Art Papazyan managed to take possession of his second World Poker Tour title in 2017, by emerging victorious from the WPT Maryland Main Event. The victory is one of Papazyan’s best achievements so far in his career, boosting his total live earnings to over a million dollars.
The first WPT title came to Papazyan in less than two months for him winning the WPT Legends of Poker $4,000 NLHE Main Event. Now, a few weeks later, he managed to become a WPT champion for the second time – something that has not been made by many other players so far.
As a matter of fact, only 26 players have won more than one WPT title in the history of the series to date. And before this year’s edition of the WPT Maryland tournament, only seven players have won more than one WPT titles in the same season, which basically means that Papazyan has become the eighth World Poker Tour champion who managed to win multiple WPT titles in the same season. Te rest of the players who have done this are Gus Hansen and Howard Lederer in Season I, Erick Lindgren in Season II, Tuan Le in Season III, Anthony Zinno and Darren Elias in Season XIII and Sam Panzica in Season XV.
Art Papazyan’s WPT Achievements So Far
In order to emerge victorious from the tournament, Papazyan topped a total players field of 561 entries. This year, the Main Event offered a $3,500 buy-in and a total prize pool estimated to $2,000,000, with Papazyan winning a first-place prize of $389,405. The Main Event’s top prize also included a $15,000 seat into the season-ending WPT Tournament of Champions, but Papazyan already got a seat at the tournament after winning the WPT Legends of Poker Main Event in August, so he will get the seat’s cash equivalent.
The $389,405 first-place prize boosted the overall WPT earnings of the player so far to $1,066,112. Papazyan’s total live winnings so far in his career amount to $1,111,434, with his best live cash of $668,692 generated at the time he won this season’s WPT Legends of Poker Main Event.
Regardless of the fact that he did not enter the Final day of the Main Event as a chip leader, Papazyan was first in chips with a 10.44-million stack at the start of heads-up play. He faced Zachary Donovan, who had a total of 6.43 million in chips at the time, and even managed to boost his lead to Donovan and soon after that managed to defeat him, winning his second WPT Title so far.
Final Table Ranking
With Art Papazyan becoming the victor in the Season XVI WPT Maryland Main Event taking home of a monetary prize pool portion of $389,405, Zachary Donovan remained on the runner-up position, getting a cash prize of $262,930. The third place was occupied by Tom Reynolds, who was granted with a $168,990 cash portion of the overall prize pool.
The fourth place in the WPT Maryland Main Event was taken by Randal Heeb, who got a prize of $120,165 for his efforts. He was followed by Grigoriy Shvarts, who remained fifth, winning a total of $92,015. Timothy Chang is sixth, getting a payment of $76,620 for his ranking.
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Harry Evans
