WSOP 2017 – WEEK 1: OFF TO A GREAT START

At PokerWomenNews we have high hopes for the women poker players at this years World Series of Poker. In fact, we went all in and predicted, that female poker players would win four bracelets in open events this summer! Yes, four bracelets.

Every week of the WSOP, I intend to take a look at the results so far. Bracelet wins. Final tables. Deep runs. WSOP Leaderboard.

Liv Boeree Wins First Bracelet
Barely was the “Shuffle up and Deal” announced last week, before Poker superstar, co-founder of REGcharity and EPT winner Liv Boeree had won the second event of the summer, the $10,000 Tag Team No-Limit Championship together with her boyfriend, Russian poker Player Igor Kurganov.
The power couple competed in a field of 102 teams, incl. the all-female team led by Lauren Roberts and with the two bracelet winners Lisa Hamilton and Haixia Zang on board. Unfortunately Team Roberts busted outside of the money on Day 2. The teams with Loni Harwood, Kitty Kuo, Carol Fuchs and Jennifer Shahade all suffered the same fate.

Fortunately Team “Li-gor” was able to make it all the way to the final table. Three-handed they faced the strong teams of Daniel Negreanu and Ankush Mandavia. Negreanu’s team was first out, and after 90 hands of heads-up play Mandavia ran a lesser straight into Kurganov’s nut straight.
This is the first bracelet win for both Kurganov and Boeree, who immediately donated half of their prize money to REGcharity. Even though Kurganov played most of the event and Boeree seemingly only played the one orbit required to participate in the event, a bracelet is a bracelet! Huge congrats to both players.

Linglin Zeng Takes 3rd in Shootout Event
Soon after the Tag Team Event had concluded, another woman was in contention for a bracelet in Event #3: the $3,000 NL Shootout. This time it was the Chinese-American Player Linglin Zeng, who advanced to the final table of 10 after winning her tables two days in a row. By playing a very patient game and picking good spots Zeng was able to outlast players like Olivier Busquet, Jean Gaspard and Taylor Paul. The subsequent winner, Upeskha De Silva, eventually knocked out Zeng in third place for $130k.
This impressive start bodes well for Linglin Zeng, who had a great 2016 WSOP, finishing in 12th place of the Ladies Event, in 5th place of a $3,000 NL Event and in 16th place of the Monster Stack.

E-Tay and Sam Cohen Make Final Table
In the low buy in version of the Tag Team Event (Event #10) three teams with women on board were able to make the nine-handed final table: Team Austin Buchanan/Lanie Foster, Team DJ MacKinnon/ Esther Taylor-Brady and Team Ryan Laplante/Sam Cohen.
With Team Allyn Shulman/Barry Shulman/Jessica Horan finishing in 11 place it was pretty insane to see so many women making the final table at the same time; even though none of the women actually played the final table.
Team Austin Buchanan/Lanie Foster finished in 8th place for $13,680, Team Ryan Laplante/Sam Cohen in 7^th place for $18,143 and Team DJ MacKinnon/ Esther Taylor-Brady in 6th place for $24,430.

Deep Runs
In Event #4: $1,500 Omaha Hi-Lo Kate Hoang and bracelet winner Carol Fuchs both went deep. Hoang finished in 20^th place and Fuchs in 26^th, both cashing for $6,725.
In Event #5: $565 The Colossus, which attracted 18,054 entries Pojana Jenne made it all the way to 28th place and a prize of $24,465, while Ellen Lambeth would finish in 53th place, worth $15,956.
In Event #7: $2,500 Mixed Triple Draw Lowball, Carol Fuchs made it into the money again. This time to a 30th place finish, collecting a min-cash of $4,234 for her efforts.

Keep an Eye on: Lauren Roberts
Has Lauren Roberts played all the events so far? No, but the high-stake poker player seems to be everywhere this summer and competing in the highest buy-in events of the year. First she played in the $300,000 Super High Roller Bowl at the Aria, then the aforementioned Tag Team Event, and last but not least she entered the $111,111 High Roller for One Drop. Wow!
Even though Roberts was not able to go deep in any of the events this time, it has been encouraging to see a female poker player compete at this level. With Jennifer Harman and Vanessa Selbst not playing the big buy-in events at the moment, we have not really seen any women playing high-stake tournaments in a long time.

WEEK ONE
Bracelets: 1 (Liv Boeree)
Final Tables: 4 (Linglin Zeng, E-Tay, Sam Cohen, Lanie Foster)
WSOP Leaderboard: Linglin Zeng, #23. Carol Fuchs, #36

Be sure to check out Week 2 of the WSOP, when I return next week with more coverage of deep runs, final tables and hopefully another bracelet win (or two).