Tony Tran wins the WPT Bounty Scramble; five new 2019 tour dates announced

Tony Tran wins the WPT Bounty Scramble; five new 2019 tour dates announced

Two stories involving Adam Pliska’s World Poker Tour including a victory for Tony Tran at the bestbet Bounty Scramble in Jacksonville, and news of five European and Canadian stops in 2019. 

Tony Tran wins the WPT Bounty Scramble; five new 2019 tour dates announcedAnother World Poker Tour (WPT) event is in the books, and Tony Tran becomes the latest member of the WPT Champions Club after taking down the WPT bestbet Bounty Scramble Main Event in Jacksonville.

The $5,000 buy-in event surpassed the $1m guarantee by $648,280, thanks to a field size of 356-entrants, and the final table contained players who had contested no fewer than 11-WPT final tables.

Chief amongst them was Jake Schwartz, who marched into his fourth WPT final table as the chip leader. Kelly Minkin, who herself had made two final tables, began second in chips, followed by Ray Qartomy (3 appearances), and Ping Liu (two appearances).

Final Table Chips

Seat 1: Jake Schwartz – 4,785,000
Seat 2: Ping Liu – 1,710,000
Seat 3: Ray Qartomy – 2,345,000
Seat 4: Dominique Mosley – 515,000
Seat 5: Kelly Minkin – 3,210,000
Seat 6: Tony Tran – 1,675,000

With over 160 big blinds in his stack, Schwartz was the big money favourite to finally land a WPT title, and he did make it to the end zone; falling short as the title went the way of Tony Tran.

Tran began the heads-up encounter a slight dog against Schwartz with 7,425,000 leading 6,815,000, and Schwartz extended that lead after firing three streets, including a flop check-raise, on Kd6d3h7c2s, only for Tran to bail out on the river, after shipping 1.5m chips to his opponent. Tran then doubled into the lead QQ>99, and Schwartz never had a look-in after that, getting his last chips into the middle A5<AK.

It was a fairytale of a result for Tran who was down to two big blinds with 30-players left and earned more than his entire live tournament winnings since 2011 with this win.

It’s Tran’s second title after beating 739 entrants in a $400 buy-in event at the Borgata back in 2012 for $58,202. His previous best score was the 85th place finish in the 2015 WSOP Main Event for $68,624.

Here are the final table results: 

Final Table Results

1. Tony Tran – $341,486*
2. Jake Schwartz – $228,590
3. Kelly Minkin – $146,973
4. Ray Qartomy – $95,684
5. Ping Liu – $73,734
6. Dominique Mosley – $60,981
*Includes a $15,000 seat into the Tournament of Champions

Three other tarantulas who spun webs deep into this thing were the WPT Champions Club members, Brian Altman (9th) and Samuel Panzica (15th), and the Triple Crown winner, Harrison Gimbel (10th).

The next event for the WPT Main Tour is in the Playground Poker Club in Montreal, October 28, and we talk a little bit about that in Part II of this little WPT melodrama.

The WPT Announces partypoker LIVE Deal 

In August, the WPT and partypoker LIVE announced a new four-year partnership that would see the two behemoths host up to seven events across Europe and Canada, and the first five are out of the bag.

The above mentioned WPT Montreal is the first stop to contain WPT500, WPTDeepStacks and WPT Main Event tournaments, and it seems that will be the modus operandi moving forward.

Here are the new events.

Schedule

WPT Russia, Casino Sochi, Jan 18-27 – $3,300 Main Event
WPT Barcelona, Casino Barcelona, Mar 9-17 – €3,300 Main Event
WPT Euro Championships, April 6-14 – £3,300 Main Event
WPT Germany, Aug 9-19 – €3,300 Main Event
WPT Montreal, Oct 25-Nov 3 – CAD 5,300 Main Event

WPT Russia and WPT Germany take advantage of partypoker’s relationship with the Sochi and King’s Casinos, hosting first-time events for the WPT.

The WPT European Championships has a new home. Last year, Ole Schemion defeated 339-entrants to win the €3,300 WPT European Championships for €218,435 in Berlin. The 2019 event will take place at Dusk till Dawn (DTD). The last time there was a WPT event at DTD there was a WPT500 and Main Tour stop with Iaron Lightbourne conquering a field of 450-entrants to win the £200,000 first prize in the £2,200 WPT UK Main Event, and Richard Harris picking up a £150,000 cheque for defeating 1,616-entrants in the WPT500.

The WPT returns to Barcelona for the first time since Season XII when Chanracy Khun defeated a pre-November Niner, Ben Pollak, to win the 249-entrant, €3,500 WPT Barcelona Main Event.

WPT Montreal is old hat.

The WPT has been here before, but never managed to pull in the numbers anywhere near those enjoyed by the PokerStars European Poker Tour (EPT). Back then, the WPT partnered with partypoker frequently, but the satellite numbers never materialised. Let’s hope a revitalised partypoker under the tutelage of Tom Waters, John Duthie and Rob Yong can change all of that.