WSOP Day 3: The Youngest Bracelet Winner in History
The kid on the left is Steve ‘MrSmokey1’ Billirakis, and he is the world champion in mixed limit hold’em, winning Event #1 ($5,000 Mixed Hold’em World Championship). He is just ten days past his 21st birthday, making him the youngest player to ever win a World Series bracelet. That’s ESPN’s Norm Chad on the right, checking Billirakis’s driver’s license after the victory.
Most of the growth in poker the last few years has been coming from the younger generation, as college kids cut their teeth online by playing countless hands at multiple tables simultaneously. This is reflected by the fact that this is the fourth consecutive year that the record for youngest bracelet winner has been broken.
Way back in 1998, Daniel Negreanu won his first bracelet, and he was just 23 years old. That record stood for six years, until 22-year-old Gavin Griffin won an event back in 2004. The next year, 21-year-old Eric ‘EFro’ Froehlich won a bracelet in limit hold’em, and we thought we had seen the end of it. Then Jeff Madsen comes along in 2006 to win not one bracelet, but two. And he was several months younger than Froehlich.
Now Billirakis claims victory just ten days after his 21st birthday. Keep in mind that this was a three-day event, so he was only a week past the legal gambling age when the tournament started. That leaves a very narrow window for someone to break his record, and I expect it to stand for a long, long time.
As a side note, Phil Hellmuth is still the youngest player to ever win the Main Event (he was 24 in 1989) -- but with a sizable percentage of the field expected to be younger than that, expect that record to be broken any year now.
June 3, 2007
Sunday, June 3, 2007
