It took four days of play for a field of 4,555 entrants to be narrowed down to a single player, Paul Hoefer from Germany. The 24-year-old college student and part-time poker player collected his first bracelet and $645,969 for winning the tournament.
There were 2 former bracelet winners on the final table of this event: Brett Shaffer, a two-time champ went out first of all finalists in ninth place for $53,088 and John Reading, who won this year's Hyper Hold'em title, finished 4th place for $212,559.
From there on, Hoefer accumulated plenty of chips. The fact is that he had 80 percent of the total chips once the tournament was down to three players. He then knocked out Senovio Ramirez III and Mario Lopez quickly to lay hands on the title.
"I did make it look easy," Hoefer said afterward. "There's no question I ran super good. But I played good, I think. When you play good and the cards hit you, that's an unstoppable combination."
"It's really unbelievable to win and have all my friends here with me," Hoefer said as he was surrounded by a mob of supporters. "The German poker community is super. We have been very tight-knit for a couple of years now. We are like a family."
Final table results:
OTHER IN-THE-MONEY FINISHERS:
Aside from the final table finishers, other former gold bracelet winning players who cashed included - Jordan Smith (53rd), Joey Weissman (78th), Craig McCorkell (85th), Dominik Nitsche (99th), Davide Suriano (123rd), Alex Bolotin (144th), Andy Frankenberger (190th), Jim Collopy (257th), Carlos Mortensen (311th), Ylon Schwartz (333rd), Michael "the Grinder" Mizrachi (337th), Thor Hansen (404th), and Sam Greenwood (410th).
FUN FACTS:
There were 4,486 males and 215 females who entered this event.
The average age of participants was 36 years, with the range from 21 to 83.
There were 138 first-time WSOP participants in this event.
The number of unique players (single entry) was 3,214.
There were 3,014 American players and 1,509 from other nations. The top-five list with the most players included - U.S., U.K., Canada, Brazil, and Italy.
