In an eight-hour final day battle, businessman Danny Le dominated on his way to winning Event #22, the $1500 Limit Hold’em tournament, last night at the 2016 World Series of Poker at the Rio All Suites Hotel and Casino.
Final day action began with 15 players still remaining in the event and Le atop the standings with his 784,000 in chips. Poker professional Tyler Bonkowski, who picked up his first WSOP bracelet in a similar tournament ($3000 Limit Hold’em) in 2011, was joined by a fellow Canadian and WSOP bracelet holder, Daniel Idema, in looking to take down Le. There were also hungry non-bracelet winners in the mix, including Aleksandr Denisov and Mark Gregorich, that Le would have to battle.
The normally sedate pace of Limit Hold’em wasn’t seen in the first few moments of action on Thursday. Denisov, on the short stack, was the first player to go for the day, failing to find that key double up to hit the rail in 15th place. On that very same hand at the other table, Le was in the process of losing his lead after seeing Jeffrey Cookson catch with his pocket Jacks on a J-4-2-4-6 board to crush Le’s pocket Aces. With Le suffering the setback, Bonkowski would assume the lead with a long day ahead.
Le didn’t sulk in his cracked Aces, however. He would recover to eliminate Cookson in 13th place, making a diamond flush to best Cookson’s two pair, and take out Idema in 12th place an hour later after Le turned a full house to Idema’s Ace high. By the time that Le bumped Alan Bittikofer out in 10th place to set the official WSOP final table, Le was back in the lead and the only player over a million chips (holding 1.35 million, to be exact) while everyone squabbled behind him.
The steamroller that was Danny Le didn’t exactly hold up at this point either. He outflopped Andrew Beversdorf with a J-8 (against Beversdorf’s pocket eights) on a J-6-5-3-7 board to eliminate Beversdorf in seventh place and approached the two million chip mark in besting Dale Eberle with only an Ace-high. He would leave Dustin Bush on fumes after making Broadway against Bush (Bush would depart at the hands of Scott Farnsworth in sixth place) and rocketed past the two million chip mark in chopping a sizeable chunk of chips from Bonkowski’s rack.
Although he would temporarily lose the lead to Farnsworth at mid-final table, Le wouldn’t be denied in his pursuit. He eliminated Dave Tobin in fourth place and took down Bonkowski in third to enter heads up play with a 2:1 lead over Farnsworth. With both men looking to earn their first WSOP bracelet, many settled in for what they thought might be a long slog.
Instead, the heads-up battle was over in about 30 minutes. Le never really let Farnsworth back into the tournament – although Farnsworth did draw under a million chip deficit at one point – and simply snuffed the WSOP dreams of Farnsworth out. On the final hand, the players would see a board of J-5-2-8-2 and get the rest of Farnsworth’s chips to the center of the table. “Show the deuce,” came a shout from the rail and indeed Le held “The Hammer,” the infamous 7-2, for the rivered trips. All Farnsworth could muster was a J-6 as he congratulated Le for his bracelet victory.
1. Danny Le, $188,815
2. Scott Farnsworth, $116,663
3. Tyler Bonkowski, $80,706
4. Dave Tobin, $56,740
5. Dale Eberle, $40,550
6. Dustin Bush, $29,466
7. Andrew Beversdorf, $21,778
8. Daniel Huseman, $16,376
9. Esmeralda Villafuerte, $12,532
There was to be a second bracelet awarded on Thursday evening, but Event #21, the $3000 Six-Handed No Limit Hold’em tournament, was stopped by WSOP curfew with five players remaining. Will Givens will lead Calvin Lee, Mark Herm, Martin Kozlov and Steven Thompson Vila back to the felt on Friday afternoon to determine the champion. Also expected to be awarded on Friday are bracelets in Event #23, the $2000 No Limit Hold’em tournament (2015 WSOP bracelet winner Anthony Spinella leads the final 27 runners) and possibly Event #24, the $10,000 H.O.R.S.E. World Championship, where 2016 WSOP bracelet winner Jason Mercier is looking to add to his win total as the chip leader of the final 14 players.
