Three sevens on a slot machine usually means a jackpot for the person that hits it (“777”). That was the case for popular tournament professional Pat ‘IchiiKawawa’ Lyons on Saturday morning as he picked up his first piece of jewelry at the 2020 online WSOP. Saturday evening turned out to be Scott ‘BudLightLime” Hempel’s coming out party as he triumphed in the $1000 Eight Handed Turbo Deepstack event.
Lyons Roars to Victory
Both tournaments on Friday and Saturday would come very close to eclipsing the $1 million mark but would eventually fall short. For the $777 No Limit Hold’em tournament, Event #17 on the WSOP.com schedule, 917 individual players would put up another 465 rebuys to build a $967,400 prize pool. Once ‘ejanicom’ left the event in 208th place ($0), Lyons would then storm to the final table with the lead and never faced much of a challenge.
Lyons would knock off Dave ‘DunningKrugr’ Alfa in ninth and maintained a dominant chip lead through to the final three players. Lyons would take down Barry ‘_MLB_’ Wenger in third place and, facing Chris ‘NJ_GLive’ Ginley for the crown, made quick work of the situation. On the final hand, Lyons would turn trip Queens to beat out Ginley’s Big Slick that had flopped an Ace, taking home his first ever piece of WSOP hardware.
1. Pat ‘IchiiKawawa’ Lyons, $173,551
2. Chris ‘NJ_GLive’ Ginley, $107,478
3. Barry ‘_MLB_’ Wenger, $76,327
4. Jonathan ‘Art.Vandelay’ Dokler, $54,948
5. Jim ‘Bocaratone’ Collopy, $40,147
6. Vincent ‘veepoh’ Pontrello, $29,602
7. Scott ‘BudLightLime’ Hempel, $22,250
8. Julian ‘Julian’ Parmann, $16,832
9. Dave ‘DunningKrugr’ Alfa, $12,963
Lyons is arguably the most acclaimed player to have captured a bracelet at this year’s online WSOP. The holder of a World Poker Tour title and over $1.5 million in career tournament earnings, Lyons also is a WSOP ring winner. He is now only one step away from poker’s “Triple Crown” after picking up the bracelet in this event.
Saturday Night’s Alright to Win Cash for Hempel
The $1000 Eight Handed No Limit Hold’em Turbo Deepstack did not fail in any aspect on Saturday. The 697 players who stepped forth to play also thought enough of their chances that they fired 290 rebuys into the prize pool. The $937,650 prize pool was enough for 143 players to put the few hours effort in to get a return of a minimum $1594 on their work.
Obviously not affected by playing late into the night on Friday, Hempel came to the final table behind veteran pro Barry ‘puigmyfriend’ Hutter, but he wasted little time in working his way up the leaderboard. It was Hempel, in fact, who took down Hutter with a J-10 against Hutter’s A-Q in fifth place. This lit a fire under Hempel as, in quick succession, he forced Daniel ‘IntoTheRiver’ Fischer and “GoatMaster’ to the rail in fourth and third places, respectively, to go to heads up against Myles ‘Shipthemoney’ Kotler with nearly a 10 million chip lead.
The duo put on an outstanding performance for much of the heads-up fight, with Kotler taking the lead from Hempel at several points in the evening’s festivities. On the final hand, Kotler would call off his chips to a Hempel all in at the wrong moment. Kotler’s K-10 looked decent, but it was drawing pretty thin to Hempel’s pocket tens. Once the J-8-6-J-A board ran out, Hempel’s tens stood tall as he picked up the 2020 online WSOP bracelet.
1. Scott ‘BudLightLime’ Hempel, $181,060
2. Myles ‘Shipthemoney’ Kotler, $111,955
3. ‘GoatMaster,’ $78,856
4. Daniel ‘IntoTheRiver’ Fischer, $56,259
5. Barry ‘puigmyfriend’ Hutter, $40,694
6. Landon ‘ActionDealer’ Tice, $29,817
7. Harrison, ‘harrisond33’ Dobin, $22,222
8. Matthew ‘EarvinMagic’ Parry, $16,784
GGPoker Leg of 2020 Online WSOP Starts Today
While the WSOP.com version of the 2020 online WSOP continues until the end of July, the GGPoker leg of the schedule kicks off on Sunday. Open to the international community (be sure to check GGPoker to ensure you can play, as U. S. players cannot take part in the events on GGPoker), the GGPoker schedule kicks off with a charitable event, the $1111 Every 1 for COVID Relief tournament, before putting up two events on its first day. One of those tournaments is “The Opener,” a $100 buy in tournament that has a guaranteed prize pool of $2 million. The other is a smaller tournament, the $525 Six Handed No Limit Hold’em Super Turbo Bounty event.
As this is the first time that there has ever been an online WSOP event contested on an international scale, there is no clue as to how this is going to come out. It could be a raging success or the GGPoker servers could crash from the overload of so many people trying to get in from around the world. The poker world will have to wait and see as, for the next couple of weeks at the minimum, both WSOP.com and GGPoker will have the virtual chips flying in the 2020 online WSOP.