It isn’t often that the poker world is captivated by a Limit Hold’em event. But with three-time World Series of Poker gold bracelet winner John Monnette and FiveThirtyEight.com Creator Nate Silver competing heads-up for the win in the 2021 WSOP Event #16 $10,000 Limit Hold’em Championship on Saturday night, social media was buzzing. And after a grueling heads-up battle that took two hours and 45 minutes to settle, John Monnette had earned the fourth WSOP bracelet of his career, to go along with the tournament’s top cash prize of $245,680.
Monnette’s victory brought his documented total live tournament earnings to over $3 million. The lion’s share of those earnings have come in WSOP events. The four-time bracelet winner has 72 career cashes in WSOP events for a total of $2,604,551 in prize money. His three previous bracelets came in the $10,000 No-Limit 2-7 Lowball Draw Championship in 2017 ($256,610), the $5,000 Seven Card Stud tournament in 2012 ($190,826), and the $2,500 8-Game Mix in 2011 ($278,144).
Poker.org interviewed Nate Silver before the unofficial final table began. Silver is best known for his work at FiveThirtyEight.com and has become a polarizing figure due to his site’s heavy emphasis on politics. But he’s no stranger to poker. He used to grind online poker before Black Friday and had three WSOP cashes before this one. This was Silver’s first career cash in a tournament that wasn’t a No-Limit Hold’em event and was easily his biggest cash to date at $151,842.
Jason Somerville and John Racener also ran deep
Silver and Monnette weren’t the only two big names at the $10,000 Limit Hold’em Championship final table. The final ten players who started the unofficial table on Day 3 included four other WSOP bracelet winners besides Monnette: Ray Dehkharghani, Kevin Song, Jason Somerville and John Racener. Racener was the chip leader at the end of Day 2, but the 2010 WSOP Main Event runner-up settled for a six place finish in this one.
In total, this event drew 92 players to generate a total prize pool of $857,900. This marked a pretty significant drop of over 20% from the 118 players that played in the 2019 WSOP $10,000 Limit Hold’em Championship.
Final Table Payouts
1. John Monnette: $245,680
2. Nate Silver: $151,842
3. Eric Kurtzman: $108,747
4. Terrence Chan: $79,210
5. Jason Somerville: $58,697
6. John Racener: $44,263
7. Scott Tuttle: $33,979
8. Christopher Chung: $26,561
9. Kevin Song: $21,149
Featured Image Credit: PokerGO
