His career was already more illustrious than most. Six bracelets and a three-time winner of the $50,000 buy-in Poker Players Championship were the crowning glory on more than $28 million of live tournament winnings.
But that seventh bracelet really does move him into an exclusive club and the American was so grateful after the job was done.
“Just immense gratitude. I feel like no one ever deserves to win a tournament because it’s so crazy what has to happen to win. I was very short at least twice, if not three times.
“I really liked my mindset on this one. I was just telling myself, even before the final table, just focus on your play. If you bust at this point, no matter what happens, you have a great life, you’re doing well, playing good poker.
“And that’s all I can control. I was very happy how I played, and just these ups and downs, emotionally. That was the longest heads-up battle that I’ve ever had. Andrew made it really tough.”
Action Recap
Day 1 of Event #50: $10,000 Razz Championship brought in 102 players to challenge for one of the more offbeat events of the WSOP 2025.
Not the most popular event on the schedule, even for the old timers but there were still plenty of recognisable names in the mix.
Max Coleman led the way at bagging up time, at the front of what was a tightly-packed top ten.
Day 2 started with 47 players returning to the tables and by the end of play we saw a completely different list of names at the head of the field.
Ali Eslami was the man in charge, but with only a couple of big bets more than Brian Yoon and Andrew Yeh, and Brian Rast was lurking with intent in sixth place out of the remaining twelve.
Even with the slow structures of these $10,000 championship events, another full day of play wasn’t enough to decide a winner.
All eyes were on this final table as Rast kept on ploughing away, outlasting his rivals to set up a heads-up showdown against Andrew Yeh. The pair played a couple of levels but ended up no closer to a decisive result.
As they packed up for the night, Yeh had a lead of 25 big bets to the 8 of Rast, giving him a significant advantage, but Rast is no mug and even so far behind many still had him as the favourite.
When Day 4 kicked off, it couldn’t have gone any worse for Rast. Yeh immediately picked up a 6-5-4-3-A to leave his opponent with just a single big bet.
Obviously a miracle was needed, at this point.
The tide did turn quickly as Rast banked a couple of double-ups and then a timely 6-5-3-2-A gave him a third in quick succession.
Yeh didn’t give up, though, and before long Rast was once again down to a single big bet as the players were about to go on a break, but then the unthinkable happened.
Showing a 6-5-4-3-A, Yeh had Rast all-in with him needing to draw one of the other three fives to make a wheel and save the day. Of course it arrived, as Rast declared “The dream is alive.”
And alive it was indeed, because this was the start of the run which would see Rast become a seven-time WSOP champion, matching a feat only achieved by fourteen players in history.
Upon the realisation of what he had just done, Rast appeared quite emotional. He explained just what he thinks about his recent achievements.
“I’ve been able to look at my career at various times, especially in retrospect, it becomes easier to place where I’ve been and everything.
“What I’ve done in my career has also changed quite a bit. Basically, before COVID, I never took the World Series super seriously. I used to grind my ass off way more than I do today.
“I would play the Bobby’s Room game, then I would come play 10-12 tournaments, max late-regging, just to mix it up and give myself something to do.
“Post-COVID, I basically just come. I don’t play cash. I don’t even play full year-round poker anymore. I come to the WSOP in order to treat this as a game in itself, to grind my ass off and do well.”
Event #50: $10,000 Razz Championship Final Table Results
| Place | Player | Country | Prize (USD) |
| 1 | Brian Rast | United States | $306,644 |
| 2 | Andrew Yeh | United States | $204,423 |
| 3 | Brian Yoon | United States | $142,579 |
| 4 | Joao Vieira | Portugal | $101,983 |
| 5 | Nikolay Ponomarev | United Kingdom | $74,857 |
| 6 | Christian Roberts | Venezuela | $56,424 |
| 7 | Ali Eslami | United States | $43,706 |
| 8 | Maksim Pisarenko | Russia | $34,817 |
