Twenty-three-year-old Matt Perrins has won the second World Series of Poker bracelet in 2011 for his hometown of Rochdale, England by taking the win at the $1,500 No Limit 2-7 Single Draw event. He pocketed $102,105 for the win.
The other Rochdale winner was Jake Cody who came out on the top of a 128-player field in the $25,000 Heads-up Hold’em event for a $851,192 payday.
Rochdale has a population of less than 100,000 people and apparently a very high percentage of who are top notch poker players.
While Cody’s win was in a higher paying and somewhat more prestigious tournament, Perrins’ win is pretty noteworthy because he beat the Swedish poker superstar, Chris Bjorin, in heads-up to take the bracelet and he had only just learned the rules of 2-7 Single Draw minutes before the tournament began. Who drops $1,500 to enter a tournament in a game they’ve never played before? Well, it seems Matt Perrins does – and he wins.
“To be honest, Day 1 the first three or four hours, I didn’t really know what was going on here,” Perrins said. “I kept speaking to mates [asking] what to do here, what to do here. As the tournament got deeper, it was kind of similar to Hold’em where opening a lot of pots and three-betting wins you a lot of pots.”
With the win, Perrins rounds out his live tournament winnings to date to $605,091which now surpasses his online poker tournament winnings of $569,439.
The good news for this year’s WSOP is that despite the industry’s latest setbacks, it is clear that the popularity of poker is here to stay, as WSOP attendance in the first week showed a slight increase over last year.
Out of the nine events already started or completed, only three have experienced a drop in numbers which makes for unexpectedly strong attendance.
There’s still time for you to contribute to the size of the WSOP fields yourself and get a seat through Sports Interaction’s online WSOP qualifiers.
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- Rio Casino Holds $50K Poker Player’s Championship to Start 2010 WSOP
- WSOP Folds the All-Nighter Poker Game
- 2011 WSOP Schedule Announced
