When Wednesday dawned and Event #30: $10,000 No-Limit 2-7 Lowball Draw Championship returned for the unscheduled Day 4, only 12 players in the history of poker had won 7 or more bracelets from the World Series of Poker. As of Thursday at Horseshoe and Paris, Las Vegas, that number was up to lucky 13 after Nick Schulman cemented his poker legacy by winning the $10k NL Deuce Championship for the 3rd time. The Championship game drew 233 runners for prizes of $2,166,900 and just shy of $500k for first place.
Considered by many to be the purest form of poker, deuce-to-seven lowball is a unique variant of the game. With no card information available to players, it’s a game based on instinct and player reads, where players try to make the “worst” poker hand possible instead of the best.
And it’s a game that Schulman clearly excels at. His first two bracelets were won in the discipline, in this $10k marquee event, and now the game has propelled him to the stratosphere of poker with his 7th bracelet overall, and 3rd Deuce Championship.
To say it was a challenge would be an understatement. Not only did the game have to play an extra day when there were still 6 players remaining late on Day 3, but that final day was a marathon war of attrition that went for more than 12 hours, with 8 of those hours consumed by the heads-up battle between Schulman and runner-up Darren Elias.
After the game, Schulman was quick to shout out Elias during his post-win interview with the on-site reporting team from PokerNews. “First of all, Darren Elias, who I was heads-up with, is easily, probably the toughest No-Limit Deuce player I’ve ever played with. Big shoutout to him.”
With his 3rd win in the Deuce Championship, it’s pretty clear that Schulman should count himself among “the toughest No-Limit Deuce players” in the world. And with bracelet #7, in disciplines as varied as deuce, stud, Omaha, and hold’em, Schulman should be content with the knowledge that he’s now secured a spot among the poker elite as one of the best players the game has ever seen.
Event #30: $10,000 No-Limit 2-7 Lowball Draw Championship Final Table Results
| Place | Player | Prize |
|---|---|---|
| 1 |  Nick Schulman | $497,356 |
| 2 | Darren Elias | $336,421 |
| 3 | Chad Eveslage | $231,321 |
| 4 |  Oscar Johansson | $161,721 |
| 5 | Ben Yu | $114,989 |
| 6 | Dan Smith | $83,179 |
| 7 |  Daniel Negreanu | $61,231 |
Event #30: $10,000 No-Limit 2-7 Lowball Draw Championship Final Table Recap
It was more of a war than a poker tournament, and in the end, it turned into a war of attrition. What was supposed to be a three-day game turned into four long days of deuce action.
The game was supposed to award the bracelet at the end of Day 3, but in the wee hours of Tuesday night/Wednesday morning, after one of the players with 7 bracelets, Canadian Daniel Negreanu, bowed out in 7th place, the final six bagged up to return for the extra day.
If anyone thought the final installment would be quick, they were sadly mistaken. Action played down to heads up relatively quickly, with two-handed play commencing about 4 hours after cards went in the air.
The first player to fall on the final day was Dan Smith, taking 6th for $83k just 20 minutes after they sat down for the day. First, the eventual winner coolered Smith for most of his stack with #3, before taking the rest of it in the next hand with an 87 against Smith’s 96.
About 10 minutes later, Ben Yu sent the rest of his chips over to 3rd-place Chad Eveslage when he was pipped with his ten-nine losing to the ten-eight for Eveslage. The action didn’t slow, with Oscar Johansson hitting the cage for 4th place about 20 minutes later, with his chips going to runner-up Elias after Elias drew one to a jack and Johansson drew one to a nine.
They both made jack-nine, but Elias was ahead by a hair with his five versus a six for the Swede. Things slowed a bit once they got three-handed, which was hardly surprising given the level of talent in the final three. Schulman, of course, had already won a couple of these before last night, called Elias “probably the toughest No-Limit Deuce player I’ve ever played”, while Eveslage has two Dealer’s Choice bracelets ($1,500 and $10k, both won in 2023), so he clearly knows his mixed games as well.
They played three ways for about 90 minutes before Eveslage bowed out in 3rd. In another example of Schulman getting there, Eveslage was drawing live to a ten, while Schulman was drawing to a nine. Schulman was the first to peel and he found an 8, leaving Eveslage drawing dead.
Schulman and Elias then traded blows for about 8 hours before the final hands were dealt. Both players were on the ropes at various times, with their opponent on the verge of winning, and both staged epic comebacks a few times. While Schulman was clearly running hot, and admitted as much in his post-game interview — “It was a crap shoot at the end and I made hands” — he was also very much tuned into the action, finding big folds when needed to, sniffing out a few big snowstorms, and throwing some successful snow himself.
Elias gave as good as he got. He was on the ropes and nearly out shortly after heads-up began, but he doubled to the lead when he drew into an 87 and called off the 10-7 shove from Schulman. Schulman played the short stack for a couple of hours until he sniffed out a bluff from Elias to regain the lead.
But Elias ground it back up and took the lead again with a 10-9 before widening the gap with a correct call on some Schulman snow followed up with a pat 8, and it looked like Elias might take down his first bracelet. Schulman had other ideas, after getting it in with an 85 one-draw but running into Elias drawing one to a 74. Schulman didn’t draw well, pulling an ace, but Elias drew even worse and paired up.
That put Schulman back in the lead and they finally made it to the endgame. In the final hand, Schulman took it down with a pat 10-8 when Elias drew one to an already-dead 10-9 and finally brought the epic heads up battle to a close after nearly 8 hours at the felt.
Coincidentally, Schulman, who, along with co-commentator Ali Nejad, is also well-known as one of the top commentators in the business (and calls a pretty solid game of pool as well, I might add), turned 40 near the end of 2024. After becoming just the 13th player in history to own 7 bracelets, he seems like a lock for Hall of Fame discussions. He’d be in that conversation JUST for the 7 bracelets, but when you add in his commentary work over the years, it seems like Schulman should be leading the Hall of Fame pack.
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* Hands and photos courtesy of PokerNews and WSOP
