Accidental registration results in WSOP bracelet
Find out how 40-year old pro Christian Pham won his first bracelet playing a game in which he didn't even know the rules.
After an inconceivable string of unlikelihoods, 40-year old Vietnamese born pro Christian Pham has won WSOP Event #23, a $1,500 buy-in 2-7 Lowball tournament, even though he'd mistakenly registered and didn't even know the rules.
When Pham first took his seat on Day 1, he was expecting to be playing his usual game (No Limit Hold'em), but to his horror the cards were being dealt in a fashion he'd never seen before.
"They had started dealing already, so I couldn't do anything", Pham told the WSOP. "If they hadn't started I would've asked to be unregistered."
But after quickly accepting his cruel fate, knuckling down and paying close attention to what other players were doing around him, by the end of the first day Pham was the tournament's chip leader with just 20% of the 219 player field remaining.
From that point on he looked like a seasoned deuce to seven veteran, gliding to his first WSOP final table, then past the likes of 1996 Main Event champion Huck Seed (5th) and bracelet winner Mike Leah (7th) on his way to to the Day 3 chip lead.
By then, only Daniel Ospina and Matthew Smith stood in his way, and once Smith had been sent packing early on, Pham eventually defeated a brave Ospina heads-up to take the bracelet and $81,314 in prize money.
"I'd played lots of poker before, but not this game, I had to learn at the table. I was figuring out what I had to do as I went along, and got a lot of good cards too which helped", he explained after the win. "Now I love this game!"
Although Pham must be the only player in WSOP history to win an event he'd accidentally registered too, bizarrely there have actually been instances in the past where players have won events in game types they've admitted they had no clue how to play.
Shout outs to Cliff Josephy, who won a Seven Card Stud event back in 2005, and Matt Perrins, who won the same 2-7 Lowball event as Pham in 2011.
WCOOP 2015 schedule announced
On the subject of World Championship poker festivals, PokerStars has just rolled out its first draft of the 2015 World Championship of Online Poker (WCOOP) schedule.
The festival will take place from Sunday, September 06 - Sunday, September 27, with the obvious highlight being the massive $5,200 buy-in, $10,000,000 guaranteed Main Event running on the final day.
For a look at the full preliminary schedule (without guarantees), head over to our dedicated forum thread:
Forum: WCOOP 2015 preliminary schedule
