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Not to sound too morbid, but once Jason Koon is ready to leave this earth he will want to bequeath a great many things for his children, and in a few days, a World Series of Poker (WSOP) bracelet may be amongst those many, many trinkets.

Koon ranked #9 in the All-Time Money List for live tournaments currently leads the final nine players in a misted window of a $25,000 No Limit Hold’em Poker Players Championship. The event attracted 407-entrants like robin nests attract cuckoos, and courtesy of the $10m GTD, Koon stands to collect $1.8m if he can put eight more players into their graves.

Koon is the most experienced WSOP practitioner at the final with double-digit final tables appearances. The closest the West Virginian has come to winning poker’s top prize came in 2012 when he finished runner-up to Leif Force in a $3,000 Heads-Up No Limit Hold’em/Pot Limit Omaha Mix.

As you would expect, we have a final table testament to the price tag.

Shankar Pillai is attempting to win his third bracelet after winning a $3,000 No Limit Hold’em in 2007, and the $1,500 No Limit Hold’em reserved for bracelet winners in 2019.

Christian Rudolph is making his fourth final table and was runner-up to Michael Addamo in a €25,000 No Limit Hold’em in the 2018 World Series of Poker Europe (WSOPE)

Aram Zobian finished sixth in the 2018 WSOP Main Event, and Chris Hunichen makes his fourth WSOP final table, including a runner-up finish to Nadar Kakhmazov in a $5,000 No Limit Hold’em at the 2017 WSOP.

Here are the final table chip counts.

Final Table Chip Counts

  1. Jason Koon – 7,863,055
  2. Shankar Pillai – 6,875,234
  3. Christian Rudolph – 5,544,188
  4. Aram Zobian – 4,405,440
  5. Chris Hunichen – 4,175,274
  6. Aleksejs Ponakovs – 3,883,951
  7. Aliaksei Boika – 3,297,276
  8. Paulius Plausinaitis – 2,905,555
  9. Brunno Botteon – 1,750,027

And those payouts.

Payouts

  1. $1,800,290
  2. $1,332,097
  3. $979,138
  4. $719,700
  5. $529,005
  6. $388,837
  7. $285,808
  8. $210,079
  9. $154,416

Nick Maimone Wins Event #69: $1,500 Marathon No Limit Hold’em

Former high stakes star, Nick Maimone, is a WSOP bracelet winner.

Maimone conquered a field of 1,438 entrants after more than 13 hours of play. The philanthropist poker pro had earned $2.2m playing live, with close to half of that coming in 2016 when he won the $25,000 High Roller at the PokerStars Caribbean Adventure (PCA) in 2016 for a million bucks, beating Sean Winter and Dario Sammartino, three-handed.

Maimone has two previous cashes in the GGPoker Series, finishing 446/12757 in the $400 COLOSSUS and 24/3247 in the $8,000 No Limit Hold’em Asia Championships. In 2009, Maimone got down to the final three tables of the WSOP Main Event finishing 15th.

Here are the final table results.

Final Table Results

  1. Nick Maimone – $302,4722*
  2. Diego Bittar – $228,212
  3. Giovani Torre – $165,613
  4. Nikolay Motsenko – $120,186
  5. Sebastian Sikorski – $87,219
  6. Ermo Kosk – $63,295
  7. Murilo Nascimento – $45,933
  8. Erik Lemarquand – $33,334
  9. Bert Stevens – $24,190
  • Also receives a $15,00 WSOPE package

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

  1. Daniel Smyth – $413,362
  2. Manig Loeser – $279,359
  3. João Maureli – $174,510
  4. Pim Gieles – $118,980
  5. Pedro Marques – $89,070
  6. Artur Martirosian – $63,875
  7. Ryan Riess – $48,261
  8. Shyngis Satubayev – $24,254
  9. Matheus Luiz Costa E Silva – $32,726

Limestone is a tomb for creatures big and small. To acknowledge its grim reaper status, those in the know labelled it an organic sedimentary rock. Nick Petrangelo is no rock, but a few nights ago, he did spend the evening encasing creatures, big and small, in a tomb of his own.

He’s come close to a WPT title before, most notably, losing to Fedor Holz, heads-up, for the WPT Alpha8 title in the Bellagio back in 2015. He had to migrate to the online realm to claim a title finally.

Petrangelo didn’t just win a title, banking $494,550, a Hublot Classic Fusion Titanium watch, a seat in the $15,000 buy-in WPT Tournament of Champions, and had his name etched on The Mike Sexton WPT Champions Cup.

