Online and live tourney professional player Brian Hastings is riding high in the current World Series of Poker in Las Vegas, claiming his third career winner’s bracelet just over a week after winning his second in the $10,000 buy-in Seven Card Stud Championship (see previous report).
Hastings’ battleground this time was event 39, a $1,500 buy-in Ten Game Mix competition that was entered by 380 players to generate a prize pool of $513,500, enabling 42 survivors to cash.
Among the stars taking their seats (but not at the final table) were big names like Daniel Negreanu, Eli Elezra, Phil Hellmuth, Dan Kelly, Jeffrey Lisandro, Ylon Schwartz, Matt Glantz, Rob Mizrachi, Dan Idema and Jason Mercier.
In a very confident performance (Hastings later said that he had a good feeling going into the event because he was able to play all ten games in the mix well) the 26-year-old Pennsylvanian pro played a flawless game to enter the heads up against Ukrainian-American pro Rostislav Tsodikov.
It turned out to be a torrid, hard-contested affair in which these two great players duelled relentlessly for almost 3 hours, with Tsodikov seizing a 4 to 1 lead at one point. Hastings had to use his considerable skills to fight back into contention before dispatching a truly tough opponent and claiming that third bracelet and the $133,403 first prize.
Other final table cashes were:
Rostislav Tsodikov $82,398
Todd Brunson $52,977
Alexey Makarov $35,130
Tim Reusch $23,982
Mike Watson $16,846
Owens Ahmed $12,163