Phil Ivey would already have the most bracelets if he wanted to

Last week Phil Ivey won his 11th career bracelet a decade after his last one. A fan favourite moment of the WSOP for sure and history as he became the first person to go clear in 2nd place, after being neck-and-neck with Doyle Brunson, Erik Seidel and Johnny Chan for what seemed like forever. 

Naturally, it leads poker fans to ponder if he could ever catch up with Phil Hellmuth, who has 17 bracelets. The thing that makes me sad, as a poker nerd, is that if Ivey wanted to, he could already be there. 

It hasn’t taken Phil Ivey a decade to win his 11th bracelet because of variance or the games getting tougher. It’s taken a decade because he is not as interested in winning bracelets in the same way that Hellmuth is. 

Ivey needs extra motivation for bracelets

These are Ivey’s career bracelets:

He won three in a year in 2002 which was pretty sick. He also won three between 2009 and 2010. This is when he famously had a series of high-stakes prop bets that he could win bracelets that year. Most notably two seven figure bets with Howard Lederer that he could win two in a year, which he did in 2009, but only one in 2010. 

In 2011 he missed the WSOP after Black Friday and in the intervening years, he had the two edge-sorting court cases with the Borgata and Crockford’s, which prevented him from playing a full series. Even when those things were not an issue he would often not play the whole WSOP. No doubt he had bigger more lucrative games elsewhere. 

The reason why Phil Ivey doesn’t already hold the lead for most bracelets is that he is not motivated by them in the way Phil Hellmuth is. When he had seven figure prop bets on bracelets he couldn’t stop winning them, but without them, he has bigger fish to fry.

That makes me sad as a poker nerd, but also adds to the enigma of Ivey. 

This is what the race for most bracelets looks like, with everyone with six or more:

Can he overtake Hellmuth? Let us know in the comments: