Connor Berkowitz, a 25-year-old online poker professional who plays under the handles connisaurusrex and nyr9414, has won the inaugural Event 66: $777 buy-in Lucky Sevens No Limit Hold’em, the last of the preliminary World Series of Poker tournaments to produce a result Monday.
The 4 day event attracted 4,422 entries, creating a prize pool of $3.09 million which allowed 468 players to cash; Berkowitz’s share of the pool was $487,784…and his first World Series of Poker winner’s bracelet. It was only the second WSOP event the young New Jersey professional had played in, and his first major win since going professional in January this year.
“This is like a dream for me,” he said of the victory. “I’m speechless. I literally don’t know what to say other than this is a dream come true. It’s every poker player’s dream.”
Much of the action in this event was led by David Yu, but late in the game he fell at third place on a bad run of cards, opening the heads up stage to Texas player John Armbrust and Berkowitz, with the latter holding a 4 to 1 chip advantage.
Berkowitz quickly leveraged that advantage into a convincing win, dispatching Armbrust in just half an hour with a second placing cash of $301,615
Other final table cashes were:
3. David Yu – $217,173
4. Jeffrey Dobrin – $160,496
5. Faraz Jaka – $119,606
6. John Gallaher – $89,890
7. John Zimmerman – $68,098
8. Matt Matros – $52,033
9. Massimo Mosele – $40,085
In other World Series of Poker news, Day 1A starters in the Main Event totalled 741, the smallest Day 1A field in years. That shrank to 470 by the time the first day players had bagged their chips (see previous report). The official chip counts list William Kakon as Day 1A chip leader on 152,325 chips.
Day 1B – still in action when we went to press Tuesday morning – attracted a considerably bigger field at 1,716, which brings the total number of entries so far in the Main Event to 2,457.
Around dinner break Monday (Las Vegas time) there was some excitement and a pause when a large rain storm hit Las Vegas and the Brasilia Room started leaking. Staff and security quickly moved the 23 tables to another room.
UPDATE:
Day 1 B concluded at the World Series of Poker Monday night with the original field of 1,716 reduced to 1,134 survivors. They are led by Hamid Feiz with 182,675 chips, pursued by Adil Kahn on 156,800.