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Phillips defeats Cada to win WSOP bracelet, $664,13020 June 2012Carter Phillips won the most recent $1,500 No-Limit Hold’em event at the World Series of Poker early Tuesday morning, overcoming the third-largest field of the tournament series thus far (2,811 entrants) to win $664,130 in prize money and the WSOP gold bracelet. After a lackluster WSOP last year, and a slow start this year, Phillips is rejuvenated by his most recent victory. In his own words, Phillips played really poor poker at the WSOP last summer. His love for the game was diminishing and his patience was wearing thin. The tournament grind was becoming monotonous and he didn’t care if he won or lost. “I knew I would rather not be in the poker world than doing that. School was an option for me,” Phillips said. He dropped out in 2007 to pursue poker full-time, but is currently enrolled in classes for the Fall 2012 semester at the University of North Carolina-Charlotte. He has aspirations to study business, and hopes his poker winnings can help him with his own start-up company in the future. In order to cash in on his most recent payday, Phillips bested a final table that included 2009 Main Event champion Joe Cada. The pair played heads up for the better part of three hours before Phillips was finally crowned champion. “Joe is probably one of the toughest opponents I could have been playing," said Phillips. "I knew coming in to today if I was going to make it deep in this, then he was going to be my biggest threat,” Phillips would say about his adversary. This gold bracelet victory marks the second of Phillips’ young career. At only 23-years-old, the poker pro from Charlotte, N.C., won his first bracelet in 2010 at the ripe age of 21 when he beat 1,663 players in a $1,500 No-Limit Hold’em Six-Handed tournament to win $482,774. Cada's consolation prize amounted to $412,424. While not as impressive as his $8.5 million payday in 2009, it does represent his second-biggest score at the WSOP. Had Cada been able to outlast Phillips heads up, he would have become the first Main Event champion in the post-Moneymaker era to win a bracelet. Tom Chambers finished third to win $290,875, while Cherish Andrews was fourth for $210,083. Najib Kamand was fifth for $153,578, Maxi Lehmanski finished sixth for $113,618, and Michael Aron (seventh), Jonathan Poche (eighth) and Huy Quach (ninth) also made the final table. The top-297 players finished in the money. Notable players who cashed but did not make the final table include: Dwyte Pilgrim (11th), JC Tran (12th), Terrence Chan (20th), Soi Nguyen (32nd), James Akenhead (37th), Gabriel Nassif (42nd), Ted Forrest (45th), Bernard Lee (52nd), Nam Le (74th), Chris Grigorian (83rd), Mike McDonald (164th), Nick Binger (223rd), and Vitaly Lunkin (255th). Modified from tournament notes provided by Lukas M. Willems, WSOP.com |