Joe Cada continues his incredible run this summer in Las Vegas. The US player has won his second gold bracelet of the year and the fourth of his lifetime in Event #75: $1,500 NLHE $1M GTD just 2 days after finishing fifth in the Main Event. The 2009 Main Event champion Cada bested a tough field of 3,120 entries to claim the top prize $612,886, which took his WSOP earnings to over $12,490,058.
“I feel amazing. What a way to cap it off!” Cada said. “I’ve been running good and deep in every tournament, and the tournaments I busted, I feel good about how I played. I haven’t played many tournaments this summer, and I’m kind of upset that I didn’t play more, but it feels good to close it out.”
After Tanouye was busted in third place holding ten-eight against Bansal’s pocket queens, it came down to heads-up between Cada and Bansal. Unfortunately for Bansal, his run for the bracelet ended in the very first hand of heads-up. Bansal and Cada got the chips in before the flop with Bansal holding 9d 8d and Cada holding 10h 10d. Although the nine-high flop 9s 5h 2c gave Bansal a bit of hope, Cada hit a set on the turn 10s and then rivered quad with 10c on the river to win the title.
Paawan Bansal has been the most successful Indian player at the ongoing WSOP series. With his runner-up finish in this event, he notched up his career-best score $378,765 ( INR 2.60 Crores). It was his 7th cash at 2018 WSOP. He has already recorded six cashes prior to this runner-up finish, including his previous best of $35,087 for finishing 13th in the Colossus Event. Now, he has become India’s biggest scorer moving ahead of Nishant Sharma who had earned $230,475 (INR 1.58 crore) for his 34th place finish in the recent WSOP Main Event, which found a champion in John Cynn.
From Team India, the young gun of poker Nishant Sharma was also seen in action at the event. Sharma’s run was a little swingy and he ended up finishing 19th for $20,336 (INR 13.95 Lac). One of India’s most experienced players in this event Raghav Bansal finished 38th for $13,328 (INR 9.14 Lac). The star player Aditya Agarwal took 73rd place for $6,365 (INR 4.36 Lac).
Other Indian players who cashed included the DPT April 2018 Super High Roller winner Sriharsha Doddapaneni (148th for $4,021 – INR 2.75 Lac) and Muskan Sethi (453rd for $2,242 – INR 1.53 Lac). Indian origin Yudhishter Jaswal also entered the event but hit the rail empty-handed.
Final table results:
- Joe Cada – $612,886
- Paawan Bansal – $378,765
- Jeffrey Tanouye – $278,774
- Richard Ali – $206,813
- Eric Afriat – $154,660
- Richard Cox – $116,595
- Jimmy Poper – $88,615
- Brayden Gazlay – $67,904
- Joshua Turner – $52,465