The American high roller outlasted a 999-entrant field to win the $3,200 WPT World Championship NLHE Six-Max on partypoker.

Here is the nutshell action.

The Nutshell Action

Elior Sion was the first player to leave the final table after shipping his final five bigs into the middle holding a raggedy ace. Jiachen Gong didn’t leave him in solitude calling and winning with pocket jacks.

Those new five bigs didn’t have a wondrous effect on Gong as he ended up the next man out when Petrangelo’s JdTd cracked his aces, turning quads. We were three-handed when Patrice Brandt exited in fourth. Brandt flopped top pair with Ah5d, only for Artsiom Prostak to hit a set of eights on the turn, when the money went in.

The tournament entered the heads-up phase with Prostak holding a monumental lead when his pocket jacks held against Arsenii Karmatckii’s AK on a blind and blind battle.

Heads-Up

Artsiom Prostak – 79.6m

Nick Petrangelo – 20.3m

Few whispers around the rail mentioned the name of Petrangelo in connection to the title, but the American star ground out the lead. Prostak did double once, but it wasn’t enough. Petrangelo made his previous night’s prayers come true in the final hand of the competition.

Prostak raised to 2.8m, holding AcQs, and Petrangelo called holding KcTc, and the pair saw a ThTs2s flop. Prostak bet 1.4m and called when Petrangelo raised to 4m. The turn was the 5s, and Prostak called an 8.3m Petrangelo bet. The Ah hit the river, and Prostak made the call after Petrangelo had moved all-in, and just like that, it was over.

Final Table Results

  1. Nick Petrangelo – $494,550
  2. Artsiom Prostak – $368,250
  3. Arsenii Karmatckii – $278,448
  4. Patrice Brandt – $192,900
  5. Jiachen Gong – $128,100
  6. Elior Sion – $92,630

Three more high rollers who ventured deeper than the hospitality tent at a Guns and Roses concert were Jake Schindler (7th), Chris Hunichen (9th) and Sergio Aido (18th).

Wiktor Malinowski EPT Monte Carlo
Image by Danny Maxwell

With the World Series of Poker (WSOP) churning up the chum over at GGPoker, the sharks and whales have turned up en masse to take advantage of the carnage, with two of the best in the business setting a new online record. 

Wiktor ‘limitless’ Malinowski is mustard at No Limit Hold’em cash games, and he recently offered a heads-up challenge to anyone, playing while drunk, while guesting on the Joey Ingram podcast. Michael Addamo is one of the world’s top multi-table tournament (MTT) artists with more than $8.3m in live tournament earnings and two WSOP bracelets to his name. 

Both Addamo and Malinowski were competing alongside Chris Brewer, Tan Xuan and the anonymous Maltese falcon ‘UnderO’ in an invitation-only VIP cash game on GGPoker’s Natural8 skin, with blinds $500/$1000 with a $1000 Ante, when the pair locked horns, thumbs and fingers in the following hand.

Sitting behind 400+ big blind stacks, the action folded to Malinowski who looked down to see two black aces in the cutoff. The Pole opened to $2,000, folds followed until Addamo three-bet to $14,000 from the big blind holding two black kings. Malinowski four-bet to $43,500, Addamo five-bet to $108,000, and Malinowski made the call. 

With more than $216,000 in the pot, a 7h5d2c flop beckoned both to continue their love for this hand, with Addamo’s proving to be unrequited. Addamo bet $71,775, and Malinowski made the call.

You could hear the footfall of the 9c on the fourth street, and Malinowski called a $100,146.50 Addamo bet. The 5s finished the action on the river, and Malinowski called when Addamo moved all-in for his remaining $140,547.80. 

The final tally was a spacious looking $842,438.62, a new record, beating the $723,941 that went the way of ‘Urindanger’ in a mirror of a hand that saw his pocket aces out-flop, turn and river the pocket kings of Tom Dwan back in the halcyon days of Full Tilt.

When GGPoker and the World Series of Poker (WSOP) crossed distant shores to pull together the first-ever online WSOP bracelet series, the $10,000 Heads-Up No Limit Hold’em Championship became one of the premium events.

It didn’t disappoint, with two of the world’s smartest decipherers of the game of No Limit Hold’em, David Peters and Michael Addamo, battling it out for the sliver of gold and $360,480, and it was Peters who thwarted Addamo to collect his second bracelet.

