Erlend Melsom Might Play More Tournaments After His First Bracelet Win in $3,000 Freezeout No-Limit Hold’em
Out of the 1,252 players that registered for Event #49: $3,000 Freezeout No-Limit Hold’em at the 2024 World Series of Poker, it was Norwegian Erlend Melsom that ultimately emerged victorious. After three long days of play, Melsom, who is not a frequent tournament or no-limit hold’em player, was able to take down the $523,195 first prize, the biggest live tournament cash of his life by about half a million, and his first WSOP bracelet.
The event collected a prize pool of $3,342,840. Many familiar names and previous bracelet winners entered the field for a shot at a repeat, but when it came down to the final table, all but one player, Maxx Coleman, who already won a bracelet in a $1,500 No-Limit 2-7 Lowball Draw in 2022, were going after their first-ever WSOP jewelry.
Final Table Results
| Place | Player | Country | Prize |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Erlend Melsom | Norway | $523,195 |
| 2 | Nikolay Yosifov | Bulgaria | $348,784 |
| 3 | Ben Hoy | United States | $249,005 |
| 4 | Jonathan Schwartz | Switzerland | $180,127 |
| 5 | David Stamm | United States | $132,053 |
| 6 | Maxx Coleman | United States | $98,128 |
| 7 | Joseph Carden | United States | $73,925 |
| 8 | Uri Reichenstein | Israel | $56,472 |
| 9 | Morgan Petro | United States | $43,751 |
Melsom, who hasn’t played much live tournament poker in his life, but spends his time playing pot-limit Omaha cash games, was one of the short stacks going into the final three tables on Day 2, falling to as low as 12 big blinds. However, he was able to turn things around and have a strong finish to end with 42 big blinds for the third biggest stack.
Final Day Action
Thirteen players returned for the last day of play. The start was fast-paced, with four players eliminated within the first level of play. Andjelko Andrejevic, Neil Warren, Ivan Ruban and Clemen Deng were out in 13th to 10th places, respectively. Two of those players, Andrejevic and Ruban, were eliminated by Melsom, within just a couple hands of each other. It was after these and a few other hands that Melsom first felt like he has a good chance to win it all, “I had a good start today; I started with around 5,000,000 chips and was able to get to around 12,000,000 chips, and that was the moment I felt like maybe I can win.”
Morgan Petro was next to bust in ninth place, around an hour and a half into play. After that, play quieted down for a few hours, with mostly small bets and small pots being exchanged between players.
It wasn’t until right before the final table was getting ready to set up for the livestream, in the fourth hour of the day, that we saw another rapid-fire round of eliminations. Within just a half an hour of each other, Uri Reichenstein, Joseph Carden and Maxx Coleman were eliminated in eighth, seventh and sixth-place, respectively.
David Stamm and Jonathan Schwartz both played a good game, a lot of it on a short stack. Stamm impressed with his precise and aggressive play at the final table, but was unlucky to be eliminated in fifth place after holding the best hand preflop. Schwartz, especially, had to nurture a short stack for the majority of the day, but impressively took it to a fourth-place finish.
Melsom was chip leader going into the final table of nine, but it was far from smooth sailing from there. Players passed around the chip lead many times on Day 3, and Melsom again got as low as eleven big blinds three-handed after losing well over 8,000,000 of his chips in a big hand against Ben Hoy.
He was later able to come back and ultimately eliminate Hoy, but was still the chip-underdog going into heads up against Nikolay Yosifov, who had steadily built a nice chip lead during the last hours of the tournament.
Hoy had climbed up to a big chip lead during the last hours of Day 2 and, despite losing some of that lead, entered Day 3 as the chip leader as well. Throughout the tournament, he was one of the most active players in the field, generating action and putting pressure on his opponents regardless of his chip stack, which indeed saw many ups and downs. Hoy’s biggest live score before this deep run was for a bit over $7,000, so any result at this final table was going to be a great achievement; the third-place prize for just under $250,000 certainly was that.
The Drama of the Day
It takes luck to win a tournament and that is what Melsom had in spades in one of the most dramatic hands of the day. It was especially dramatic for Yosifov, who had climbed to a solid chip lead and was, in this hand, just one card away from taking the bracelet and the first prize himself.
Melsom was drawing to six outs on the river and hit one of two remaining kings to complete a broadway straight, leaving Yosifov's rivered set of kings in the dust. Soon after, Yosifov had to make do with the second place after Melsom eliminated him with a better ace.
Despite not being a specialist, Melsom showed on multiple occasions that he is a great player, successfully navigating various situations and chip stacks throughout the tournament. Melsom says that the win won’t change his life that much, but felt really great, and also somewhat changed his outlook on tournament poker and no-limit hold’em in particular. “This is my second WSOP. The plan was to mostly play pot-limit Omaha tournaments, but then I jumped into this one,” he explained. The reason, he says, was simply because there were no Omaha tournaments for him to play at that moment and he “needed something to play.” The win gave him motivation to go for more titles, “Yes, I think after this I will definitely be playing more no-limit hold’em tournaments.”
This concludes the coverage of Event #49: $3,000 Freezeout No-Limit Hold’em at the 2024 World Series of Poker, held at the Horseshoe and Paris Las Vegas. Stay tuned for many more weeks of action, where many new bracelet winners will be crowned.