After scooping the WSOP No-Limit Hold’em Main Event title in 2015, Pennsylvania-born poker pro Joe McKeehen added a Limit Hold’em Championship one to his list of poker accomplishments. It was only last night when the player took down the $10,000 buy-in tournament for his second gold piece and $311,817.
His latest triumph brought his overall WSOP earnings to more than $10 million, most of which came from his WSOP Main Event victory. The player topped the field of the world’s most important annual No-Limit Hold’em tournament for $7,683,346.
Averting our attention back to this year’s Limit Hold’em Championship, McKeehen bested a 120-person field to capture his second gold bracelet. In addition to the two gold bracelet, the player has also previously won two WSOP Circuit gold rings.
The event’s final day was played on Wednesday. As many as 15 players returned to the poker tables of Rio All-Suite Hotel & Casino to play down to a final table and finally to a champion. McKeehen began play in a very weak position, holding the second smallest stack of all remaining players.
A series of good hands helped the player improve significantly. Thus, the former Main Event champion eventually ended up as the last man standing at the table. Here it is also important to note that McKeehen emerged the winner from a final table of extremely tough opponents, with Sorel Mizzi, Ben Yu, who won the $10,000 Limit 2-7 Lowball Triple Draw Championship mere days ago, and JC Tran being few of them.
Jared Talarico was the player whom McKeehen had to face off heads-up. The duel began with the eventual champion being slightly ahead of his final opponent. Even though Talarico himself ran pretty well over the course of final day play, the player could not hold up against McKeehen for too long. He survived the first all-in confrontation he was challenged into, but the second one ended with him hitting the rail in second place for $192,717.
On the very final hand in play, Talarico was down to just 100,000, which went in with the blind. McKeehen called to see the board. Talarico held [4d][3s] against his opponent’s [10c][5s]. The board ran out [Qs][Js][8c][5c][As], securing McKeehen with the gold.
Commenting on his latest triumph, the former Main Event winner said that he likes the limit format and finds the game particularly fun. He also noted that a Limit Hold’em field is usually quite tough as winning a couple of hands could slide all chips in a player’s direction.