Peters, who has more than $33.7m in live tournament earnings, won his first bracelet in 2016, defeating 1,860-entrants to win the $412,557 first prize in a $1,500 No Limit Hold’em event. To win this one he had to overcome the likes of Sami Kelopuro and Sergi Reixach before taking out the Canadian live streamer Alyssa McDonald in the semi-final.

Addamo overcame the formidable presence of Chi Zhang in a skitter of a mouse semi-final that lasted no more than 30-minutes. It’s been a tough few days for the Aussie, surrendering the lead to lose to Peters a few days shy of being the wrong end of the largest ever online cash game hand – $842k versus Wiktor Malinowski. Peters denied Addamo what would have been his third bracelet after winning two in 2018 taking down the $2,620 No Limit Hold’em Marathon in Las Vegas and the €25,500 No Limit Hold’em in Rozvadov for a combined haul of $1.5m

David Peters Route to the Title

Round of 128: Beats Johan Guilbert
Round of 64: Beats Sami Kelopuro
Round of 32: Scott Woods
Round of 16: Sergi Reixach
Quarter-Finals: Stefan Burakov
Semi-Finals: Alyssa McDonald
Final: Michael Addamo

Event #54: $10,000 Heads-Up No Limit Hold’em Championship

128-entrants

Results

  1. David Peters – $360,480
  2. Michael Addamo – $223,488
  3. Alyssa McDonald – $124,160
  4. Chi Zhang – $124,160
  5. Stefan Burakov – $49,664
  6. Chris Brewer – $49,664
  7. Belarmino De Souza – $49,664
  8. Pedro Waldburger – $49,664

Israeli Ravid Garbi ghosted through a patchwork quilt of superstars to claim the bracelet in Event #58: $5,000 No Limit Hold’em 6-Handed Championship at the World Series of Poker (WSOP) Online Series on GGPoker. Garbi topped a 672-entrant field to claim the $531,513 first prize, an unbelievable score for a man whose online and live poker antics remain invisible to the naked eye.

What a final table.

Hun Wei Lim came into this one on the back of winning Event #37: $1,050 Pot Limit Omaha Bounty. Lim finished eighth. Mikita Badziakouski is one of the best No Limit Hold’em players in the world, and the Belarusian finished seventh. Ludovic Geilich made his second WSOP final table of his career. The Scotsman finished seventh in the 2016 $25,000 Pot Limit Omaha High Roller and claimed a fifth in this one. Preben Stokkan is an online star who finished 21st in the WSOP Main Event last year. Stokkan finished third.

Then you have Chris Moorman.

The British-pro, now based in Las Vegas, has a litany of near-misses to go with the bracelet he won in 2017 when he took down the $3,000 No Limit Hold’em Six-Handed title. His second-place finish to Garbi is his third, finishing runner-up to Joe Ebanks in the $10,000 No Limit Hold’em Championship and then Elio Fox in the World Series of Poker Main Europe (WSOPE) both in 2011. Most recently, Moorman finished 4/1137 in the $500 Pot Limit Omaha 6-Handed bracelet event on WSOP.com.

But Moorman didn’t win the bracelet, and neither did Badziakouski, Stokkan, Geilich or Lee – Garbi did, only I don’t know anything about the fella, so I can’t wax lyrical about him 🙁

Here are the final table results.

Event #58: $5,000 No Limit Hold’em 6-Handed Championship

672-entrants

Results

  1. Ravid Garbi – $531,513
  2. Chris Moorman – $398,393
  3. Preben Stokkan – $292,021
  4. Urmo Velvelt – $214,051
  5. Ludovic Geilich – $156,989
  6. Shyngis Satubayev – $115,006
  7. Mikita Badziakouski – $84,299
  8. Hun Wei Lee – $61,791

Three more high rollers who ventured into the delicate end of things included Davidi Kitai (12th), Luke Schwartz (15th) and Sergi Reixach (18th).

There’s a lot of controversies emanating from GGPoker that’s making for good TV during the World Series of Poker (WSOP). Still, one thing that’s not controversial or unusual is the ascent to the top of the $400 PLOSSUS pile from Yuri Dzivielevski.

The former PocketFives World #1 (currently ranked #6), dismembered the 4,356 field with the precision of a sushi chef dissecting the anatomy of a sea urchin. Dzivielevksi now has two gold bracelets, his first coming last year when he conquered a field of 401-entrants in a $2,500 Mixed Omaha Hi/Lo 8-or-Better, Seven Card Stud Hi-Lo 8-or-Better event (man, that was a mouth full). He also finished 28th in the Main Event last year.

