Carsten Joh was facing 2780 to 1 odds when he plunked down $1500 dollars to play in Event #51 ($1,500 No Limit Hold'em). These are the sort of odds that Leonidas and his 300 Spartans faced when they crammed themselves into the Thermopylae pass and dared the massive Persian army to pass through them. It didn’t really work out in that case. Carsten Joh fared a bit better then the doomed yet heroic Greeks. He managed to overcome the staggering odds and come away from the encounter with not only the World Series of Poker bracelet, but $664,426 for three days work.
Carsten didn’t take the easy road to the championship. When the final table started he was near the bottom of the pile with 900,000 chips. Most other players have more than a million; a few of them owned stacks more than twice the size of Carsten’s. Things started to move in his direction when the final table chip leader took an unexpected 8th place exit. With the table bully suddenly removed from the equation, it seemed to open things up a bit.
Carsten managed to fight his way into the final pairing. He started heads-up play against Andrew Chen with a modest chip lead that he soon expanded into a big chip lead, which led to a blowout of Chen. Carsten managed to finish off Andrew in about forty-five minutes of heads-up play.
Carsten Joh is not unknown to those in Europe; especially his native Germany. Over there he has racked up just about $300,000 in winnings. Over in the United States he is more anonymous. This victory at the WSOP was his first the first real cash he has won playing on this side of the pond. Some people work their entire lives for what he has managed in one summer. Somehow it doesn’t seem fair.
Congratulations to Carsten Joh for overcoming a massive field of players along with chip deficits and coming away with your first WSOP bracelet.
