The US poker player John Cynn is the newest WSOP Main Event champion. He defeated Tony Miles in heads-up to win the 2018 World Series of Poker Main Event for a whopping $8.8 million, topping a huge field of 7,874 entries, which was the second largest field in the history of WSOP tournaments.
Given the massive field in the main event, the victory for Cynn, who bubbled the unofficial final table in the 2016 Main Event, was very tough. He had to battle it hard with some of the world’s best poker players, including the world-famous Phil Hellmuth, Phil Ivey, Shaun Deeb and Bart Lybaert.
Cynn, who debuted in the tournament series back in 2012, has come a long way cashing out in a total of 17 WSOP events. This main event win gave him his career’s best live score $8,800,000 and took his WSOP earnings to a massive $9,512,071 in total.
Cynn battled it for about 10 hours in heads-up to win and become rich. He was extremely elated after his win. He grabbed his head and crouched for a moment as the crowd shouted after his victory.
“Right now, I do feel pretty overwhelmed,” said Cynn after his historic win in this event. “The money is very significant, but I do like to think that I don’t need the money to be happy, but at the same time, practically, it’s going to make things a lot easier, things I want to do in life.”
Miles, who fought it brilliantly in heads-up, eventually settled for an impressive $5m for his remarkable runner-up finish. He hugged his supporters after his defeat and shed some tears as well.
Cynn’s Kc Jc on the final hand was better than Miles’s, who shoved with Qc-8h. The board was Kh Kd 5h 8d 4s. Each of the 9 players who entered the final table was guaranteed at least $1m. The heads-up between Cynn and Mile was the longest-running battle lasting for a record 199 hands.
As mentioned above, the main event of the 2018 WSOP drew the second largest field in the WSOP tournaments history with 7,874 entries and generated a total prize pool of $74,015,600. Eventually, the top 1,182 players made the money in this tournament with a min-cash remaining $15,000.
Team India
As many as 25 Indian players took part in this event, including Aditya Sushant, Rohan Dhawan, Kavin Shah, Dharmesh Patel, Rishab Jain, Jaswinder “Bobbe” Suri Paawan Bansal, Vivek Rughani, Jaideep Sajwan, Mayank Jaggi, Yudhisther Jaswal, Nikita Luther, Apoorva Goel, Shashank Jain, Kartik Ved, Nishant Sharma, Aditya Agarwal, Akash Malik, Amit Jain, Sriharsha Doddapaneni, Muskan Sethi, Nipun Java, Vikram Kumar, Jasven Saigal and Abhinav Iyer.
A total of 11 players entered Day 3 and this number came down to just 9 runners at the end of day’s play. Only 3 players Nishant Sharma, Vivek Rughani and Kartik Ved made it past Day 4. Sharma recorded the deepest run by an Indian in the event to win his career-best $230,475 (INR 1.58 Crores), while Rughani finished in 88th place making the second deepest run in this event for $77,695 ( INR 53.47 Lac). Ved finished in128th place to earn an impressive $57,010 ( INR 39.24 Lac).
Other Indian players who made money in this event included Jaideep Sajwan (589th for $23,940 – INR 16.44 Lac), Aditya Agarwal (717th for $19,900 – INR 13.66 Lac), Rohan Bhasin (731st for $19,900 – INR 13.66 Lac), Yudhister Jaswal (977th for $15,920 – INR 10.93 Lac), Sriharsha Doddapaneni (1,057th for $15,920 – INR 10.93 Lac) and Apoorva Goel (1,148th for $15,000 – INR 10.30 Lac).
Amongst the nine players entering the final table of this event was the 2009 Main Event World Series of Poker (WSOP) winner Joe Cada. He was running well and gunning for the coveted title again, but unfortunately, he missed out on his second main event title and ended his run finishing 5th for $2,150,000 in prize money.
Final Table Results (USD)
1. John Cynn – $8,800,000
2. Tony Miles – $5,000,000
3. Michael Dyer – $3,750,000
4. Nicolas Manion – $2,825,000
5. Joe Cada – $2,150,000
6. Aram Zobian – $1,800,000
7. Alex Lynskey – $1,500,000
8. Artem Metalidi – $1,250,000
9. Antoine Labat – $1,000,000