While there are several players who have more than one WPT title, no player had won the same event twice until Wednesday. Brian Altman changed that and made a history by becoming the first player to ship the same Main Event twice. The poker pro beat a strong 843-entry field to take down the WPT Lucky Hearts Poker Open $3,500 Championship Event at Seminole Hard Rock Hollywood for $482,636. Altman previously won this event in 2015 for $723,008, which is his best score till date.
Altman entered the FT with $3.7 million in earnings and after his win at the the WPT Lucky Hearts Poker Open, he surpassed $4 million in his live career earnings. “Winning a second WPT title feels amazing. It’s incredibly special. It doesn’t always work out. I’ve had maybe a dozen or so situations where I’ve gone deep and thought I was going to win and I didn’t. But that’s how tournaments go. To continually put myself in a position to win tournaments, it feels special,” said the eventual winner.
Altman bagged the chip lead at the end of Day 2 and then stayed among the top two in the counts the rest of the way. It was a strong final table with the likes of John Dollinger, Chanracy Khun, Nadya Magnus, Nadeem Hirani and Peter Walsworth. The final table started with Altman holding a small chip lead over John Dollinger. Peter Walsworth became the first elimination when John Dollinger’s pocket nine beat his Ace-seven. Nadeem Hirani was the next player to hit the rail in fifth place after his Ace-King lost to Altman’s Jack-ten. Altman flopped a pair of tens, which held up to win the pot.
During 4-handed play, Nadya Magnus pitted his Ah Qs against Altman’s Ad Kc. Big Slick held up for Altman and Magnus hit the rail in fourth place. After almost one hour later, Dollinger took out Chanracy Khun with 10-8 against Ace-deuce to eventually enter the heads-up with Brian Altman.
Interesting Heads-Up Battle!
The heads-up battle began with Altman trailing Dollinger 20,850,000 – 12,875,000 in chips but he chipped-up quickly and took the lead. Over the course of the next one hour, Altman relinquished the chip lead for a while but came back strongly to finally finish Dollinger off. On the final hand, Altman held Ad Ac against Dollinger’s Ace-eight. They got it all-in preflop and pocket Aces held up for Altman, who won the coveted title and $482,636 in cash. Dollinger finally settled for $311k.
Notable ITM Finishers
The 843-entry field created a prize pool that swelled to almost $2.7 million. The top 106 players got paid out and some notables who cashed included James Calderaro, Aaron Rosenthal, Victor Figueroa, Joey Couden, Tzu Huang, Jake Schwartz, Matt Affleck, Chris Edwards,Darren Elias, Mikey Amato, Anthony Zinno, Trung Tran, Mike Vela, Lee Markholt, Jason Young, Joe McKeehen, Jared Jaffee, Riley Fuller, Jerry Wong, Jonathan Jaffe, Chris DaSilva, Kristine Zakaite, Jim Collopy, Scott Baumstein, Brock Wilson, George Pappas, Jason Brin, Geoffrey Hum, Tony Hu, and Richard Rice.
WPT Lucky Hearts Poker Open FT Payouts:
- Brian Altman – $482,636
- John Dollinger – $311,751
- Chanracy Khun – $230,086
- Nadya Magnus – $171,642
- Nadeem Hirani – $129,438
- Peter Walsworth – $98,686