Ted Forrest: The Bracelet Means More Than Any of the Money

For a guy that already owned five of them, you’d think winning another WSOP bracelet wouldn’t be that big a deal.

Not so, says Ted Forrest.

Holding back the Phil Hellmuth #14 tide last night to earn his sixth career WSOP bracelet, Forrest says it’s the gold on his wrist that still matters most.

Ted Forrest Wins WSOP Bracelet #6

PokerListings: Number 6, where does this rank?

Ted Forrest: It’s hard to say which is best. I mean, Razz is probably one of my favorite games. So I’m glad to repeat and win a Razz bracelet.

PL: You’ve been featured in books and have been known for high-stakes cash games. This is kind of a different victory in terms of prosperity. Talk about the difference between winning large sums of cash and the bracelet.

TF: I mean, this really wasn’t about money, for myself or for Phil. I mean, the bracelet means more than any of the money to both myself and Phil.

So I was just really, really, really fighting hard and I mean Phil was fighting hard for the bracelet you know. It’s really not about the money

PL: You’ve been around from when poker was very small in the Binion days and now you see all this. What are your thoughts when you come on to this stage?

TF: It’s definitely bigger, in terms of just popularity. There are huge numbers of people that you get entering tournaments.

You know, if poker pros knew what Phil Hellmuth knew years ago we probably would’ve been playing a lot more tournaments and fighting for the bracelets 20 years ago.

But back then, I was pretty much just fighting for the cash and if I happened to enter a tournament then … you know that year I won three bracelets I actually only played six tournaments plus the Main Event.

I probably would’ve played a lot more tournaments in retrospect but I’m happy the way things turned out today.

PL: You started the heads-up match with a 2-1 deficit. Can you talk about fighting your way out of that hole and grinding your way back up and surviving that match?

TF: It was definitely a war of attrition. I had to first survive to get to the final three, and then three-handed I was pretty much short stacked with 200, 250 while they each had 600.

So I had to just play with handcuffs on almost and just wait for Greg Pappas to get knocked out third. Then Phil had a 2-to-1 chip lead on me. So I had to just be patient and I was the bring-in quite often.

I’d like to have someone go online and see how many times I was actually the high card. It was just amazing.

You know, the key pots, when the money went in, I usually had the best hand. And Phil won most of the pots when I was the high card.

I just had to be patient and fold when he had more chips and could play when he thought that I could be stealing with a low card.

PL: Now that you have number 6, you think we’ll see more of you this summer?

TF: I never plan on playing a certain amount of events, I just see how I feel. If I wanna play a tournament that day, I play it.

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