Level seven, seven-handed, blinds at 300,000-600,000 with a 75,000 ante. Phil Ivey shoves his short stack into the middle with ace-king. A Maryland logger named Darvin Moon, who had never played a WSOP event before this one, looks him up with ace-queen. It should be a coin flip that favors the favorite. Then the flop brings a queen. The turn and river bring nothing. Ivey stands up, shakes Moon’s hand, and walks to the rail in seventh place, $1,404,014 richer and a lifetime removed from the bracelet he actually wanted.

That single card, one queen out of forty-five unseen, is the closest Phil Ivey has ever come to winning poker’s biggest tournament. It is also, oddly, the perfect entry point into his career. Ivey has spent a quarter century being the most feared man at almost every table he sits down at, and the deck has not always cared.

The Queen That Cost Him Everything

Final table, seven-handed, with the blinds at 300,000-600,000 with a 75,000 ante, Ivey went all in and Moon called in the big blind, with Ivey poised to double up his short stack through Moon. Moon was dominated by the hand and appeared to continue his downward trajectory, but a queen in the window stunned everyone in the theater, and Ivey was unable to redraw. Ivey’s ace-king had dominated Moon’s ace-queen, but Moon caught one of three remaining queens on the flop to move ahead.

The finish stung because of how the run had built. By day five Ivey was over the million-chip mark, bagging 1,400,000 in chips, and by day six the poker world had its eyes on him as he made his fourth deep run in the WSOP Main Event of the decade. He ended day six in third place with over 6 million in chips, then finished day seven with over 11 million. Ivey had been close to Main Event glory three times before, finishing 23rd in 2002, 10th in 2003 and 20th in 2005. Seventh place remains, to this day, the best Main Event finish of his career, one place worse than the run that ended when a queen paired Darvin Moon on the flop.

The Kid Who Slept Under Docks

Ivey went from sleeping under docks to becoming the person many consider the greatest poker player alive, starting as a teenager gambling under a fake name in Atlantic City. His first WSOP cash came in 2000, and later that year he headed to the WSOP, cashing in three events including winning the $2,580 Pot-Limit Omaha event for $195,000 and his first WSOP bracelet.

He did not stay a one-bracelet man for long. Two years later, at the 2002 WSOP, Ivey won three bracelets in one summer, giving him four for his career and putting him alongside Doyle Brunson, Gary Berland, Bobby Baldwin and Lakewood Louie as the only players to win four bracelets in three years. He was the first to accomplish the feat in the era of growing tournament fields, which meant beating bigger crowds to do it than the old guard ever had to.

The Bluff Nobody Believed

By November 2005 Ivey was already the man other pros pointed to when asked who they least wanted to see across the table. For three days, 112 of the world’s greatest poker players from 22 countries gathered in Monte-Carlo for the largest prize pool tournament in European history, a field that included 27 WSOP gold bracelet holders and seven World Poker Tour champions. Ivey outlasted all of them but one.

He carried a five-to-one chip lead into heads-up play against British underdog Paul Jackson. The hand that people still talk about two decades later came mid-match. Ivey limped from the button with six-five offsuit, Jackson found queen-eight of hearts in the big blind and checked, and the flop of seven-jack-jack did not seem to foreshadow any action. Jackson bet 80,000 after that flop, Ivey re-raised to 150,000, Jackson raised again to 150,000, and an icy cold Ivey finally pushed all-in, psyching out his opponent into an instant fold. Neither man had much of anything. It did not matter. “Coming to the final table as the chip leader, I couldn’t do anything less than win,” Ivey said afterward. He took home $1 million and the championship of the first poker tournament ever held at the Casino de Monte-Carlo.

Two Bracelets Before the Big Show

The summer of 2009 is remembered for the Main Event run, but Ivey had already put on a clinic before he even sat down at that table. He won his sixth career bracelet in the $2,500 No-Limit 2-7 Draw Lowball event, defeating a field of 147 players and beating John Monnette heads-up. He then won another bracelet in a $2,500 Seven Card Stud Hi/Lo and Omaha Hi/Lo event, besting a field of 376 players and defeating Ming Lee heads-up. Two bracelets in a matter of weeks, and he still had the Main Event left to play.

The Aussie Millions Double

Melbourne became one of Ivey’s favorite hunting grounds. In 2012, at the Aussie Millions, Ivey won the A$250,000 Challenge, taking home A$2,000,000. He came back two years later and did it again on a bigger stage. Topping an elite field of 46 entries in the 2014 LK Boutique $250,000 Aussie Millions Challenge, Ivey won $4 million AUD to become the event’s first two-time champion.

The final hand was brutal for his opponent. Mike McDonald min-raised on the button and called after Ivey shoved roughly 1.3 million, with McDonald’s ace-queen dominating Ivey’s king-queen, until the flop came king-ten-ten. The win remains his best-ever single tournament haul, worth $3,582,753.

Bracelet Number Eleven

Then came the drought. Ivey’s volume waned from mid-2014 through 2018. He returned frequenting the Triton Super High Roller Series around the world, seemingly set on only playing the highest buy-ins. Fans wondered if his bracelet count was frozen at ten forever, tied with Doyle Brunson, Erik Seidel and Johnny Chan.

It ended at the Horseshoe in Las Vegas. The $10,000 Limit 2-7 Lowball Triple Draw Championship reached its climax on an unscheduled Day 4, after an intense 13-hour Day 3 whittled a field of 149 entrants down to three players: Phil Ivey, Danny Wong, and Jason Mercier. Ivey collected $347,440 after the three-handed battle. He broke free from the four-way tie for ten bracelets, becoming the lone player positioned to chase down Phil Hellmuth’s all-time record of 17. “Anytime winning a World Series of Poker event is always special,” Ivey said.

He is not done. Ivey has more than $10 million in WSOP winnings and more than $45 million in career live tournament earnings. If you want to test your own nerve for less than a bracelet’s worth of buy-in, Royal Gambit Poker runs its own $500 monthly poker freeroll, no queen on the flop required.

How many WSOP bracelets does Phil Ivey have?

Ivey has won 11 bracelets throughout his career, the second most all-time behind only Phil Hellmuth’s 17.

Has Phil Ivey ever won the WSOP Main Event?

No. His highest Main Event finish came in 2009, when he placed seventh after his ace-king lost to Darvin Moon’s ace-queen when a queen hit the flop.

What is Phil Ivey’s biggest single tournament cash?

His largest single tournament score is $3,582,753, won at the 2014 Aussie Millions A$250,000 Challenge.

Why is Phil Ivey considered the most feared player in poker?

Eleven WSOP bracelets won across a vast range of games, from Pot-Limit Omaha to Limit Seven-Card Stud, Seven-Card High-Low, and H.O.R.S.E., stand as a testament to his range. Few players have ever combined that kind of cross-discipline dominance with a live tournament resume this deep.

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