For over three weeks, the WPT's peak season in Las Vegas has been churning out day after day of great poker that has already managed to crown a few champions along the way. As we've already informed you, Michael Rossito was the first to be crowned champion in the opener event, and while we'll have to wait for the champion of the huge Prime event, we've managed to get to know two other champions along the way.
Mystery Bounty
The increasingly popular and widespread Mystery Bounty format was not absent from the WPT World Championship Festival. Another successful event saw 3,421 entries and, with a $1,600 buy-in, a prize pool of over $5 million. This was dished out during Day 2 among the 427 advancers who faced a gruelling 18 hours of play on their way to the championship.
As for the bounty prizes, they ranged in levels from $500 to the top prize of $250,000. The lucky player who managed to turn the elimination of an opponent into a quarter of a million dollars was David Hipperson, who took home a prize equivalent to third place in the tournament.
The tournament itself only saw its champion at the end of the aforementioned marathon, which lasted 18 hours. At the end of it, the only undefeated player was the Romanian George Tomescu, who took home the full $500,202 without a deal. To make matters worse, in the bounty envelopes he also added an extra $64,000 to that sum
| # | NAME | COUNTRY | PRIZE |
| 1. | George Tomescu | ROM | $500,202 |
| 2. | Jiacong Zhang | USA | $324,347 |
| 3. | Jack Hardcastle | UK | $249,761 |
| 4. | Matthew McEwan | USA | $192,754 |
| 5. | Todd Turoci | USA | $148,507 |
| 6. | Fausto Valdez | USA | $113,136 |
| 7. | David Levy | USA | $85,014 |
| 8. | Danny Fuhs | USA | $62,463 |
Ladies Event
A nice touch to any poker festival is always the Ladies Event, and the WPT Ladies Championship was no exception. In it, the ladies bought in for $1,100 a total of 457 times, nearly doubling the quarter-million dollar guarantee ($443,290 prizepool). Two days of play gradually whittled the title hopefuls down to the final nine, who played live for the title during last night's event.
The five-hour-long finale finally revealed the name of the champion, which was local backer Lisa Costello. She defeated final table chipleader Ashley Sleeth in heads-up play and took home $85,297 in prize money in addition to the trophy.
| # | NAME | COUNTRY | PRIZE |
| 1. | Lisa Costello | USA | $85,297 |
| 2. | Ashley Sleeth | USA | $57,069 |
| 3. | Kathy Stahl | USA | $43,686 |
| 4. | Chris Read | USA | $34,220 |
| 5. | Aylar Lie | NOR | $26,480 |
| 6. | Ada Lang | USA | $20,155 |
| 7. | Alida Veliu | USA | $15,128 |
| 8. | Michelle Gibson | USA | $11,058 |
Record WPT Prime
As for the aforementioned WPT Prime event, it boasts a $5 million guarantee at $1,100. Last year, this tournament produced 5,430 entries, and well, to make sure that happens this year, there are four flights to take care of that. The first one contributed 1,636 entries to the guarantee (205 advancers), while the second opening day surpassed those numbers even further (2,198 entries and 273 ITM advancers). In total, the entries counter shows a mid-flight total of 3,834, indicating that the guarantee will be a mere formality.
Source - WorldPokerTour, Flickr, YouTube
