It appears that Brett Shaffer has found his niche in the live poker tournament world. For the second time in two years, Shaffer won a $1,500 No-Limit event, winning 2014 World Series of Poker (WSOP) Event #31: $1,500 No-Limit Hold’em on Monday.
This go around, there were 1,631 entries in the event, creating a $2,201,850 prize pool and a $418,435 first prize for Shaffer. That is a far cry from his win last year, when there were 2,816 players, a prize pool of $3,801,600, and a healthy $665,397 first prize. But hey, $1.1 million from two tournaments isn’t half bad. Other those two wins, Shaffer has only a handful of cashes that even reach into the five-digit range, let alone mid-six-digits.
Shaffer entered Monday in third place out of the remaining fifteen competitors. When play reached the final table of nine, his chip stack had fallen by a couple hundred thousand and he was in the middle of the pack, sitting in sixth with 628,000 chips. He wasn’t in bad shape though; the top four players all had between about 1,000,000 and 1,200,000 with the chip leader entering the day, Matt Stout, in fifth place with 740,000. It didn’t look like any one or two players would be able to play the role of bully.
With seven players left, Shaffer was still limping along, but he finally made a big move on Hand #42 of the final table when he was able to double through Rob Wazwaz. A few hands later, he eliminated Robert Schmidt in sixth place and by the time the tournament was four-handed, he was in second with 2,125,000 chips. From there, he took off, jumping into the lead and building his chip stack. Going into heads-up play against RJ Sullivan, Shaffer had the lead, 4,105,000 to 3,240,000.
It took just thirteen heads-up hands to finish the event. On the final hand, Sullivan raised pre-flop to 180,000 and Shaffer moved all-in, having Sullivan covered. Sullivan decided it was as good a time as any to take a chance and made the call with A♥-4♥. He was in fantastic shape, as Shaffer had just A♠-2♦, a dominated hand. The flop came down 5♦-2♣-9♥, giving Shaffer the sudden lead, though Sullivan did have a gut-shot straight draw in addition to the three remaining fours. The turn and river, though, were 6♣ and 2♥, respectively, offering RJ Sullivan no help and giving Brett Shaffer his second World Series of Poker bracelet.
2014 World Series of Poker Event #31: $1,500 No-Limit Hold’em – Final Table Results
1. Brett Shaffer – $418,435
2. RJ Sullivan- $258,695
3. Matt Stout – $170,247
4. Peter Gould – $122,731
5. Aleksandr Gofman – $89,835
6. Robert Schmidt – $66,716
7. Rajaee Wazwaz – $50,246
8. Jim Jakobsen – $38,356
9. Jason Vanstrom – $29,658
* Photo and tournament information courtesy WSOP.com.
