Duo came up big
The PokerGO Tour (PGT) Championship kicks off on Tuesday, but before that could happen, there was still the matter of the two Dream Seats to award. And with the conclusion of the PGT Last Chance series on Sunday, those seats went to Samuel Laskowitz and Dylan DeStefano.
The PGT Championship is a freeroll with a $1 million prize pool, open to the top 40 finishers on the 2023 PGT leaderboard. In addition to those 40 players, two more were going to make it into the field via the PGT Last Chance series.
The PGT Last Chance series consisted of six $10,000 buy-in tournaments, held at the PokerGO Studio in Las Vegas. Players received PGT points depending on how they finished in each event and the top two points earners for the series who were not also in the top 40 on the season-long PGT leaderboard received the Dream Seats.
Laskowitz finished with 307 PGT points on the Last Chance leaderboard, thanks to first, fifth, and seventh place finishes during the series. As it turns out, his victory in Event #3 would have been enough to win the Dream Seat. DeStefano had 276 points – he also had a win plus a fifth place and 13th place finish in Last Chance events.
Laskowitz was 108th on the overall PGT leaderboard, while DeStefano was 117th.
Points still matter
The top five on the PGT leaderboard are Isaac Haxton with 2,847 points, Chris Brewer with 2,490, Stephen Chidwick with 2,402, 2023 WSOP Main Event champ Daniel Weinman with 2,300, and Alex Foxen with 2,103.
So those players were obviously comfortably in the PGT Championship field, but the points they earned were important, as their starting stacks in the tournament correlate to said points. Each player will begin with 1,000 chips for every ten points. Haxton, for example, will have 285,000 chips.
The two Last Chance qualifiers will have 100,000-chip starting stacks. That works out well, as the bottom of the top 40 won’t have much more than that. Maxx Coleman, in 40th place, has 1,137 points on the PGT leaderboard. Just ahead of him are Jason Koon with 1,162 points, Orpen Kisacikoglu with 1,165 points, Arthur Morris with 1,183, and Juan Maceiras with 1,200.
The championship “bubble boy” of sorts was Jim Collopy, who ended up 41st on the PGT leaderboard with 1,108 points.
The PGT Championship begins Tuesday and concludes on Wednesday. The winner will bank $500,000 and the five other players at the final table will receive portions of the other half million.
Image credit: PokerGO.com