Twenty-five-year old Florida poker professional and high stakes cash game exponent Sam Soverel has claimed his first World Series of Poker bracelet….and the main prize of $185,317…after besting a field of 1,106 entries which created a prize pool totalling $995,400 for the $1,000 buy-in Pot Limit Omaha event, enabling 166 entrants to cash.
This was the largest of Soverel’s three WSOP cashes to date and pushes his live tourney career earnings to almost $300,000.
“Coming into this year’s series, a $1,000 event isn’t something I would normally play,” Soverel told WSOP organisers after the game. “But I had a really bad week in cash games, so I decided to take a few days off. Then, I late registered right before the dinner break and came in with only ten big blinds when I started, and then ran good.”
That was an understatement; Soverel was low in chips on Day 3 of the competition but then he managed to win several big final table pots, which he cleverly leveraged into a chip lead, becoming the player to watch at the six-hour-long table.
Soverel faced Kirby Lowery of Houston, Texas in the heads up; the Texan gave a good account of himself but there was no stopping a dominating Soverel and he had to be content with the second placing prize of $114,486…his third WSOP cash so far this year.
Garrett Garvin finished in third place for $81,080, trailed by Zachary Hench at fourth ($58,164), Brazilian Bruno Borges fifth for $42,270, sixth placed Jeffrey Landherr ($31,126), Jared Keppel at seventh ($23,228), Finland’s Henri Ojala at eighth for $17,570 and fellow Finn Juuso Leppanen who finished ninth and won $13,474.