The sixth time was the charm for Tommy Le, a young entrepreneur from California. He had previously made it to five final tables at WSOP Pot-Limit Omaha events, but had never managed to win a gold bracelet.
Last night, the player took down the $10,000 Pot-Limit Omaha Championship to finally capture the coveted gold piece. A nice payout of $938,732 made his victory even sweeter.
The Championship tournament attracted a field of 428 Pot-Limit Omaha specialists as well as poker enthusiasts. Despite a dynamic third day, players could not determine the winner and play was extended into an additional fourth day.
There were eight players left in contention at the time and two-time gold bracelet winner Scott Clements was the one to lead the final pack. Le was second in chips when Day 4 of the event kicked off. It could be said that it was Clements who dominated action during the first half of the day. He is known to be one of the best Omaha experts in the world. However, this year’s WSOP Pot-Limit Omaha Championship was clearly not his to win. The player was eventually eliminated in fourth place for $277,768.
Three-handed play was an important stage of the game as it saw Le overcoming Chris Lee’s commanding advantage to take the lead and never look back. By the time heads-up was set, Le held two times more chips than Lee, his final opponent.
Two-handed battle turned out to be a short one. As mentioned above, Le never lost his momentum from the moment he took the lead until the very end of the major tournament. It took the player around half an hour and several hands of play to finish off his final opponent.
The last hand in play occurred with Lee moving all-in after the flop ran out [Ac][8s][3c]. Lee had [8d][7s][5s][3h] against Le’s [Ac][10d][3d][2c]. The blank [7c] turn and [6s] river were of no help at all to Lee, and the player had to settle for the $580,177 second-place payout.
As for the winner, he was certainly in the mood for celebration, after scooping his first gold bracelet and bringing his overall WSOP earnings to more than $2.4 million. The player said that he does not play poker for a living, but that he considers himself quite good at it.
As mentioned above, the player had five previous Pot-Limit Omaha final-table finishes and was actually very close to winning a gold bracelet in some of the events he took part in. Last year, for instance, the player finished runner-up to Finland’s Jens Kyllonen in the $25,000 Pot-Limit Omaha High Roller. He also took third place in the $10,000 Pot-Limit Omaha 8-Handed Championship, the exact same event he won this year.
