Skip To Content
JEWISH. INDEPENDENT. NONPROFIT.
The Schmooze

This Jewish Player Won The World Series Of Poker With A Pair Of 2’s

(JTA) — Scott Blumstein admits it: He never expected to get the card he needed to become the World Series of Poker champion.

Blumstein, 25, of Brigantine, New Jersey, pulled a deuce on the river — the final card of a poker round — to win with a pair of twos in a dramatic finish Sunday to poker’s most prestigious event.

The Temple University graduate — with a degree in accounting — took home the $8.15 million prize in the Texas Hold ‘Em tournament at the Rio in Las Vegas, as well as the coveted WSOP bracelet.

The odds of Blumstein, a Jewish player making his debut in the event, getting the needed deuce? About 93 percent against.

“I’m going to be honest, I was probably not as positive as I wish I was,” Blumstein was quoted as saying by ESPN following his victory. “My mental coach is going to be mad at me that I wasn’t expecting a deuce.”

Blumstein topped a field of 7,221 players, the third largest in history, and dominated much of the final table. He grabbed the chip lead on Thursday and never relinquished it.

This wasn’t his first major victory: Last year Blumstein won nearly $200,000 at a tournament in Atlantic City, near where he lives.

Blumstein has been described in poker magazines and on television as a “grinder” — one who plays a lot of poker and considers it a career. It looks like that won’t change for the foreseeable future.

“A normally inconsequential [card] — the deuce — changes my life,” he said on ESPN, which televised the tournament.

His pair of deuces knocked out Dan Ott, a Pennsylvania, who picked up $4.7 million for finishing second. Frenchman Benjamin Pollak was third and won $3.5 million.

A message from our Publisher & CEO Rachel Fishman Feddersen

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s award-winning, nonprofit journalism during this critical time.

We’ve set a goal to raise $260,000 by December 31. That’s an ambitious goal, but one that will give us the resources we need to invest in the high quality news, opinion, analysis and cultural coverage that isn’t available anywhere else.

If you feel inspired to make an impact, now is the time to give something back. Join us as a member at your most generous level.

—  Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO

With your support, we’ll be ready for whatever 2025 brings.

Republish This Story

Please read before republishing

We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free, unless it originated with JTA, Haaretz or another publication (as indicated on the article) and as long as you follow our guidelines. You must credit the Forward, retain our pixel and preserve our canonical link in Google search.  See our full guidelines for more information, and this guide for detail about canonical URLs.

To republish, copy the HTML by clicking on the yellow button to the right; it includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline and credit to the Forward. It does not include images; to avoid copyright violations, you must add them manually, following our guidelines. Please email us at [email protected], subject line “republish,” with any questions or to let us know what stories you’re picking up.

We don't support Internet Explorer

Please use Chrome, Safari, Firefox, or Edge to view this site.