It took until the final event of the series, but one man won his bracelet bet against Daniel Negreanu, and that man’s name is Connor Drinan.
Ahead of the tandem World Series of Poker (WSOP) series on WSOP.com and GGPoker, Drinan was always going to be Negreanu’s biggest problem, especially after a year that saw him collect a record five Spring Championships of Online Poker (SCOOP) titles on PokerStars.
But boy did Drinan leave it late.
Event #83: $10,000 Super MILLION$ saw the $5m guarantee pale into insignificance as 899-entrants turned up for the final WSOP hurrah of the 2020 season, and Drinan placed a clean white pillow over the heads of the last six players suffocating the lot on his way to a $1.4m payday, and a $100,000 flick of the wrist from Negreanu.
It was the 37th time that Drinan had made money in a WSOP bracelet event and his seventh final table. Before this win, he had finished ninth in Event #75: $300 Double Stack No Limit Hold’em (3,552 entrants), and seventh in Event #50: $2,100 No Limit Hold’em Bounty (1168 entrants), both on GGPoker. He also finished sixth in Event #13: $1,500 No Limit Hold’em (649-entrants) on WSOP.com.
Drinan has also made three final tables in Las Vegas finishing 4/516 in a 2013 $5,000 No Limit Hold’em 6-Handed event, 4/815 in a 2015 $1,500 Pot Limit Omaha Hi/Lo 8 or Better, and 7/1117 in the same event in 2019.
It was a final table with a lot of class.
Chris Oliver is a former PocketFives World #1 with more than $13.3m in online earnings, who in 2011 picked up $1.8m for finishing second to Galen Hall in the PokerStars Caribbean Adventure (PCA) Main Event.
Sylvain Loosli finished fourth in the 2013 WSOP Main Event for $2.8m and was appearing in his third final table after finishing 5/113 in a €25,000 No Limit Hold’em event at the 2017 World Series of Poker Europe (WSOPE). Chris Kruk appeared in his third WSOP final table after finishing 3/400 in a $3,000 No Limit Hold’em Shootout in 2016, and 8/109 in the 2018 $10,000 Limit 2-7 Lowball Triple Draw Championship.
Suraj Mishra also brought the heat, booking a sixth-place finish for $288,836 a hop, skip and a jump away from finishing runner-up to Ivan Zufic in the 15,205-entrant $500 Mini Main Event for $586,157
Here are the final table results.
Results
- Connor Drinan – $1,423,049
- Daniyar Aubakirov – $1,041.414
- Viktor Ustimov – $755,754
- Chris Oliver – $548,450
- Sylvain Loosli – $398,010
- Suraj Mishra – $288,836
- Chris Kruk – $209,609
- Arsenii Malinov – $152,113
- Kenneth Smaron – $110,389
Three other high rollers who went deep into this thing before turning into David Bowie’s ashes were Elior Sion (23rd), Joao Vieira (26th), and Sam Trickett (27th).