On Friday night, Matt O'Donnell won Event #47: $2,500 No-Limit Hold'em for $551,941, by far the biggest cash of his career. Not only that, he claimed his first career bracelet for beating a 1,244-player field.
In doing so, he erased the pain of last summer's second-place finish in the $10,000 Pot-Limit Hold'em Championship, where he lost a 9-1 chip lead to Alex Bilokur. This time around, O'Donnell prevailed in another long heads-up battle when he beat Israel's Timur Margolin, with the players' respective rails reportedly getting testy during the match.