The 42nd Annual World Series of Poker (WSOP) ran from May 30 to July 19, 2011, from the Rio All-Suite Hotel & Casino in Las Vegas, Nevada.
The finale of the series was the $10,000 No-Limit Hold’em World Championship that began on July 7 with four opening flights. The 6,865-player field was the third biggest up to that date with over &64 million in the prize pool, and the top 693 players collecting an elusive Main Event cash.
Pius Heinz of Cologne, Germany, turned his second WSOP cash into the biggest victory of his career when he defeated Martin Staszko of Trinec, Czech Republic, to win the $8,715,638 first-place prize. Neither Heinz or Staszko feature in the 2011 WSOP Main Event Top 5 Hands video on PokerGO, but some of the players that made deep runs in this year’s Main Event do fill the countdown.
The Top 5 opens with a triple-barrel bluff from JP Kelly of London, England, into quads, before Sam Barnhart of Little Rock, Arkansas, makes an incredible laydown. Next are two crazy bad beats where pocket kings are outdrawn by deuces, before aces get cracked in a six-bet pot. The final hand would help ensure Anton Makiievskyi of Dnipropetrousk, Ukraine, survive all the way until his eventual finish in eighth-place.
Watch PokerGO’s 2011 WSOP Main Event Top 5 hands now, and see where each hand ranks.
About the World Series of Poker
The World Series of Poker® is the largest, richest and most prestigious gaming event in the world, having awarded more than $3.29 billion in prize money and the prestigious gold bracelet, globally recognized as the sport’s top prize. Featuring a comprehensive slate of tournaments in every major poker variation, the WSOP is poker’s longest-running tournament in the world, dating back to 1970. In 2019, the event attracted 187,298 entrants from 118 different countries to the Rio All-Suite Hotel & Casino in Las Vegas and awarded more than $293 million in prize money. In addition, the WSOP has formed groundbreaking alliances in broadcasting, digital media and corporate sponsorships, while successfully expanding the brand internationally with the advent of WSOP Europe in 2007 and the WSOP Asia-Pacific in 2013 and the WSOP International Circuit Series in 2015. All WSOP events are subject to the then-current and applicable WSOP tournament rules. For more information, please visit www.wsop.com.