Cai | United States | $1,850,000 |
| 7th | Nick Marchington | United Kingdom | $1,525,000 |
| 8th | Timothy Su | United States | $1,250,000 |
| 9th | Milos Skrbic | Serbia | $1,000,000 |
2018 WSOP Main Event 2020 WSOP Main Event
About the Author: Paul Seaton has written about poker for over 10 years, interviewing some of the best players ever to play the game such as Daniel Negreanu, Johnny Chan and Phil Hellmuth. Over the years, Paul has reported live from tournaments such as the World Series of Poker in Las Vegas and the European Poker Tour. He has also written for other poker brands where he was Head of Media, as well as BLUFF magazine, where he was Editor.