As we reported in our poker news section, Frank Kassela recently won his second WSOP bracelet of 2010. How is it that despite just 57 tournaments on the schedule and an average field size that must be in the high three-figures if not four-figures that at least one player manages to win multiple bracelets every year? You have to go all the way back to 1999 to find a year where no individual was able to win two bracelets in a single WSOP. That’s a streak of 11 consecutive years of a multiple bracelet winner at the WSOP!

Here are the players responsible for keeping this streak alive:

2000 – Chris Ferguson
2001 – Scotty Nguyen, Nani Dollison
2002 – Phil Ivey (3), Layne Flack
2003 – Men Nguyen, Layne Flack, Chris Ferguson, John Juanda, Phil Hellmuth, Johnny Chan
2004 – Ted Forrest, Scott Fischman
2005 – Mark Seif
2006 – Bill Chen, Jeff Madsen
2007 – Tom Schneider
2008 – John Phan
2009 – Jeffrey Lisandro (3), Brock Parker, Greg Mueller, Phil Ivey
2010 – Frank Kassela

This feat seems even more improbable when you consider the number of the 57 events that a player is capable of participating in. Since there’s usually two tournaments every day and each event needing at least three if not four or five days to complete, it’s pretty tough to play more than 20 or 25 events in a single WSOP. That means every year for eleven straight years, at least one person has managed to win at least two of the 20 or so WSOP tournaments they’ve played. Keep in mind that this is the World Series of Poker. Winning 2 out of 20 tournaments where the average field size is 100 clueless fish would be fairly impressive. Winning 2 out of 20 where the average field size goes well into the several hundreds most of which are world-class poker players is simply astounding. And every year someone manages to do it!

One thing is for sure, the stage is set to get a pretty good price on a “will anyone win multiple-bracelets at the 2011 WSOP?” bet. Despite the 11 year streak, I’d still jump at the chance to bet “no” at even-money, but with the way things are going, I could probably get someone to lay some handsome odds!