The 2022 PokerGO Cup is in the books, and it came down to the very end to determine the overall champion of the festival. Jeremy Ausmus was able to hold onto his lead in the overall championship, needing every bit of the third place points earned in his stay at the Main Event final table to ward off the champion of the $50,000 finale, Sean Perry. It was a tremendous finish to what was a hotly contested series.
Perry Starts with Chip Lead, Finishes with Chip Lead
The $50,000 No Limit Hold’em tournament, the eighth event of the 2022 PokerGO schedule, saw a decent field of 32 entries come to the felt. Only five men would partake of the bounty, however, and PokerGO officials decided to play down to that number on Thursday instead of the usual six-player final table. Perry led the way at the start of the action on Friday, but every player there had additional impetus to do well in the tournament.
Ausmus started the day in the lead for the overall championship of the series, but he started the day on the final table as the short stack. The difficulties that Ausmus faced were that three other competitors on the table – Perry, Brock Wilson and Daniel Negreanu – could all catch him in the overall standings if he were to be eliminated early (Nick Schulman had a mathematical chance, but it was dependent on him winning the event and Ausmus finishing in fifth). Thus, not only did Ausmus have the pressure of climbing from the basement on the leaderboard in the tournament, but he also had the additional headache of trying to defend his championship points lead.
Surprisingly, Ausmus thrived in the circumstances. Negreanu would be the first to go in the tournament, his pocket sevens clashing with Wilson’s pocket tens, to end his day in fifth place and eliminate him from the overall title picture. Schulman would head to the cash out cage next in fourth place, advancing Ausmus further up the ladder.
Perry decided this was the point that he needed to get going. He would dismiss Ausmus in third place and headed to the heads-up fight with a dominant 5.61 million to 810,000 chip edge. On the final hand, Wilson pushed off the button with a great hand for heads up, a K♣ Q♣, and Perry looked him up with a pocket pair of Jacks. The board featured an uneventful runout, keeping Perry in the lead and giving him the championship of the tournament.
1. Sean Perry, $640,000
2. Brock Wilson, $416,000
3. Jeremy Ausmus, $256,000
4. Nick Schulman, $176,000
5. Daniel Negreanu, $112,000
Ausmus Holds Off Perry for Overall Title
With his outstanding third place finish in the $50K Main Event, Ausmus only had one more obstacle preventing him from taking the overall championship. The points earned in the Main Event put Ausmus at 658 points, but one man had a chance to catch him and he was in the heads-up battle. If he were to win the Main Event, Wilson would take over the lead in the standings to snatch the overall title from Ausmus.
Alas, Wilson’s massive chip disadvantage worked against him. His second-place finish did give him enough points to move into third place overall and, as it turned out, Ausmus did need that third-place finish to hold off Perry in the end:
1. Jeremy Ausmus, 658 points
2. Sean Perry, 616
3. Brock Wilson, 570
4. Cary Katz, 346
5. Ali Imsirovic, 300
6. Nick Schulman, 299
7. Daniel Negreanu, 277*
8. Sean Winter, 269
9. Bill Klein, 246
10. Darren Elias, 234
(* – Defending champion)
“It’s great,” Ausmus said while receiving the trophy and the $50,000 bonus for winning the overall title. “It was a big sweat to win this. Everyone coming into the final table could’ve won it and I barely eked it out.”
“I was telling someone earlier that I’ve gotten crushed in here,” Ausmus reminisced. “In the U.S. Poker Open and Poker Masters, I was home for dinner every night and I didn’t realize what it was like to have any points or anything. Then I was part of the big race and saw how involved everyone was and how people are into it, and I didn’t get that before. It’s cool. It’s a lot of fun. The extra $50K that’s given is awesome. It’s just really cool.”
(Photo courtesy of PokerGO.com)