In a nine-hour battle that went into early Friday morning, Pat Lyons was able to deny Benjamin Zamani’s drive to a title in winning the World Poker Tour’s Legends of Poker at the Bicycle Casino in Bell Gardens, CA.
Lyons actually came to the felt with the second largest stack to start the day (4.98 million), behind only local favorite William Vo’s 5.26 million stack. Upeshka de Silva held down the third place slot at the start of the day’s action with 4.475 million, while Zamani was in a perfect stalking position with his 3.215 million in markers. Todd Peterson (1.93 million) and Rafael Ferreira de Oliveira (780,000) were the two players on watch for elimination as the cards went into the air on Thursday afternoon.
Oliveira, sitting on a stack that was utterly dominated by everyone else at the table, knew he had to strike quickly to get back in the game. He tried just that on Hand 7 when, after Zamani limped in and de Silva pounded in a raise, Oliveira came over the top with an all-in. Zamani got out of the way but de Silva called, showing 7♦ 6♦ to go against Oliveira’s pocket Jacks. The K-Q-10-6 flop and turn looked great for Oliveira’s double-up potential, but another six on the river ended those thoughts. Hitting his trips on the river, de Silva instead knocked off Oliveira, sending him back to Brazil with a sixth place payday ($85,760).
With everyone now quite settled with large stacks (even Peterson’s two million chips as the short stack represented 34 big blinds), it was thought that the players would just shuffle chips around and wait for the blinds to increase. That process, however, saw Vo bleed out his stack slowly as Lyons took over the lead on Hand 28 and drop under four million in chips by Hand 31. The most destructive hand for Vo came only seven hands later.
Peterson would lead from the cutoff with a raise and Vo, in the small blind, was faced with a difficult decision. As Lyons wasn’t at the table when the cards were finished dealing, his hand was dead and Vo was essentially the big blind. The deliberation led Vo to make the call and, after an 8-6-3 rainbow flop, Vo check-called another bet from Peterson. A second three on the turn brought another check-call from Vo but, on a deuce river, he suddenly came to life with a 1.4 million bet.
Now it was Peterson’s turn to be perplexed as he took his time in making the decision. After a good two minutes in the tank, Peterson decided to call and it proved to be the right move. Vo showed a 9-5 for complete air and Peterson, after turning up an A-8 off suit for two pair, took the more than 4.5 million pot down in sending Vo to the short stack.
Vo would never recover from that hand against Peterson. On Hand 45, with a J-8-3-Q-2 board showing and more than half his chips in the pot, Vo called a de Silva river all-in and showed Big Slick for Ace high. De Silva had hit from the start, his K-J flopping a second Jack, and gotten Vo to commit all his chips to the cause. After starting the day as the chip leader, Vo had to have some disappointment in finishing the tournament in fifth place.
De Silva took over the lead at this point, but Lyons was only about 300K in chips behind him while Peterson (4.51 million) and Zamani (1.84 million) brought up the rear. It would take the same number of hands (45) to eliminate the fourth place player as it had taken to eliminate the first two members of the final table but, once it came, it came in dramatic fashion.
Under the gun, de Silva popped the betting to 250K and, on the button, Lyons took the action up to 850K. While Zamani had no interest from the small blind, Peterson did from the big blind. He would move all in and get de Silva to fold, but Lyons looked him up. Showing Big Chick (A-Q), de Silva was in a race with Lyons’ pocket tens and pulled a lady from the deck on a Q-7-4 flop. The five on the turn wasn’t helpful to anyone, but the ten was a dagger through Peterson’s heart. Giving Lyons a set on the river, the hand would go to the Californian as Peterson was sent from the final table in fourth place.
At this point, it looked like the eventual heads up match was going to be Lyons and de Silva:
Lyons, 11.005 million
de Silva, 8.155 million
Zamani, 1.48 million
But it was time for Zamani to shine. Making his second final table of the Season XV schedule, Zamani earned a double up through Lyons on Hand 106 and, on Hand 138, used flopped quad tens to double again through de Silva. Zamani would have liked to have completed the elimination of de Silva, but it was Lyons who would be the benefactor of de Silva’s chips, setting up what would be a battle between Lyons and Zamani.
Starting off heads up with almost a 2.5:1 lead, Lyons never let Zamani bring the two chip stacks closer together, but Zamani didn’t exactly roll over and let Lyons steamroll him. It would take an hour of play between the two gentlemen before, on Hand 201, Lyons moved all in and Zamani made the call. Both had picked up Aces, but Lyons’ eight kicker was bigger than Zamani’s deuce. The Aces didn’t come into play on the 9-9-7-J-10 board, but Lyons’ eight gave him a straight and the championship of the 2016 WPT Legends of Poker.
1. Pat Lyons, $615,346
2. Benjamin Zamani, $341,412
3. Upeshka de Silva, $198,720
4. Todd Peterson, $149,715
5. William Vo, $113,105
6. Rafael Ferreira de Oliveira, $85,760