Three days ago, Nicholas Seiken, a real estate broker from Texas, entered his first-ever standalone 2-7 Triple Draw event to eventually take it down, battling and outlasting a pack of seasoned pros. Late last night, the player joined the club of WSOP gold bracelet winners as he remained the last man standing in this year’s $10,000 Limit 2-7 Lowball Triple Draw Championship.
Seiken also collected $287,987 for outstanding performance in a game he did not have that much experience.
The tournament drew 109 entries, including a number of Triple Draw experts. Farzad Bonyadi, a three-time gold bracelet winner, was among the notables to enter the tournament. It is interesting to note that Bonyadi’s mother, Farhintaj, became the first female winner of this year’s edition of the series just a couple of days ago. She bested the field of the $1,000 Super Seniors.
Despite his effort, Bonyadi could not claim the Triple Draw Championship title last night and add another gold bracelet to his already impressive collection.
Aside from Seiken and Bonyadi, the final day of the tournament kicked off with 11 more survivors. Quite some of the remaining players struggled quite a bit throughout the day. But it looked as if Seiken, a player with significantly less experience than some of his remaining opponents, navigated through that final stage of the game very successfully.
Final Table and Heads-Up Play
By the time the official six-handed final table was set, Seiken had already built quite a stack. The player entered that final stage of the game as the chip leader with a significant lead over the next in line, who happened to be Bonyadi.
The eventual winner had 1.661 million in chips at that point to Bonyadi’s 943,000. Seiken seemingly had an easy run at the final table. In his post-victory interview, the player said that being the chip leader helped him a lot against the plethora of experienced players he was facing and he did not take much risk that would have cost him that advantage.
The only time the player lost the lead for a very short while was during three-handed play, when Randy Ohel replaced him at the top of the chip counts chart. Seiken himself admitted that he got a bit worried by Ohel’s short momentum.
Eventually, the player regained the lead, eliminated Kristijonas Andrulis in third place to cement his leading position and headed into heads-up against Ohel with a 3-2 advantage. The structure of the tournament allowed for a longer heads-up, but Seiken finished off his final opponent relatively quickly over the span of a 45-minute duel, which concluded with Ohel heading to the payout desk for a second-place prize of $177,992.
The 109-strong field of the championship tournament generated a prize pool of $1,024,600. The money was split into portions for the top 17 finishers, min-cashes starting from $14,864.
Following his latest triumph, Seiken told WSOP staff that while he is completely done with No-Limit Hold’em, we will be seeing more of him at the tables of mixed-game tournaments.
