The first gold bracelet to be awarded at the 2018 WSOP has been won by Elio Fox, who outlasted a player field of 243 at Event #2: $10,000 Super Turbo Bounty No-Limit Hold'em for a sweet prize of $393,693.
This is Elio Fox's second gold bracelet in his poker career, with his first one acquired as the 2011 WSOP Europe Main Event winner.
The one-day event began on May 30 (Wednesday) at 3pm, which featured 20-minute blind levels helping to amp the action. The total of 243 players built a prize pool of $2,284,200 that was awarded to the top 37 finishers.
After the event, Fox said, "There was such a big field. And I think there was a good mixture of pros and recreational players. I think doing turbos is great because it's good for non-professional players who can finish an event quickly. Bounty turbo formats appear a lot online, so I've definitely played it a lot, but I think it's a great addition to the WSOP schedule."
It's actually the very first year that this specific format has been included in the WSOP schedule, and the 2011 WSOP Europe Main Event winner Elio Fox seemingly just breezed his way through a final table that included the likes of Alex Foxen, two-time bracelet winner Paul Volpe, and former Main Event champ Joe Cada.
The turbo nature of the event played to Fox's advantage, because the stacks were shallow throughout the later stages. There were some crucial moments at the final table, like while five-handed as Fox delivered a double knock-out he then soared into the three-handed chip lead. Fox said, "It put me in a really good situation three-handed, having more chips than Paul. It meant I could play a lot of pots and put pressure on him, especially with the payout structure. And he was forced to fold a lot because of the short stack, so it definitely swung things in my favor."
Fox defeated Volpe and had a 7:1 chip lead into the heads-up play with Adam Adler, but an early double up from Adler meant that he's not going to make it easy for Fox. Adler said, "Heads-up with shallow stacks is something I've played a lot before, but not for a little while so I felt a bit rusty. Anything could happen with such short stacks; I didn't feel extremely confident that I was going to win after he doubled up, and I was just really happy to do so!"
Other notable players who joined this event but failed to cash in include reigning WSOP Player of the Year Chris Ferguson, 14-time bracelet winner Phil Hellmuth, Qui Nguyen, Adrian Mateos, Erik Seidel, Kristen Bicknell, Brian Yoon, and 888poker Team Pro Dominik Nitsche. Players eliminated before late registration closed were Igor Kurganov, Dietrich Fast, Andreas Eiler, Stephen Chidwick, Rainer Kempe, Liv Boeree, Steffen Sontheimer and Fedor Holz.
2018 WSOP Event #2 $10,000 Super Turbo Bounty No-Limit Hold'em Final Table Results
Source:
https://www.pokernews.com/news/2018/05/elio-fox-wins-first-ever-wsop-10k-super-turbo-bounty-30952.htm?itm_content=pn-hp-hero-1