The $221,557 Dzivielevski banked for his victory is his second most significant haul. In 2014, he finished runner-up to Fedor Holz in the World Championships of Online Poker (WCOOP) Main Event for $1,253,070. All told, the Brazilian star has earned $7m playing online multi-table tournaments (MTTs), with most of it coming on PokerStars, playing under the pseudonym ‘theNERDguy’.

Dzivielevski has 22-cashes in WSOP events, and also won the PokerStars Latin American Poker Tour (LAPT) Grand Final in Sao Paulo back in 2015 for $175,155. His PLOSSUS win was his ninth cash of the series, including finishing 6/328 in the $5,000 Pot-Limit Omaha Championship, won by Juha Helppi. Dzivielevski proved to be an impenetrable mass for his heads-up opponent Matt Vengrin, who also finished runner-up to Daniel Idema in the 2015 $3,000 HORSE.

Here are the final table results.

Results

  1. Yuri Dzivielevski – $221,557*
  2. Matt Vengrin – $165,147
  3. Tautvydas Jokubauskas – $116,777
  4. Gabi Livshitz – $82,573
  5. Samuel Bernabeu – $58,388
  6. Juan Perez – $41,287
  7. Chad Layne – $29,194
  8. Dustin Dirksen – $20,643
    *Also receives a WSOPE package valued at $15,000

Three other high stars that went deeper than a hole in a bagel in a boulangerie include Simon Higgins (23rd), Fedor Holz (28th) and Juha Helppi (65th).

For some, a $1,500 buy-in is a walk along a cliff-edge path.

For some, a $1,500 buy-in is an untrammelled flick of a chip.

Daniel Dvoress is the chip flicker.

The Canadian high stakes star is a World Series of Poker (WSOP) bracelet owner after roaming through the mist of the 6,299-entrant Event #48: $1,500 MILLIONAIRE MAKER at the GGPoker WSOP Online Series. Dvoress walked into no-mans-land, trading blows with anyone and everyone until he remained, untouchable, eternal.

Amazingly, throughout his $15.6m in live tournament earnings, and multi-millions earned playing online, Dvoress, had never made money in a WSOP event until the GGPoker series began (taking 251st in Event #32: $100 The Opener, before winning this).

His sojourn into the WSOP web was a sticky one, turning a $1,500 investment into a $1.5m payday. Big money finishes are common to a man like Dvoress, taking the $4m first prize in the Super High Roller Bowl Bahamas in November. But to turn a $1.5k investment into $1.5m is massive, even for a high roller like Dvoress.

It’s another incredible performance for the Canadia. While he has been a serious contender for many moons, especially on the European Poker Tour (EPT) circuit, Dvoress began venturing into the deeper waters of high stakes tournaments during the 2019 Triton Poker Super High Roller Series, peaking with that SHRB victory.

Dvoress wasn’t the only titan to make it to the final table. partypoker’s Anatoly Filatov once again underlined his ever-growing reputation with a third-place finish, and the former EPT Main Event winner, Ronny Kaiser, finished seventh.

Here are the results.

Event #48: $1,500 MILLIONAIRE MAKER

Results

  1. Daniel Dvoress – $1,489,289
  2. Caio De Almeida – $1,072,428
  3. Anatoly Filatov – $772,251
  4. Michael Nugent – $556,095
  5. Alejando Caridad – $400,412
  6. Neville Endo Costa- $288,356
  7. Ronny Kaiser – $207,644
  8. Tomasz Cybulski – $149,523

Three more high stakes stars who ventured deeper than a Zen master in meditation were Michael Addamo (16th), Isaac Haxton (20th), and Seth Davies (37th).

Norman Michalek photo by Joe Giron

The 2020 World Series of Poker (WSOP) Online Series has bewitched and bewildered those fortunate enough to log-in and compete for a bracelet in the land that currently bans online poker in most of its states.

But every merry dance must end.

Sweat beads have to run dry.

The Monday to Friday ‘sort of dying’ has to resume.

The climax of the series – Event #31: $1,000 No Limit Hold’em Championship – is sitting in an Epsom salt-filled bathtub, dressing gown hanging from a hook on the door.

The event attracted 1,455 players; a gaggle that bought back in 671 times to create a final field size of 2,126 and the wealthiest prize pool of the US-based leg of the tournament series ($2,019,700).

Nahrain “2Rivers” Tamero won the bracelet as rapidly as it takes your grandma to knit a woolly jumper. Tamero, who has only $6,888 in live tournament cashes to his name, finished the thing in less than 12-hours.

