Fredrick Arni won the opening event of the WSOP Circuit Bicycle Casino poker festival for his first major tournament victory and his first-ever gold ring. Apart from the shiny and much-coveted gold piece, the player also scooped a first-place prize of $87,010.
As Arni explained in his post-victory interview, he has been on the brink of winning major events over the past several years, but somehow luck has always evaded him. However, the player had the feeling that he would win that one and, as it can be seen, he proved right. Arni is now planning to invest his prize money into higher buy-in events, including Main Events on the WSOP Circuit schedule.
Arni emerged victor in a $365 buy-in Monster Stack tournament, the first one on the schedule of the WSOP Circuit’s Bicycle Casino stop. The event featured four starting flights. Interested players were also given the chance to skip the flights and to buy directly into Day 2 for $2,200. By the time registration closed, there were as many as 1,471 entries to have entered the event. The prize pool amounted to $533,100 and was split to the top 189 performers.
Day 3 was the final day to be played within the tournament. It kicked off with 23 survivors who were reduced to the final nine within the matter of two and a half hours. The final table started with Greg Pohler as the chip leader. In fact, the player had maintained a good chip lead over the greater part of Days 2 and 3. Arni was positioned in the top half of the initial final table chip counts but quickly improved to take the lead at the time there were only four players left.
He did not let go of his advantage for the rest of the day. Describing his performance during those final stages of the event, the player said that he “just kept the pedal to the metal and just ran [his opponents] over.”
One-time gold ring winner Sohale Khalili was Arni’s final opponent at the final table. Two-handed match began with the eventual winner holding a commanding chip lead. The two players battled it out for less than an hour before Khalili hit the rail in second place, missing the chance to capture a second WSOP Circuit gold piece. He received $54,040 as a consolation prize.
