James Mackey, a former WSOP gold bracelet winner and tournament regular, last night scooped his first WPT title. The player won the WPT Choctaw $3,700 Main Event, taking home $681,758 in prize money, a pair of Monster 24K Headphones, and a Hublot watch.
Mackey has not won a WPT Main Event before but has been a regular participant in such tournaments over the years. His best WPT achievement was his third-place finish in the WPT Seminole Hard Rock Showdown $3,500 No-Limit Hold’em Championship in 2014. The player was paid $441,128 for his deep run into the tournament.
WPT’s Choctaw stop attracted quite a lot of attention but this is barely a surprise to anyone, given the Tour’s general popularity and Choctaw Casino Resort’s status of a highly preferred poker destination. The $3,700 Main Event unfolded over five days – from July 29 to August 2. As many as 1,066 entries paid the buy-in in order to take part in the tournament. The eventual prize pool totaled $3,619,070.
As usual, the event’s final day saw the six final table players return to play down to an eventual champion. Six-handed play started with Bastian Fischer holding the chip lead. As many as 97 hands were played before the names of the two heads-up opponents were clear. Mackey had to face Benjamin Zamani. Action kicked off with the Mackey as the chip leader. The player managed to maintain his advantage until the very end.
Hand #134 was the final one to be played not only for the day but for the tournament as a whole. Zamani limped for 300,000 and Mackey raised to 1,000,000. Zamani moved all and his opponent called without losing any time.
Mackey tabled [8h][8d] against his opponent’s [5h][5c]. The flop came [8s][7s][6s], giving Mackey a solid advantage. The [Js] appeared on the turn and the [6h] came on the river, both of no help to Zamani. Hitting the rail in second place, the player collected a nice payout of $412,234.
Craig Varnell finished 3rd in the event, good for $306,346. Start-of-the-day chip leader Bastian Fischer eventually took 4th place, scooping a payout of $230,300. Jack Duong collected $175,122 for his fifth-place finish. Matthew Smith rounded out the official six-handed final table, taking home the amount of $134,720.
The WPT Main Tour is next headed to Bicycle Hotel & Casino in Bell Gardens, California for the Legends of Poker festival. Its highlight tournament – the $4,000 Main Event will be taking place from August 27-September 1.
