A few weeks after wins by big name pros Marvin Rettenmaier and Tony Gregg, relative unknown Josh Hale (2012 QJ/PTPR Rank: T-91st) is the latest winner on the World Poker Tour.
Hale defeated 621 other competitors to win the WPT Legends of Poker Main Event at the famous Bicycle Casino, outside of Los Angeles.
Hale collects 500K USD for his efforts, eclipsing his previous tournament-best 35K USD score at the 1M Guarantee event at the Legends last season.
Second place finisher Max Steinberg (2012 QJ/PTPR Rank: 9th) certainly made a game of it. The bracelet winner started final table play as one of the short stacks but built his chips up so much so that he started heads-up play as the leader.
The turning point came during hand #132 where Hale hit a river flush as both players had put all of their chips in the middle on the flop. Hale had his monster stack back and wouldn't surrender from that point.
It's not all bad news for Steinberg, first, he collects over 290K for a few days work - he also pushes Phil Ivey out of the Top 10 for Player of the Year, Steinberg sits ninth with only four months left to the season.
Three of the final table favourites were out of the event much earlier than most poker fans watching the live stream would have wanted as Jeff Madsen (2012 QJ/PTPR Rank: 289th), Greg Mueller (2012 QJ/PTPR Rank: 39th) and Ali Eslami (2012 QJ/PTPR Rank: 167th) were the first three players eliminated on Wednesday.
Mueller enters the QJ Player of the Year Top 100 with his performance, in fact, Mueller cracks the Top 40 with his 36-point score.
The WPT makes their way to France next as the Grand Prix de Paris is fast approaching!
FT PAYOUTS (USD) Josh Hale $500,000 Max Steinberg $293,490 Raouf Malek $192,400 Ali Eslami $133,700 Greg Mueller $97,100 Jeff Madsen $75,400 RELATED POSTS > HALE LEADS WPT LEGENDS FT > WPT LEGENDS PLAYS DOWN TO FT > THE THRILL OF VICTORY DEFENDING CHAMPION 2011 PTPR Player of the Year: Will Failla 2012 PTPR Points: 71 NEXT WPT EVENT WPT Grand Prix de Paris Aviation Club de France September 10-15, 2012 | PTPR PREMIER EVENT WORLD POKER TOUR WPT Legends of Poker NLH Main Event August 24-29, 2012 Bicycle Casino | California Buy-in: $3,700 | Prizepool: $2,111,690 Entries: 622 PTPR POINTS DISTRIBUTION JOSH HALE 131 MAX STEINBERG 81 RAOUF MALEK 51 ALI ESLAMI 41 GREG MUELLER 36 JEFF MADSEN 31 JIM WILLERSON 31 STEPHEN GRANER 16 JESSE MARTIN 16 ART ALANIZ 16 DAVID MARSHALL 16 CYRUS FARZAD 14 ALAN MYERSON 14 RAMZI SROUR 14 SAM BARNHART 14 ANTONIOS ROUNGERIS 11 EFREN ABUSTAN 11 JOSEPH CHEONG 11 |
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