Who became the champion of WSOP Main Event 2016?

The most important event in the poker world - WSOP Main Event 2016 - has come to an end. Here you are to find out who is the happy person with the first prize of $8,000,000 and who brought home an almost two times smaller amount.

WSOP Main Event 2016 has attracted 6,737 participants this year. Only nine of them have been competing 3 last days for a champion’s status and a chance to become a part of the poker history. Either way some of them have become national heroes, still the victory in this sort of the event is truly a turning point in any life.

The first playing day of November nine was unfortunately the last for four of them:

• 9^th place - Fernando Pons ($1,000,000)
• 8^th place - Jerry Wong ($1,100, 076)
• 7^th place - Griffin Benger ($1,250,190)
• 6^th place - Kenny Hallaert ($1,464,258)

On the second day 2 more players were eliminated:

• 5^th place - Voitech Ruzicka ($1,935,288)
• 4^th place - Michael Ruane ($2,576,003)

WSOP 2016 Main Event - the final day

On the last the day of the poker action (which was the obligatory deadline of the tournament no matter how long it takes the players) there were only three participants left. The primary stakes were following:

• Qui Nguyen - 197,600,000.
• Gordon Vayo - 89,000,000
• Cliff Josephy - 50,000,000

The game began at the 39^th level with 600K/1,2K blinds and 200K Ante. As you can see the Vietnamese Qui Nguyen was an initial chip-leader. As soon as the tournament director Jack Effel announced 'Shuffle up and deal' the player started showing a spectacular poker, where Cliff Josephy was struggling for life with his shortest stake.

On the first hand already Cliff Josephy managed to double due to Qui Nguyen. You couldn’t see fans happier when Cliff caught Qui with his     against    .

However, few hands later the oldest player in this 3-max offensively lost almost all chips he showed with a second best hand.

After this disappointing hand Josephy was left with literally 8 big blinds, but he didn’t lose his faith and kept on shooting. Unfortunately, it’s pretty hard to deprive somebody of too much when you are this deep, therefore Cliff was the next to leave. First, he was desperately but unsuccessfully trying to bluff into Nguyen, who was holding a top-pair and then showed off the rest of his chips at the preflop with Q3 against Gordon Vayo’s K6x.

Cliff Josephy got a decent award for the third place - $3,453,035.

Lingering heads-up

When the heads-up occurred at the tournament the game went a few dozen times slower. Stakes haven’t go here or there anymore, everything got calm and things that took place further reminded slaughter against almost helpless victim - Gordon Vayo.

Ilya Gorodetskiy who commented those three days of the final event has marked with his English-speaking colleagues (in one of the English broadcasts) that sometimes Vayo used to play way too tight at certain spots having a significant advantage.

The heads-up began with following stakes:

• Gorgon Vayo - 125 BB
• Qui Nguyen - 85 BB

First, players used to retain the same level of the game and were infinitely approved by professional poker players in Twitter for that. Qui Nguyen even made a few snap all-in. In general the Vietnamese more than once made the American to fold his best hands and imposed Gordon step by step his own game pace.

But one of the main hands was an all-in on the flop with the queen. Then Qui was already a leader, Gordon - the second player. First had an     hand, the second held    . The things that happened further are worth watching.

AQs against Q5s WSOP Main Event 2016

Gordon was very much cheered up by the doubling the had, but the heads-up had been lasting for 7 hours at that moment and players were tired enough. Vayo kept on floundering with 50-100 mln chips, when Nguyen had 280+ mln. To his regret, Vayo continued playing a too safe poker, and Nguyen - buying his outs with the air.

The final hand was a simple preflop all-in, where Gordon was still hoping for spades and showed ~21 BB with     against Nguyen’s preflop raise 4 BB with    . Nguyen was really nervous, by the way, since he recently got a sad experience with Vayo’s spades. Still           were put on the board and Qui Nguyen became a new world poker champion 2016!

The last time somebody named Nguyen won the WSOP Main Event was 18 years ago!..

“November Nine” finalists’ payouts

• Qui Nguyen - $8,005,310
• Gordon Vayo - $4,661,228
• Cliff Josephy - $3,453,035
• Michael Ruane - $2,576,003
• Vojtech Ruzicka - $1,935,288
• Kenny Hallaert - $1,464,258
• Griffin Benger - $1,250,190
• Jerry Wong - $1,100,076
• Fernando Pons - $1,000,000