Three World Series of Poker bracelet wins to nail to the mast including Sean Swingruber winning the $10,000 Heads-Up Championship, and $1,500 No-Limit Hold’em wins for Isaac Baron and Brett Apter.
Ed Balls.
Rachel Gotobed.
Claire Conway-Crapp.
Names you’re unlikely to forget.
Sean Swingruber also fell into that bracket until he went and won a World Series of Poker (WSOP) bracelet.
As a cash game player who rarely plays tournaments, one imagines Swingruber is resting against his headboard, staring at his bracelet like it’s an amputated hand.
The 30-year-old didn’t win any old bracelet; he won one of the toughest in the business: Event #15: $10,000 Heads-Up No-Limit Hold’em Championship.
Swingruber may have duct tape holding his tournament game together, but his $186,356 reward for beating seven top players is his second six-figure score of the year after finishing second in a 1,770-entrant, $1m GTD side event at the World Poker Tour (WPT) Los Angeles Poker Classic (LAPC) for $132,220.
112-entrants created a logistical headache for the organisers who decided to allow a portion of the field to compete in a $5,000 pre-event round, and Swingruber emerged from that shoebox after beating Bill Klein. After entering the event, proper, Swingruber defeated Gregory Jensen, Jimmy Guerrero, Jimmy D’Ambrosio, and Cord Garcia before beating Ben Yu in a four-hour final.
Other players running deep in this one included the 2015 Champ, Keith Lehr, 2015 Round of 16 finisher Jake Schindler, and 2009 Round of 16 finisher, Jimmy D’Ambrosio.
Yu was making his second final table of the series and currently stands ninth in the Player of the Year standings.
“I would definitely not want to play 50,000 hands with Ben {Yu}. I think he would crush me.” Said Swingruber after his win.
ITM results
Quarter-finals
Sean Swingruber beat Jimmy D’Ambrosio
Cord Garcia beat Matthias Eibinger
Ben Yu beat Kristen Bicknell
Keith Lehr beat Jake Schindler
Semi-finals
Sean Swingruber beat Cord Garcia
Ben Yu beat Keith Lehr
Final
Sean Swingruber beat Ben Yu
The cash
Sean Swingruber – $186,356
Ben Yu – $115,174
Cord Garcia – $73,333
Keith Lehr – $73,333
Jimmy D’Ambrosio – $31,151
Jake Schindler – $31,151
Kristen Bicknell $31,151
Matthias Eibinger – $31,151
Isaac Baron wins event #16: $1,500 No-Limit hold’em 6-Handed
PokerNews scribe Chad Holloway reminds us that Isaac Baron once won Card Player Magazine’s first-ever Online Player of the Year Award. That was back in 2007 when people like Baron were printing money, and two years later, Baron cashed in the WSOP for the first time finishing seventh in 2009 $5,000 No-Limit Hold’em – I can’t imagine he would have thought it would have taken him a decade to win one.
Baron conquered a field of 1,832-entrants, over four days, to win Event #16: $1,500 No-Limit Hold’em 6-Handed. The European Poker Tour (EPT) Main Event winner, Stephen Graner, finished third, and James Hughes had another deep run finishing fourth (he finished runner-up to Thomas Reynolds in a $1,000 back in 2017).
Baron’s $407,739 purse pushes his live tournament earnings above the $6.1m mark. It’s his best WSOP performance since coming fourth in the 2014 $10,000 Pot-Limit Omaha Championship.
Final table results
1. Isaac Baron – $407,739
2. Ong Dingxiang – $251,937
3. Stephen Graner – $177,085
4. James Hughes – $126,011
5. Richard Hasnip – $90,791
6. Cameron Marshall – $66,243
Three other stars who went deeper than a mole on crack in this one were the New Jersey online dragon Michael Gagliano (19th), the newly crowned WPT Player of the Year, Erkut Yilmaz (22nd), and the WPT Champion, James Romero (36th).
Brian Apter Wins Event #17: $1,500 No-Limit Hold’em Shootout
Someone has slipped something magical into the bathwater of Brian Apter.
Days after winning a 175-entrant $1,100 No-Limit Hold’em Turbo Bounty event at The Venetian for $26,887, Apter defeated 917 players to win the bracelet in Event #17: $1,500 No-Limit Hold’em Shootout.
Apter, who beat Erik Seidel, heads-up in Round 2, now has $1.1m in live tournament winnings. It was his fifth win, and he now has the matching bracelet and gold ring set.
It was a sturdy old final table.
Anatolii Zyrin finished 4/999 in the 2017 partypoker MILLIONS Russia, Tommy Nguyen won last year’s Monster Stack for a million bucks, Manuel Ruivo finished sixth in last year’s Millionaire Maker, and Cary Catz finished eight in the recent $50,000 No-Limit Hold’em.
Final table results
1. Brett Apter – $238,824
2. Anatolii Zyrin – $147,594
3. Tommy Nguyen – $106,351
4. Adrian Scarpa – $77,591
5. Manuel Ruivo – $57,326
6. Cary Katz – $42,897|
7. Shintaro Baba – $32,517
8. Michael O’Grady – $24,973
9. Kenna James – $19,436
Three other fantastic poker players who had to keep setting the alarm to get up for this one included the two-time bracelet winner, Athanasios Polychronopoulos (25th), the former WSOP Main Event Champ, Joe Cada (26th), and the Poker Hall of Famer, Erik Seidel (27th).
