Kevin “1sickdisease” Eyster won the 2015 World Poker Tour (WPT) Five Diamond World Poker Classic at the Bellagio over the weekend, notching the second WPT title of his career. For the win, Eyster pocketed over $1.5 million, and a trio of gaudy prizes: a Hublot Oceanographic 4000 watch, a pair of Monster 24K headphones and – get this – an Aurae Solid Gold MasterCard.
Eyster has been one of the most successful poker tournament players in the last several years. On the live tournament side, he has now won over $4 million, thanks in no small part to this most recent victory. As mentioned, he now has two WPT titles – the other was in 2013 at the WPT Seminole Hard Rock Showdown – to go along with another five WPT cashes. He also has eleven World Series of Poker cashes and one WSOP bracelet.
On the internet side of the ledger, Eyster once ranked as high as fourth in PocketFives’ online tournament rankings. He has over $3.5 million in online tourney winnings, about two-thirds of which were earned on PokerStars and Full Tilt Poker. His most sizable online cash was for $333,680 when he won an FTOPS event on Full Tilt in 2013.
Eyster began the six-handed final table in second place with 5.89 million chips. Jack Schwartz was the chip leader with 7.215 and nobody else had more than 2 million. It looked like it might be a two-person race.
What was perhaps Eyster’s most crucial hand of the final table came early on, on just the 25th hand of the final table. According to the WPT.com report, with five players now remaining, Eyster raised pre-flop to 160,000 and was re-raised by Schwartz to 465,000. Eyster three bet to 1.06 million and after some thought, Schwartz moved all-in. Eyster called another 5.21 million with pocket Aces, much to the dismay of Schwartz, who had pocket Queens. Not that mattered since a Queen never showed up, but Eyster ended up turning a wheel straight to double-up and grow his stack to 10.57 million, giving him more chips than the other four players combined.
From there, though, it was a bit of a struggle for Eyster. He cruised for a while, but then gradually found his stack shrinking. At one point he was under 5 million chips, but after eliminating Ben Yu in third place, Eyster was back up to 9.875 million, 575,000 more than his heads-up opponent, Bill Jennings.
Eyster got off to a fast start, growing his lead to nearly 2-to-1, but Jennings came charging back to completely flip the table. Eyster then did the exact same thing, taking a 12.425 million to 6.75 million chip lead, before closing out the tourney.
Eyster raised to 800,000 pre-flop and Jennings made the call. On the flop of A-9-4, Eyster bet 600,000 and Jennings called. With another 4 on the turn, Eyster bet 975,000 and Jennings, this time, decided to shove for 5.3 million. Eyster made the quick call, showing A-Q for two pair, Aces and Fours, while Jennings flipped over his K-9, giving him a worse two pair, Nines and Fours. Jennings didn’t get any help on the river and Eyster captured his second WPT title.
2015 World Poker Tour Five Diamond World Poker Classic – Final Table Results
1. Kevin Eyster – $1,587,382
2. Bill Jennings – $929,745
3. Ben Yu – $607,433
4. Jake Schwartz – $412,187
5. Cate Hall – $291,320
6. Eddie Ochana – $226,238
