The first year of the PokerGO Tour is in the books. Amidst the same challenges that many other tours faced in 2021, the PokerGO Tour seems to have navigated it all quite successfully and put a cherry on top this week. The first year’s finale wrapped at the PokerGO Studio this week, and the tour was able to declare its first annual Player of the Year.
The inaugural tour began to wrap last week with a series of Bellagio High Roller events. Those took place around the annual Five Diamond World Poker Classic at the Bellagio on the Las Vegas Strip, where the WPT hosted the Main Event. The 13 high buy-in events ranged from $10K to $100K stakes and played out December 2-14. Quite a few well-known poker players won tournaments in that series, with Justin Bonomo winning two of them.
The WPT Five Diamond Main Event then played out with Taylor Black winning the iconic tournament and $1.24M for that victory.
That led up to the finale of the PokerGO Tour presented by Guaranteed Rate.
Gostika Wins Championship
The high rollers gathered on December 20 with their $50K buy-ins to play the first annual PokerGO Tour Championship. When the tournament staff closed registration, they determined that the tournament had 46 entries. That created a $2.3M prize pool, and the top seven finishers would be paid.
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Play continued late into that first night of the two-day event. After Ren Lin eliminated Cary Katz, Sean Winter busted in tenth place, and the final nine players combined to a single table. Michael Gathy led the field at that point, with Lin nearby in second and Dominik Nitsche in third.
Short-stacked Sergi Reixach quickly doubled twice and stayed active. He eventually doubled again, that time through Ren Lin. Meanwhile, Nitsche ousted Nick Petrangelo in eighth place on the money bubble. Soon after, play stopped for the night with the final seven players in the money and their chip counts as follows:
Those players returned on December 21, seated around the final table at the PokerGO Studio at Aria on the Las Vegas Strip.
Gostisa came out firing but then settled into waiting for a double-up opportunity. He did pick up some chips in a hand against Lin nearly an hour and a half into the action, and another about a half hour later. And just before the two-hour mark, Gostisa took a big pot from Reixach to take over the chip lead.
At the same time, Nitsche lost ground during that time and struggled to stay in it. After the first break at the two-hour mark, he took his K-Q all-in on a K-8-2-Q-9 board, but Reixach had pocket eights for the set. In short order, Gostisa eliminated Lin with pocket sixes standing up to Lin’s J-T.
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Gostisa then had approximately 40% of the chips in play. Schindler was on the shortest stack but doubled through Ferro. The latter then lost a sizeable pot to Reixach and a smaller one to Schindler. Ferro then doubled through Reixach, but Ferry and Schindler remained short. Ferro risked his stack with A-2, but Gostisa had pocket tens that turned into a set on the turn. Ferro departed in fifth place. Schindler then moved with pocket sevens on an A-2-4 flop, but Gathy had pocket aces to send Schindler out in fourth.
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Rostisa led the final three, and Reixach swung the opposite direction. Reixach doubled through Gathy but then lost a 1.6M-chip pot to Gathy. Reixach had only four big blinds after that and doubled through Gostisa and did it again a bit later. After the second break of the day, though, Reixach pushed all-in with Q-J, but Gostisa had K-Q. The board only brought a king and a queen, eliminating Reixach in third place.
Heads-up play began more than 4.5 hours after the final table began. Gostisa held 4,475,000 chips to the 2,425,000 of Gathy. The two battled for a while before Gathy doubled through his opponent with J-6 on a 2-6-5-J-4 board when Gostisa had 8-4. That left Gostisa with 940K chips, and he fell from there. However, he chipped back up over 1M and then doubled with A-6 against Gathy’s K-5. Gostisa doubled again in short order with Q-T over Q-6 on a 2-8-Q-7 board. That put Gostisa back in front. Gathy put the rest of his stack in with Q-J of clubs against Gostisa’s 7-6 of spades. The 7-A-A-A-6 gave Gostisa the win.
PokerGO took the livestreaming opportunity to honor the first-ever PokerGO Tour presented by Guaranteed Rate Player of the Year. Ali Imsirovic seemed to have had the win locked up for months, but it wasn’t official until all of the first season played out.
Ultimately, Imsirovic accumulated 14 wins among 34 cashes during 2021, which came with more than $6M in prize money. That equated to 4,364 points and almost 1,300 points ahead of Michael Addamo, who surged during the WSOP to finish second on the leaderboard. Sean Perry finished in third place, followed by Sean Winter and Sam Soverel.
“It feels like a dream,” Imsirovic told Jeff Platt regarding the 2021 year. He described emerging on top of a leaderboard that includes some of the best players in the world as about the honor and not the money. He said that the experience was challenging and motivating.
Imsirovic also told PokerGO, “I never thought I would accomplish something of this magnitude in poker. Next, the goal is to just keep trying to get better and solidify and keep proving that I belong here.”
He won $200K in cash, along with the Guaranteed Rate Cup.
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