The iconic David "Chip" Rees trophy is a traditional sign that we will witness great poker. For several years, it has been associated with the $50,000 Poker Players Championship event, which is rightly considered the most challenging tournament in the world. A high buy-in, top players and a demanding mix of various poker disciplines will test even the most experienced poker master, and this year was no exception.
This year, 63 individuals decided to invest a huge stack of money, including names such as Paul Volpe, Alex Livingston, Brian Rast, Eli Elezra, Joao Vieira, Anthony Zinno, Dario Sammartino, Scott Seiver, Stephen Chidwick, Phil Hellmuth, ElkY, Shaun Deeb or Michael Mizrachi, who managed to win this tournament three times!
This year, "The Grinder" went out of the game during the first day of play, but the 5-day marathon thus formed the final five without his participation. Instead, the following group of players led by Elim Elezrom played for $954,020 on the last day:
The more than 13-hour final marathon brought exciting show full of twists, thrilling hands and beautiful openings, which gradually formed a heads-up between Dan "Jungleman" Cates and 3-time WSOP champion Ryan Leng. Jungleman entered the final heads-up with a lead of more than 5:1, and although Leng managed to double up several times, he could not reverse this situation and had to be satisfied with the runner-up title and a reward of $589,628.
The legendary Jungleman came to the final day with a green hairstyle and in the clothes of a street fighter, which he commented unequivocally: “Even before the tournament, I said that I was going to win, so I won. I'm very happy that I did it, I have Alpha 8, WPT and Triton on my resume, this WSOP win is even more valuable because I won a trophy named after the legendary Chip. The financial reward is also important to me, thanks to which I have more money to help the world and continue my career outside of poker."
In addition to the trophy and premiere bracelet, Jungleman also took home a check for a nice $954,020, which has inflated his lifetime tournament winnings to $10 million. But the interesting thing is that everything could have been completely different - in the last three players, Jungleman played for his tournament life and his opponent Ryan Leng needed only one blind to call and eliminate him. But you will see how it turned out in the time from 19:53.
