The World Series of Poker Main Event final table is set.
Well, the final table is one of two taking place this month and one of several WSOP Main Event tournaments in 2020. But the one set on GGPoker is the first step to finding the international champion that will head to Las Vegas (hopefully, Covid-permitting) at the end of December to play a heads-up match for the grand finale title.
It is confusing, especially for poker fans who don’t follow the ins and outs of the poker business.
The REAL Main Event
This summer, the World Series of Poker offered 85 events that seemed to take the place of the traditional Las Vegas summer WSOP because…well…there was a pandemic.
That series ran partially on WSOP.com in the United States and GGPoker internationally. And the culmination of the 54 events on GGPoker was a 2020 WSOP Main Event. It had a $5K buy-in instead of $10K, offered an unprecedented 23 starting flights, and carried a $25 million guarantee. It wasn’t exactly the traditional WSOP Main Event, but it seemed as close as the pandemic would allow in 2020.
Evidently, that was the WSOP Online Main Event for 2020, not the real one, the big one, the main Main.
The World Series of Poker announced the actual, real, main 2020 Main Event in mid-November. The format for the $10K buy-in tournament with no reentries is:
GGPoker for International Players--November 29: Day 1A online--December 5: Day 1B online--December 6: Day 1C online--December 7: Day 2 online--December 15: Final table live at King’s Casino in Czech RepublicWSOP.com for US Players--December 13: Day 1 online--December 14: Day 2 online--December 28: Final table live at Rio in Las VegasFinal Heads-Up Match--Winner of each final table to meet in Las Vegas--Heads-up match to play for $1 million (donated by GGPoker) and official WSOP Main Event championship title and bracelet
The initial action on GGPoker resulted in a final table set this week.
Per PokerNews live reporting, the first of the three starting flights delivered 246 players to the virtual tables. It ended with just 62 players remaining and Julian “VWgunther” Menhardt of Austria as the chip leader.
The second starting day brought in another 171 players, of which 42 remained at the end of the December 5th action. Blaz Zerjav of Slovenia held the chip lead.
Day 1C brought in another 257 players, though only 75 of them survived the night with chips. Senthuran “Prodigal Sen” Vijayaratnam of Canada had the flight’s lead when play stopped and sat atop the overall leaderboard going into Day 2.
The final numbers for the tournament were recorded as:
Day 2 began with 179 players back at the online poker tables. After the money bubble burst, players like Ronit Chamani, Antoine Saout, and Sergio Aido hit the virtual rail. Day 1B leader Zerjav busted in 25th place, followed by Day 1A leader Menhardt in 24th place, each collecting $30,404. Vijayaratnam just missed the final table when he busted in 11th place for $50,131. And Thomas “ggmbn” Macdonald busted in 10th place.
That set the final table as follows:
Brunno Botteon (Brazil) 10,317,743 chips Manuel “robocup” Ruivo (Portugal) 6,213,759 chips Damian Salas (Argentina) 5,653,528 chips “fullbabyfull” (Liechtenstein) 4,232,560 chips Hannes “BlackFortuna” Speiser (Austria) 3,515,744 chips Dominykas “MickeyMouse” Mikolaitis (Lithuania) 3,165,440 chips Ramon “Ritza” Miquel Munoz (Spain) 3,035,940 chips Peiyuan “fish3098” Sun (China) 2,185,676 chips Stoyan “UncleToni” Obreshkov (Bulgaria) 2,119,610
According to the WSOP’s press release about the live final tables, players who choose not to travel and play live poker will forfeit their seat and accept ninth place money. The word is that one player will not attend, though there is no word yet on that player’s name.
https://twitter.com/YoriEpskamp/status/1336814733266210816?s=20
The payouts awaiting the final table players are:
