Rok Gostisa Wins 2021 PokerGO Tour Championship

The poker calendar is not always bound to the regular calendar. There is usually a pause around the holidays, but December is often no different in the poker world than January. The World Poker Tour, for instance, crossed calendar years. The new PokerGO Tour, however, goes January to December and as such, just concluded its season. Winning the final event was Rok Gostisa, who won the $50,000 buy-in PokerGO Tour Championship on Tuesday night in Las Vegas.

Because of the buy-in and the time of year, the field was small – just 46 entries – and paid to only seven places. Gostisa was the shortest stack going into the final day, so really any upward movement was gravy for him.

“I didn’t expect to win because I came in seven out of seven, so it feels amazing,” he told the poker media afterward.

But this is poker and just about anything can happen. Within the first couple hours, Gostisa had gone from worst to first and then proceeded to knock players out. He eliminated Ren Lin in sixth place with pocket Sixes versus J-T, then sent Jacob Ferro to the rail in fifth place with Tens versus A-2.

Gostisa also eliminated Sergi Reixach in third place, setting up the heads-up duel with Michael Gathy. Gostisa was in good shape, going into heads-up with nearly a 2-to-1 chip lead.

But, to use that phrase again, this is poker, and things rarely go smoothly for anyone. Gathy made a huge run, taking over the lead and running his advantage up to about 10-to-1. The problem was, Gostisa still had chips.

Gostisa fought back, though, and regained the lead on a double-up when his Q-T outkicked Gathy’s Q-6 on a Q-8-2-7 board. A nine on the river was one of the cards Gostisa needed, as his kicker remained good.

Shortly after that, the two men went to the mattresses again. Gostisa moved all-in with 6-7 suited and Gathy called with Q-J suited. The flop was A-A-7, putting Gostisa in the lead with two pair. A third Ace landed on the turn, giving him a full house; a flush was also out of play at this point. Gathy could still win with a better full house or the fourth Ace (another 7 would be a chop), but none of those came on the river and Gostisa had his unlikely victory and the $689,100 first prize.

Rok Gostisa now has nearly $1.8 million in live tournament earnings, almost $1.6 million of which he won this year. Drilling down further, over $1 million of his earnings have come in December alone.

“I was basically just playing online and because of COVID I didn’t travel,” Gostisa said. “This year has been going well, so I’m really happy about how it turned out.”