The first bracelet event in this year’s World Series of Poker – the $500 buy-in Casino Employees NLHE competition, took rather longer than anticipated but has concluded at the Rio in Las Vegas, with Roland Reparejo claiming the main prize of $82,835 after 3 days of action and a tense early-hours-of-the-morning adjournment at the heads up stage.
876 entrants registered for the event, which was whittled down to just fifty one after the first 2 days of action. Those survivors were in turn distilled down to a final table that featured Reparejo, along with Corey Emery, Charles Nguyen, Olivier Doremus, John Taylor, Brian Wong, Marcin Sobczak, David Luttbeg and Kevin Chiem.
Despite expectations that this would be the final day of the event, the early hours of the morning found Emery and Reparejo still battling it out, necessitating a call by the tournament director for the chips to be bagged and the two finalists to return on Thursday afternoon.
The duo returned to the table Thursday with Reparejo holding a 2 to 1 chip advantage that he leveraged into victory after just six hands of play, winning all but one of the final hands of the game and sending Emery home with a well-earned runner-up prize of $51,037.
Other final payments included:
Charles Nguyen $33,073
Olivier Doremus $24,203
John Taylor $17,975
Brian Wong $13,528
Marcin Sobczak $10,308
David Luttbeg $7,947
Kevin Chiem $6,192