Cartsen Joh 2009 WSOP braceletAt this year’s World Series of Poker the $1,500 No-Limit Texas Hold’em events have attracted massive fields. Event 51 was no exception, drawing 2,781 entrants for a total prize pool of $3,796,065. When it was said and done the biggest chunk of the prize money went to German native Carsten Joh who captured his first career bracelet and $664,426 top place prize. With his victory he became the first German bracelet winner of the 2009 series, and only the eighth German all time to win a bracelet.

Prior to Carsten Joh’s victory the list of former WSOP bracelet winners looked like this:

Martin Klaser – 2008 WSOP
Sebastian Ruthenberg – 2008 WSOP
Jens Voertmann – 2008 WSOP
Katja Thater – 2007 WSOP
Michael Keiner – 2007 WSOP
Eddy Scharf – 2003 WSOP & 2001 WSOP
Matthias Rohnacher – 1997 WSOP

During the final table Cartsen Joh used a very conservative style and remained a short stack much of the day. However, between avoiding traps he watched many of his opponents fall as victims to their over aggressive styles. After hanging in the match long enough Joh caught a nice run of cards and eventually took a slight chip lead into heads up play against Andrew Chen.

After an hour of heads up play Cartsen Joh’s chip lead grew to 4 to 1 and would put Andrew Chen away on a final hand that saw Joh raise to 410K from the button with 6d 6c, and Chen respond with an all in for 2.2 million with Td 9d. Joh called and the board ran Qd 4c 3c 5d 6s. Chen received $412,632 for his runner up finish while Joh captured his first career WSOP bracelet and the $664,426 top place prize.

2009 WSOP Event 51 Final Table Results

1st Place: Carsten Joh – 664,426
2nd Place: Andrew Chen – 412,632
3rd Place: David Walasinski – 272,405
4th Place: Steven Levy – 192,650
5th Place: Owen Crowe – 145,199
6th Place: Thibaut Durand – 115,817
7th Place: Georgios Kapalas – 97,634
8th Place: Jason Helder – 86,702
9th Place: Nathan Page – 80,894