Dario Sammartino Leads the Dealers Choice Final Table Hunting Bracelet No. 2

Dario Sammartino has been to 38 final tables across three continents and won exactly one bracelet. Now he's sitting behind 2.03 million chips at the Event #20 Dealers Choice final table, and the only question is whether the mixed-game gods owe him or whether they've been keeping score all along.

The Italian has $14.3 million in lifetime earnings. He finished runner-up to Hossein Ensan in the 2019 WSOP Main Event. He owns two WSOP Circuit rings. By almost any measure, Sammartino is one of the most accomplished players of his generation. And yet the bracelet count reads: one.

Sammartino has $14.3 million in lifetime earnings, 38 final tables, two WSOPC rings, and exactly one bracelet.

The Field at a Glance

Five players remain in the $1,500 Dealers Choice 7-Handed (Event #20), and the chip stacks tell a strange story.

Philip Wess leads with 5.37 million, more than double Sammartino's stack and nearly half the chips in play. Wess has no recorded bracelets, no rings, and no listed lifetime earnings on WSOP.com. He's a ghost at the top of the leaderboard, and that's exactly the kind of opponent who makes a final table uncomfortable for a name player. No history to study. No tendencies to exploit across mixed-game rotations. Just a massive pile of chips and nothing to lose.

Behind Wess, the stacks compress quickly. Robert Klein holds 1.915 million with four career final tables and $275K in lifetime cashes. Nathan Gamble sits on 1.35 million, and he's the only other bracelet winner at the table: two golds and a Circuit ring on $675K in career earnings. John Bunch rounds out the five with 1.155 million, six final tables, and $411K lifetime.

Why Dealers Choice Is Sammartino's Kind of Fight

Dealers Choice 7-Handed is not a Hold'em grind. The format rotates through a menu of games at the table's discretion, and in a short-handed final, the selection itself becomes a weapon. Pick a game your opponent hates. Avoid the one where the big stack has position.

Sammartino's mixed-game chops are well documented. His lone bracelet came in a non-Hold'em event, and the bulk of his 38 final tables span formats that reward versatility over specialization. At a table where Wess controls half the chips but may not have deep reps across every rotation, Sammartino's edge lies in the margins: knowing when to call Badeucy, when to dodge Stud Hi-Lo, when to grind small pots in a game the table fears.

Gamble, with his two bracelets, is the other player who has proven he can close. His $675K in earnings is modest next to Sammartino's $14.3 million, but bracelet count is a better proxy for final-table composure than lifetime dollars. At 1.35 million chips, Gamble has enough to be dangerous without being reckless.

The Math of the Mountain

The gap between Sammartino and Wess is stark. At 2.03 million versus 5.37 million, Sammartino needs to gain roughly 3.3 million chips just to pull even. In a mixed-game final where pots tend to be smaller and the action more methodical than a Hold'em shootout, that deficit translates into a longer grind and more spots where Wess can apply pressure with stack leverage.

But Sammartino has climbed out of worse holes. He turned a short stack into a Main Event runner-up finish in 2019. He has navigated 38 final tables, which means he has sat in this exact chair, staring at a bigger stack across the felt, dozens of times before.

The difference is that a second bracelet would rewrite the narrative. One gold says you ran hot once. Two says the first one wasn't an accident. For a player with $14.3 million in cashes and a résumé that screams "elite," the hardware still lags behind the record.

Sammartino knows it. The mixed-game rotation starts again, and the stack he needs to overtake belongs to a player nobody in the room can scout.