Brandon Schaefer Wins Event 14 Shootout

For seven years following the Moneymaker boom, Brendon Schaefer made his living playing poker, but he found that poker was just a “means to an end” and wanted a more fulfilling “means” in his life.

Nine months ago, Schaefer made the decision to quit playing poker fulltime and enlist in the U.S. Army to become a helicopter pilot. He was accepted into the program and completed basic training over the winter. He is set to ship out for the helicopter program in just over a week, but before he left for his six-year commitment to the military he decided to play one last game of cards.

Schaefer entered event 14, the limit hold’em shoot-out, along with 1,138 other players, and at the end of day one, he had won his match and was in the money. By the end of day two he had made it to final table of 12. And by the end of day three the improbable had happened and Schaefer was the last player remaining, with a gold bracelet in one hand, a brick of cash in the other, and a pile of money on the table.

“It’s weird how calm I was.” Said Schaefer, “When I was playing poker the gold bracelet is like the Holy Grail. It felt really good to win, but I never really thought about that. “