Last year, Jonathan Hilton finished second a $1,000 No-Limit Hold’em event at the World Series of Poker (WSOP). As Field of Dream’s Moonlight Graham may have said, “It was like coming this close to your dreams…and then watching them brush past you, like a stranger in a crowd.”
Last Friday, Hilton got another shot at that dream and this time achieved it, winning the WSOP National Championship, his first-ever WSOP bracelet, and $355,599.
The WSOP National Championship is the invitation-only culmination of the WSOP Circuit season. There were four ways by which someone could be invited: win a WSOP Circuit Main Event (20 players total), be the casino champion at a Circuit stop by earning the most points in that stop’s events (20 players total), finish amongst the top 60 total WSOP Circuit points earners at the end of the season, and finish in the top 100 of the WSOP Player of the Year (POY) rankings. For every duplicate qualifier (for instance, if a Circuit Main Event winner is also the casino champion), an additional cumulative points earner qualifies.
Everyone’s buy-ins were free except for the POY qualifiers, who had to pay $10,000 to play, though they were not required to participate. The field of 127 included all 100 automatic qualifiers (20 Circuit Main Event winners, 18 casino champions, and 62 at-large qualifiers) plus 27 players on the POY list who bought-in.
Hilton was an at-large qualifier, ranking 23rd on the 2012-2013 WSOP Circuit leaderboard with 167.5 points. He won one Circuit ring during the season and cashed eight times for $87,766. For comparison, the overall points leader was Ari Engel with 252.5 points, earned via two rings and 14 cashes. Ryan Reiss was the top money earner, winning $266,349 during the season. He cashed ten times, but interestingly, never won an event. The bulk of his earnings were from a second place finish in the Horseshoe Hammond Main Event.
Jonathan Hilton is just 23-years old and is a full-time online poker pro. Originally hailing from Chattanooga, Tennessee, he moved to Toronto so that he could keep his career going. Using the screen name “ballallday12,” Hilton has amassed almost $1 million in online tournament winnings, according to PocketFives.com, though that number may be slightly outdated, as his profile on the site lists his location as Costa Rica. With this victory, he has now won close to $900,000 in live tournaments. His lone previous live tournament win was at the WSOP Circuit Council Bluffs stop in April, when he took down one of the $365 No-Limit Hold’em events.
Hilton almost didn’t play in the Championship, as his mom is very ill and his parents celebrated their 26th wedding anniversary on Friday. He was going to stay with his parents, but his mother urged him to go play. “I am really blessed,” he told WSOP officials after the tournament. “I wake up every morning and am thankful for everything I have.”
2013 World Series of Poker National Championship – Final Table Results
1. Jonathan Hilton – $355,599
2. Max Steinberg – $219,799
3. Robert Panitch – $156,743
4. Brock Parker – $114,008
5. Tim Bowman – $84,544
6. Joe Tehan – $63,894
7. Nicolas Vaca-Rondon – $49,187
8. Jeremy Ausmus – $38,570
