One of this year’s World Series of Poker (WSOP) Main Event November Niners – Gordon Vayo – came victorious from the $2,500 Main Event of the WinStar River Poker Series. He was granted with the largest chunk of the prize after he stroke a five-way deal with his remaining opponents at the final table. The cash prize won by the player amounted to a total of $587,120.
A total of 1,054 entrants registered in the Main Event of the WinStar River Poker Series this year. The guaranteed prize pool of the tournament was estimated to $2.5 million, with the bounty being distributed among the top 107 players of the tournament.
Three starting flights marked the beginning of the five-day event. After that, two more days of play remained for the players still standing. The third, and last day of the event started with a total of nine players around the final table of the tournament.
Vayo was the player who got to the final table as a chip leader with 6,845,000 in chips. The final table gameplay progressed at a pretty fast pace, which resulted in four players being eliminated relatively quickly. The first to fall was Daniel Fuhs, followed by Jeff Duvall and Chino Rheem. Long Duc Nguyen was the fourth player to leave the table.
With only five players left who played for about an hour, the participants decided to consider an eventual five-way deal. After calculating the potential payouts under the independent chip model formula, they decided to stick to the deal.
Since Gordon Vayo was the player who held the largest amount of chips at that stage of the game, he emerged victorious from the tournament with the largest prize of $587,120.
With Gordon Vayo getting to the first place, Ben Ector remained at the runner-up position with a prize of $344,826. Dean Bobel occupied the third position, taking home a consolation prize of $225,048. Layne Flack and Grant Hinkle took the fourth and fifth place, respectively. The sixth position was occupied by Long Duc Nguyen, whose prize amounted to $70,054. Chino Rheem ranked seventh, while Jeff Duvall and Daniel Fuhs got eight and ninth, respectively.
This year, Vayo has taken part in a series of poker tournaments and competitions primarily from the 47th edition of the World Series of Poker (WSOP). Since he started his professional poker player career, he has also been known for participating in some other tournaments and events, such as the WSOP Circuit, EPT and WPT.
This is the first time when the British player generates such a large prize in his career. Still, considering the fact that he is one of the November Niners of the 2016 edition of the WSOP $10,000 Championship, this score would probably be beaten soon, with Vayo leaving the poker tournament with winnings amounting to at least $1 million. What is even better, if the player succeeds in winning this year’s edition of the tournament’s Main Event, his prize would grow to $8 million.
- Author
Harry Evans
