Scotty Nguyen Wins $50,000 WSOP H.O.R.S.E. World Championship

In 2007, Scotty Nguyen suffered one of the most unbelievable meltdowns in World Series of Poker history.  The chip leader in the $10,000 Main Event with only twelve players remaining, he inexplicably lost all of his chips because of a series of bad decisions and hit the rail in eleventh place.  He didn’t even make the final table.  

Time can heal all wounds.  And winning almost $2 million in what is quickly becoming the most prestigious event at the WSOP helps, too. 

Nguyen didn’t falter in his first final table appearance at the 2008 WSOP, going in as chip leader of the $50,000 H.O.R.S.E. World Championship, and leaving the Amazon Room as the third winner of the now coveted bracelet, not to mention the very first recipient of the Chip Reese Memorial Trophy, named after the late winner of the inaugural H.O.R.S.E. World Championship. 

With 3.535 million in chips, Nguyen had a fairly comfortable lead over the next largest stack, 1.955 million, held by Barry Greenstein.  But at a table filled by the likes of Huck Seed, Matt Glantz, Erick Lindgren, Greenstein, Lyle Berman, Patrick Bueno, and Michael DeMichele, was any lead really that comfortable? 

Bueno, the short stack, was the first out, bowing to Lindgren in razz.  Seed was gone next, his pair of 9’s a far cry from DeMichele’s flush and low hand in stud high/low.   

Stud high/low also claimed Greenstein, who was at the final table of this event for the second consecutive year.  Greenstein led out on every street, eventually getting the last of his chips in on seventh street with 4-A-A-T showing.  With another 4 in the hole, he had a decent hand of two pair, but Nguyen flipped over rolled-up 7’s to go along with a 7 in the door for trips.  Greenstein didn’t have a low hand, so was eliminated in sixth place. 

It was back to razz for the next elimination, as DeMichele knocked out Lyle Berman in fifth place, while at the same time taking nice chunk out of Nguyen’s stack.  DeMichele was on a roll, having started as the second shortest stack of the final table. 

The final elimination for a long, long time was Matt Glantz, as his K-J-T-T was unable to improve in Omaha high/low against Nguyen’s A-2-7-K.  Nguyen turned a pair of Aces and rivered a flush. 

I took about 6 hours and 200 hands for Erick Lindgren to be eliminated in third place by Nguyen in stud.  Lindgren got it all-in on fifth street with a pair of 8’s, while Nguyen was happy to call him with a pair of 9’s.  Lindgren did not improve, obviously. 

While Michael DeMichele had worked his way up from one of the short stacks to the final two, he was in deep trouble going into heads-up play against Nguyen, facing a 4-to-1 chip deficit.  He didn’t put up much of a fight.  After about twenty minutes, DeMichele raised pre-flop with A-3 and Nguyen, holding a dominant A-T, put him all-in, saying, “It’s gonna be all over, baby.”  DeMichelle called, as Nguyen’s opponents tend to do when he says it’s going to be all over, and was unable to hit on of his three outs. 

Scotty Nguyen won $1,989,120 for his victory, as well as the Chip Reese Memorial Trophy and his fifth WSOP bracelet.