Sunday's big story at the WSOP was definitely Tom Dwan and his run at Event #11: $1.5k NLHE which ended in 2nd place, just short of his first bracelet that would have brought him millions in sidebets. In the end young Simon Watt from New Zealand stood in his way and became an instant hero of the high stakes pros at the WSOP.


"I made a ton of bets, and winning a bracelet would definitely be my biggest winning day ever at this point- so u can extrapolate from there," durrrr wrote on his blog at the start of the series. It is not clear how much was at stake, but it's at least 2 million dollars and very likely more.

Reportedly some of the pros held a meeting before the final table to decide whether they should try to buy themselves out of their bets with Dwan.

Apparently that didn't happen though, so there must have been some serious nail-biting going on when Dwan made it to heads up play with Watt, even if he was trailing by 8.4m to 3.2m. It started with some back-and-forth cautious play but then came the first big pot - and it went to Watt.

Watt raised from the button, Dwan made the call. Flop JT2 with two hearts, Dwan led with a bet, call. Turn was the ace of hearts, Dwan continued with a bet but this time Watt announced he was all-in. Dwan rolled his eyes, sighed... and folded, leaving himself just 1.6m.

Those chips went in with a shove with Q6 but Watt called lightning-fast with pocket nines and the board AA8 A K did Dwan no favours. He shook hands with his opponent and left quickly; the disappointment must have been tremendous.

Mike Matusow's comments after the game are perhaps some indication of the sums in play here. When Watt was posing for the media with his winning nines, Matusow sauntered to the table and yelled, "Thank you for saving us all millions of dollars! How does it feel to be every high-stakes gambler's hero? They're gonna, like, put you on the wall in Bobby's Room or some shit." Then Mike turned away again, but stopped once more and asked, "Hey, what's your name, kid?"

"The kid" is a young man from New Zealand whose resume includes an APPT win at his home field in Auckland. His total tournament cashes are 784k.

WSOP Event #11: $1.5k NL Hold'em (2,563 players):

1. Simon Watt $614.248
2. Tom Dwan $381.885
3. David Randall $270.299
4. Austin McCormick $194.939
5. Jason Young $142.346
6. Michael Smith $105.185
7. Marvin Rettenmaier $78.681
8. Kyle Winter $59.547
9. Eric Ladny $45.603

Source: WSOP.