Erik Lemarquand won the WPTDeepStacks Pittsburgh Main Event on Monday at Rivers Casino in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. He topped a strong field of 316 entries to earn his first WPTDeepStacks title and $66,593 in first-place prize money, which included a $3,000 championship prize package. This major win is his career-best live score and has taken his live earnings to a whopping $353,454.
On his way to the grand win, Lemarquand ran hot at the FT and went on to eliminate all the players from sixth to second places. When asked about his dominant run in the later stage of the final table in the tournament, Lemarquand said, “It was pretty crazy, I got some good cards obviously as you have to do when you win a tournament. I was supposed to put pressure on all the other stacks.”
The Main Event guaranteed a whopping $300,000 and the 316-entry field generated $306,250 in the total prizepool, which was shared by the top 40 finishers with min-cashes starting from $1,628.
The money bubble burst after several levels of play on Day 2 of the main event. As many as 88 players make it to Day 2 from the three starting flights. After three starting flights and one more day of action, it came down to 9-handed final table with James Anderson leading with 2 millions chips. Anderson and his eight remaining opponents were all vying for their first WPTDeepStacks title.
John Cebula had started the final table as second largest stack with 1.71 million chips and it was he who set the official final table after eliminating Taylor Wilson in tenth place ($5,609). Michele Iacovone at the final table was rounding up the top three chip counts with a stack of 1.28 million.
Unfortunately for John Cebula, he lost a few crucial flips and was the first player to ext the FT in ninth place. Jonathan Love was the next to fall in eighth place and William Patterson followed him in seventh place. Play got a little slower but Lemarquand heated it up, eliminating Marty Keegan (sixth place), James Anderson (fifth place), and Matt Vensko (fourth place) to take the chip lead.
Lemarquand then took out David Santucci in third place, and that gave him 7,150,000 chips to enter heads-up against Michele Iacovone, who battled hard but couldn’t go all the way, eventually finishing runner-up for $46,704. The last hand of the event saw Iacovone go all in preflop for a little more than a million, and Lemarquand who had him covered called with Ks Qh against Iacaovone’s Js 6c. The board ran Qc 10c 10s 7d 2d where Lemarquand won the pot and the title.
Some notables who made it to the money but failed to reach the final table included Stan Jablonski, John Fardo, Robert Nolen, and Taylor Wilson. .
Final Table Payouts
1st: Erik Lemarquand – $66,593*
2nd: Michele Iacovone – $46,704
3rd: David Santucci – $30,039
4th: Matt Vensko – $19,050
5th: James Anderson – $14,698
6th: Marty Keegan – $12,169
7th: William Patterson – $10,222
8th: Jonathan Love – $8,399
9th: John Cebula – $6,661
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