If nothing else, this story was much easier to research than the one I wrote earlier this week (but won’t be out for another week or two). Instead of pouncing on players who’d just been eliminated from the main event early in level one, I got to sit down and chat with a guy who was 48 hours removed from winning his first WSOP bracelet. That makes for an upbeat Vegas Seven column:
There’s no better example of what the bracelet means than Gavin Smith, who was born in Canada but now calls Las Vegas home. Smith, who’d worn the unofficial crown of “best player never to win a bracelet” for years, has been playing poker professionally for 13 years. Nothing was sweeter than his finally winning a WSOP bracelet at Event 44, a mixed $2,500 Texas hold ’em game, on June 28.
“It’s the Holy Grail, what everyone’s after,” says Smith, a likable 41-year-old who’s won more than $5 million at the tables, including a $1.2 million payday for winning the 2005 World Poker Tour Mirage Showdown, part of an incredible run that saw him named WPT Player of the Year.
Yet the big one always got away, until now.
via A long journey for that first WSOP bracelet | Vegas Seven.
Smith was genuinely emotional about winning the bracelet, and seemed legitimately proud to have secured his poker legacy.
The bracelet ceremony was also pretty neat. Playing the national anthem is a great tough, because it highlights the international nature of the competition and gives the ceremony an aura of solemnity. Whoever thought that up deserves a bonus.