The win was only Tamero’s second WSOP cash (he finished 315th in the 2018 $888 No Limit Hold’em Crazy Eights contest for a career-high $3,428), and five other players who joined him at the final table had similarly short WSOP resumes.

The two WSOP stalwarts at the final table were the ones who pushed Tamero the hardest. Runner-up, Norman “abnormality” Michalek, has 21 in the money finishes in bracelet events, but Andrew “WATCHGUY42” Lichtenberger was the headline act with 42 bracelet cashes, and in 2016 he won a $3,000 No Limit Hold’em event for $569,158. Last year he finished runner-up to Ben Heath in the $50,000 No Limit Hold’em High Roller for $917,232. All told, Lichtenberger has won more than $14m playing tournaments live and online.

Push as hard as Michalek and Lichtenberger did, they couldn’t oust Tamero from the highest spot on the podium, and for that, he picked up $310,832, and the bragging rights that come with winning poker’s most prestigious prize.

Here are the final table results.

Event #31: $1,000 No Limit Hold’em Championship

2,126-entrants

Results

  1. Nahrain “2Rivers” Tamero – $310,832
  2. Norman “abnormality” Michalek – $192,073
  3. Andrew “WATCHGUY42” Lichtenberger – $140,167
  4. Brian “foxx” Kirschhoff – $103,207
  5. Edan “goatplaya” Sucov – $76,749
  6. Greg “ Bubblealot” Wish – $57,561
  7. Arian “4632647” Stolt – $43,424
  8. Michael “merlot” Bailey – $33,123
  9. Kevin “SpecialK333” Calenzo – $25,650

Three high stakes stars who ran deeper than the poverty in Niger included Farid Jattin (16th), Ryan Riess (50th), Matt Berkey (56th), Phil Hellmuth (133rd), and Joe McKeehen (215th).

Kristen Bicknell is used to winning gold bracelets throughout the glacial slowness of live tournaments, so it must have felt slightly odd to wrap up her third gold bracelet in a little over nine hours.

That’s how long it took the Global Poker Index (GPI) World #1 Female Ranked Player to climb the granite peak of Event #44: $2,500 No Limit Hold’em 6-Handed on GGPoker.

The event attracted 892-entrants, and Bicknell laid her elaborate traps, galvanised her GTO, and tickled her rabbits’ foot with enough gall and grace to collect the $356,412 first prize after beating Belarmino De Souza, heads-up.

The Canadian has won close to $10m playing live and online poker tournaments. Amongst that haul sits two bracelet wins. She won the 954-entrant $1,000 No Limit Hold’em Ladies Championships in 2013 for $173,922, and then beat 2,158-entrants to win the $1,500 No Limit Hold’em Bounty event for $290,768.

Bicknell is also a regular in the high stakes multi-table tournaments (MTTs) on GGPoker.

The only other recognisable face on the final table belonged to Simon Higgins. The man from Britain has earned $1.1m playing live tournaments and is also a regular in the high stakes MTTs online. Higgins finished fifth.

Here are the final table results.

Event #44: $2,500 No Limit Hold’em 6-Handed

892-entrants

Results

  1. Kristen Bicknell – $356,412
  2. Belarmino De Souza – $261,249
  3. Ilya Anatsky – $191,494
  4. Dong Jiang – $140,365
  5. Simon Higgins – $102,887
  6. Jerome Finck – $75,416
  7. Patrick Semrau – $55,280
  8. Paul Barnes – $40,520
  9. Nikita Kalinin – $29,701

Patrick Kennedy Wins Event #45: $840 Bounty No Limit Hold’em

Patrick Kennedy denied Josh Pollock a third gold bracelet with his victory in Event #45: $840 Bounty No Limit Hold’em. Kennedy overcame a field of 2,382-entrants to win the $245,448 first prize and his third bracelet.

Pollock came into this one with two Pot-Limit Omaha bracelets at his home, somewhere. Pollock won a $1,500 Pot Limit Omaha bracelet in 2013, and last year won a $600 Pot Limit Omaha 6-Handed bracelet competing on WSOP.com.

Here are the final table results.

Event #45: $840 Bounty No Limit Hold’em

2,382-entrants

Results

  1. Patrick Kennedy – $245,448
  2. Josh Pollock – $113,176
  3. Bernardo Dias – $80,303
  4. Franco Spitale – $63,078
  5. Chi Chung Ho – $40,790
  6. Arie Kliper – $45,139
  7. Ho Yin Tai – $34,918
  8. Francesco Favia – $29,350
  9. Jose Severino – $14,042