The 2021 WSOP Event #9: $10,000 Omaha Hi-Lo 8 or Better Championship event saw Ari Engel win his second gold bracelet after a protracted heads up duel with Zachary Milchman.
There were 134 players who felt confident enough — or lucky enough — to put $10,000 on the line in one of poker's lowest-variance variants.
Since this event was both high on stakes and low on Texas hold'em, some of those 134 players were poker's biggest names.
These big names included Mike Matusow, who I have it on good authority — i.e. from himself — is the best in the world at Omaha hi-lo. Matusow came in 29th. Robert Mizrachi has had a controversial year after accidentally exaggerating rumors of Mike Sexton's death before it happened. More recently, he was accused of selling fake vaccine cards by Daniel Negreanu (Negreanu later adjusted his story.) Mizrachi took 7th.
Mizrachi and Matusow were accompanied by Erik Seidel, Allen Kessler, Dan Shak, David "ODB" Baker, Jason Somerville, Connor Drinnan, Carol Fuchs, Yuri Dzivielevski, Shaun Deeb, David Benyamine, and Daniel Negreanu. That's to name just a few.
But the biggest story of all was Phil Hellmuth's run to his second final table of the series. He made it into the top five, who met again today (Day 4 of the tourney) to play down to a winner.
The cream also rises
With just a few big bets left in his stack, Phil Hellmuth began Day 4 of the event on thin spring-ice.
He had high hopes (#positivity) for a comeback, but in the end Engel and Blumenthal split his stack after he just missed both the high and the low hand while all-in.
Norman Chad summarised Hellmuth's performance at the series.
"Here is @phil_hellmuth's WSOP so far," Chad wrote. "6th in $25,000 HORSE; 18th in $1,500 Dealers Choice; 5th or better in $10,000 Omaha8. That's two final tables already. If he ever learns how to play heads-up NLHE, he will be a force in poker for years to come."
If it weren't for luck, he'd win them all.
That left four green bottles standing on the wall. A few hands later, Blumenthal gave the rest of Hellmuth's chips to Engel along with the rest of his stack when Blumenthal's flush was out-kicked by Engel's.
All hail to the Milchman
Yeh was next to go, leaving Milchman and Engel heads up. All Engel had to lose was the $120k pay-jump to first, and his second gold chain.
Fortunately, Engel managed to bring about the required revolution to redistribute the chips, and after a drawn-out heads up battle he forced Milchman to finally give up the spectre.
With the limits at 150k-300k, Milchman got his last chips in on a board of: T♦️6❤️J♠. Engel showed showed A♠T♠4♠3❤️ versus Milchman's 8❤️8♣4♦️2♦️.
The turn and river came down Q❤️Q♦️. That meant there was no qualifying low and Engel scooped the pot with two pair queens and tens.
Engel won $317,076 for first, while Milchman took down $195,968 for his second place finish.
2021 WSOP Event #9: $10,000 Omaha Hi-Lo Championship complete final table results
Featured image source: Featured image source: PokerGO (photographer: Antonio Abrego)
