California-born player Griffin Paul won the WPT Seminole Hard Rock Poker Showdown mere hours ago. The six-day $3,500 No-Limit Hold’em Main Event with a guaranteed prize pool of $5 million attracted a total of 1,476 entries.
The six-handed final table lasted about five and a half hours and started with Paul as the chip leader. He had a total of 14.3 million in chips, which accounted for about one-third of all the chips in play. It took 57 hands before the first player was eliminated. Ryan Rivers moved all-in but could not stand a chance against 2011 WSOP bracelet winner Joe Ebanks and was busted in 6th place. He took home the amount of $217,500.
Brian Green was the next to go. The player was eliminated in 5th by the soon-to-be-champion and was paid $269,000. Green was followed by Shawn Nguyen, who fell victim to Ebanks. Nguyen’s 4th place secured him with $323,500.
Andre Crooks, too, was defeated by Ebanks and was paid $383,000 for his 3rd place. With his elimination, the heads-up play was set. It started with Ebanks holding 26.5 million in chips to Paul’s 17.8 million. However, it only took eight hands before the latter took the lead.
The heads-up play lasted a little less than two hours. The final hand occurred with Paul holding [Kc][9d] against his opponent’s [Ad][Jh]. The board ran out [Kd][Jc][4h] on the flop. Paul moved all-in and Ebanks called. Nothing changed for the players when [4d] appeared on the turn and [6s] fell on the river.
Paul’s top pair secured him with the tournament title, while Ebanks had to content himself with a runner-up finish and the amount of $615,000.
Paul was awarded $1 million of the entire prize pool, the tournament trophy, a pair of Monster headphones, and a Hublot watch, manufactured exclusively for WPT. So far, the player has a total of $1,074,616 in live earnings. He had previously taken part in various WSOP and WPT events but never made it to the final table.
The player is currently ranking 1,757th in the GPI ranking and 8,716th in the United States all time money list.
WPT’s next stop will be at Atlantic City’s Borgata, where the WPT Championship with a buy-in fee of $15,400 is to take place between April 25-29.
