Shaun Deeb had a ninth WSOP bracelet in his sights and a commanding chip lead to match. He didn’t get it. Joey Couden came from behind in heads-up play to win Event #52, the $3,000 Nine Game Mix, for $254,470 — and to send one of the game’s great collectors home empty-handed in a spot he rarely loses.
Mixed-game tournaments are Deeb’s backyard. He had bagged the chip lead with a day to play and looked the heavy favourite to add to a bracelet haul that already places him among the most decorated players of his generation. A ninth would have nudged him further up the all-time list. Instead, the night belonged to Couden.
Eight disciplines, one cooler of a finish
The Nine Game Mix is exactly what it sounds like: a rotation through nine different poker variants where a single weak format can quietly bleed a stack to nothing. Surviving it requires range across hold’em, Omaha and the stud and draw games — and it tends to reward grinders who never tilt. Couden ground his way back from a heads-up deficit, flipped the momentum, and closed out the title against an opponent who knows these games as well as anyone alive.
The chase goes on
For Deeb, it is another close call in a career full of them, and another reminder that bracelet number nine is proving the hardest of all to land. He’ll have more shots before the series ends — the mixed-game calendar still has the $50,000 Poker Players Championship looming, the toughest test on the schedule and exactly the kind of event that tends to bring his name back to the top of a leaderboard.
Couden, meanwhile, walks away with a career-defining title and the quiet satisfaction of out-lasting a legend in a format the legend calls home.