Home / Poker News December 2013 / 2013 Poker Retrospective – Part 12
2013 Poker Retrospective – Part 12
Posted by: Randy Williams - Mon, 2013-12-30 13:43
After a brief stroll on the dark side, it is now time to get back into the light, continuing our countdown of the best poker moments of 2013.
Phil Ivey taking down his 9th WSOP gold was definitely one of the highlights of the WSOP Asia Pacific and of the year as a whole. That’s correct: Ivey’s 9th gold did not come at the
2013 WSOP, and the event which he won for it, featured a rather small-ish starting field as well. Obviously, detractors were quick to jump on these apparent “shortcomings” saying that Ivey’s bracelet wasn’t really a full-value one. All this nitpicking put aside though, the player considered by many an expert the best in the world put down another major mark in his W column, closing in on record holder Phil Hellmuth, who currently only has a 4-bracelet lead on Ivey.
The one Ivey defeated for his 9th bracelet was Brandon Wong, and despite the negative buzz following his win, Ivey as well as Wong thoroughly enjoyed the experience.
When it comes to “name” players doing well, and thus underscoring the importance of the skill element in the game again and again, we definitely have to mention JC Tran’s November Nine run in the 2013 WSOP Main Event too.
Tran would’ve indeed been a poker industry professional’s dream WSOP 2013 Main Event champion: one of the most genuine players in the game today, Tran had the majority of the
online poker community rooting for him at the final table.
Although he did not end up going all the way (having started with the largest stack, he ended up hitting the rail in 5th place), Tran’s final table presence was a nice twist on his career, which had showed signs of heading south for good over the last two years.
Play at PokerStars and use their online qualifiers to make your way to one of the events of the 2014 WSOP.
