Max Pescatori Claims Second Bracelet of the Series

Max Pescatori, known to many as ‘The Italian Pirate’, has won his second gold bracelet at the 2015 World Series of Poker after taking down $10,000 buy-in Seven-Card Stud High-Low Championship.

The event has attracted 111 players generating a prize pool of $1,043,400 that was distributed amongst 16 top finishers. Italian poker pro has outlasted a tough field to claim fourth World Series of Poker gold bracelet of his career.

Pescatori explained for WSOP.com that Stud is his best game and that this event was his best chance to win a bracelet. He even spent hours preparing for this tournament, studying and thinking about the game. It was certainly worth it as ‘The Italian Pirate’ managed to come back from behind at the final table. He amazingly overcame the chip disadvantage when play was 4-handed. At one point it looked like he was going to finish fourth but Pescatori survived and kept on battling.

Daniel Negreanu who was really confident that he would collect his seventh WSOP gold got eliminated in third place and took home $113,062. This was his best appearance since last year, when he finished a runner up in Big One for One Drop and won $8.2m. That finish was Negreanu’s biggest financial score in his poker career.

Italian poker pro found himself in heads-up duel with Stephen Chidwick from England. Chidwick is well known in poker community as a player of an extraordinary talent. His name often gets mentioned when there is a discussion about best poker players who haven't won a bracelet at WSOP. However Chidwick will have to wait for his bracelet some more as Pescatori scooped up a the victory and collected the first place prize of $292,158.

Introduced 37 years ago, Seven-Card Stud High-Low Split is the favorite game of many experienced and talented players and it is the first ‘split’ game ever to be played at the WSOP. The first Seven-Card Stud High-Low Split champion was Doc Green in 1976 and he won $12,750 for his victory.

Max Pescatori now has more than $2m in WSOP earnings and four gold bracelets to his name, which he won in 2006, 2008 and two in 2015. One of the interesting facts about Max is that he never finished second or third in a WSOP event. All four times that he got into three handed play, Italian poker pro won the event. By winning this event, Max joined Brian Hastings as double winner of 2015 WSOP.

Russian poker player Aleksandr Denisov finished fourth and took home $81,865. It was his second final table appearance at this year’s series.

Thomas Butzhammer from Vienna got eliminated in fifth place and collected $51,022 which was his sixth time to cash at 2015 World Series of Poker.

Richard Sklar from Las Vegas finished seventh and earned $41,433.