Brian Yoon Wins Fifth Career World Series of Poker Gold Bracelet

The short list of poker players with five or more World Series of Poker gold bracelets to their name grew by one this week. In the early-morning hours of Thursday, June 8, Brian Yoon emerged victorious in the 2023 WSOP $10,000 seven card stud championship event, earning $311,433 and his fifth title at the series.

The 33-year-old poker pro is just the 33rd player in history to have won as many bracelets.

“Honestly, I don’t try to bracelet hunt or anything like that, I’m just trying to play the tournaments and enjoy playing the games. It feels great, obviously, to be the 33rd to get number five, so I’ll take it and see what happens in the future,” Yoon told PokerNews live reporters after coming out on top.

Yoon won three no-limit hold’em bracelets during the 2010’s, and took down his first mixed-game title at series in the 2021 $10,000 deuce-to-seven triple draw lowball championship.

This latest victory increased his career tournament earnings to nearly $5.9 million. It was his first title and fourth final-table finish of the year. The 600 Card Player Player of the Year points he took home as the champion were enough to move him into 179th place in the 2023 POY standings presented by Global Poker.

Yoon also secured 311 PokerGO Tour points for the win. This was his second qualifying cash for that high-stakes-focused tour. He now sits just outside the top 30 on the PGT leaderboard.

This championship event played out over the course of three days. It attracted 131 total entries, creating a prize pool of $1,209,000. Only the top 20 finishers made the money, with notables like four-time bracelet winners Jeff Madsen (19th) and Julien Martini (13th), three-time bracelet winners Chad Eveslage (12th) and David ‘Bakes’ Baker (11th), and bracelet winner Alex Livingston (10th) all running deep.

With bracelet winner Johannes Becker’s elimination in ninth place, the official final table of eight was set. Yoon was in second chip position at the time, trailing only bracelet winner Maxx Coleman.

Max Hoffman (8th – $36,847) was the first to fall. Not too long after his exit, Yoon eliminated Leonard August (7th – $46,484) to narrow the field to six. George Alexander knocked out bracelet winner Ben Diebold in sixth place ($59,688), only to then find himself on the rail as the fifth-place finisher ($77,985).

Four-time bracelet winner Ben Yu got the last of his stack in with split nines against the buried aces of Coleman. Both players improved to two pair by seventh street, but Coleman’s aces up were best and Yu’s run ended in fourth place ($103,645).

Three-handed play lasted roughly 100 minutes, during which time Yoon began to pull away. While Yoon ascended, Coleman fell to the bottom of the leaderboard. He ultimately finished third, earning $140,081 for his latest strong showing at the series. He now has nearly $3.5 million in recorded tournament earnings.

With that, Yoon took more than a 3:1 chip lead into heads-up play with Dan Shak, who was at his second final table of the series after finishing seventh in the mystery millions event just two days earlier.

Shak managed to nearly pull even after an early run, but Yoon kept pulling away whenever Shak got close. In the final hand of the tournament, Shak committed the last of his stack in on sixth street with nines and eights, only to find that Yoon had made a broadway straight. Shak needed a nine or eight on the end, but instead drew up the 4 to finish as the runner-up for $192,479. The score increased his career earnings to more than $13.3 million.

Here is a look at the payouts and rankings points awarded at the final table:

Visit the Card Player 2023 World Series of Poker page for schedules, news, interviews, and the latest event results.

Winner photo credit: WSOP / Omar Sader.

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