The World Poker Tour (WPT) demands VIP hospitality in your poker memory banks, because of its magical ability to tell the most incredible poker fairy tales. The WPT may have moved online, but those tales keep on coming.
In classic WPT style, the final table of the WPT World Championship Knockout competition pitched some of the world’s most ferocious ‘Goliaths’ against a few ‘Davids’, and the slingshot once again found the mark through the narrowest of strictures.
The beauty of shifting a tournament like the WPT, online, is it gives the coy, the cheeky and those of delicate predispositions to qualify via a host of cheap as chips online satellites. It’s why partypoker and the WPT have been attracting five-figure fields, and how Daniel Smyth managed to parlay $33 into $413,362.
Smyth began the final table fourth in chips, but three people, in particular, looked a better bang for that buck.
Ryan Riess is a former World Series of Poker (WSOP) Main Event champion with $15m in lifetime earnings, and 17 cashes in the recent WSOP events on WSOP.com and GGPoker. Riess ‘The Beast’ finished seventh.
Artur Martirosian is one of the most dangerous players on the high stakes circuit, right now, and came close to winning the first Poker Masters Online, losing out to Alexandros Kolonias at the death. Martirosian finished sixth.
Manig Loeser was the man who pushed Smyth the hardest. The German star with $11.1m in live earnings to his name is also a European Poker Tour (EPT) Main Event winner and former Triton Champion. Loeser has come close to a WPT title before, bubbling the final table of last year’s WPT UK Main Event, and finishing fifth in Fallsview in 2017. Loeser missed out on a third major title, losing to Smyth, in heads-up action.
The final duel began with Loeser holding a near 2:1 chip lead. Smyth doubled into the lead after flopping bottom set. Loeser turned the second pair and found the call when the Irishman moved all-in on the river. Loeser retook the lead, Smyth doubled it back, and after dwindling to chip dust, Loeser put it in holding 8d7d, and Smyth called and won with Ks9h for his first major title.
Results
- Daniel Smyth – $413,362
- Manig Loeser – $279,359
- João Maureli – $174,510
- Pim Gieles – $118,980
- Pedro Marques – $89,070
- Artur Martirosian – $63,875
- Ryan Riess – $48,261
- Shyngis Satubayev – $24,254
- Matheus Luiz Costa E Silva – $32,726