Bracelet-Chasing Sports Talker Nick Wright Chooses the Patrick Mahomes of Poker
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Things didn't go right for Nick Wright early on Monday at the 2024 World Series of Poker (WSOP). But the sports talk personality is hoping to build up a stack and record his first WSOP cash in Event #61: $2,500 Mixed Omaha-8/Stud-8.
The co-host of First Things First on FS1 first entered Event #60: $3,000 No-Limit Hold'em, but quickly busted. He then registered for the mixed event and has, thus far, found better luck.
Wright Sounds off on Chiefs
Wright, who lost a $50,000 buy-in heads-up match to Phil Hellmuth on PokerGO in 2021, chatted with PokerNews on a break during the mixed event, and we had to ask the die-hard Kansas City Chiefs fan and Patrick Mahomes fanboy the hard-hitting questions.
"Who would you consider to be the Patrick Mahomes of poker?"
Mahomes, a three-time Super Bowl MVP, is a generational talent at quarterback for the Chiefs. There aren't many poker players, or football players, who compare. But Wright came up with a few poker pros who best exemplify the greatness of Patty Mahomes on the felt.
"Nick Schulman has an interesting case now that he peeled a bracelet in no-limit," Wright said of who he'd consider the Mahomes of poker. "Can play all the games, there's nothing he's bad at. Also, like Patrick Mahomes, he's pretty universally popular."
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What about Hellmuth, the WSOP bracelet record holder? His answer was yes, but also no.
"Phil is without question the Patrick Mahomes or the G.O.A.T. or whatever, of the World Series of Poker," Wright argues. "And I know that there is a lot of debate and discussion about if that is the only metric. In Phil's defense, what I have always said and believed is, when he started, it was kind of universally agreed upon, the way to be considered the best ever would be to have the most success at the World Series of Poker. He went out, with that in mind, accomplished it, and now I think he feels now you guys changed the damn rules on me."
"And so I understand why he would be irritated by that," the FS1 personality continued.
The World Series of Poker remains the biggest and most prestigious annual poker series. But there are other major tours out there in the mdern era, such as the World Poker Tour (WPT) and European Poker Tour (EPT), that hold weight in terms of prestige.
"If it's from an all-time standpoint, I'm going to say the easy answer, it's Phil Ivey, and I don't think that's really debatable," Wright said.
Ivey recently won his 11th WSOP bracelet, moving into sole possession of second place of all-time, and is widely considered the greatest poker player ever.
Wright was one of 507 entrants in the mixed Omaha/stud event, and one of 189 players who bagged chips on Day 1. He's in search of his first World Series of Poker cash, and first recorded live tournament cash anywhere (excluding a Poker After Dark single-table win for $50,000 in 2021).
The Kansas City Chiefs superfan and exhaustive LeBron James defender put 106,000 chips in the bag, about an average stack. Only the top 77 will be paid, with first place taking home $222,703 and a gold bracelet. Play resumes at 1:00 p.m. PT on Tuesday for Day 2.
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