The 2021 WSOP Event #39: Pot-Limit Omaha (8-Handed) went to Josh Arieh. This was Arieh's third bracelet. His most recent win was also in PLO, the 2005 World Series of Poker $2,000 PLO event. The bracelet prior to that was in the 1999 $3k Limit Holdem event.
The prize pool reached $1,096,035, with 821 entries. There was a little over $200k up top for first, and second was scheduled to get $127k.
Day 1 ran for a little over 14 hours and saw 821 players whittled down to 58. At this point, Arieh was already at the top of the leaderboard. Among those that made it through this first hurdle were Ari Engel, Ben Yu, Dan Zack, and Will Jaffe.
Day 2 saw the final table set with Maxx Coleman hitting the bricks as the FT bubble boy in 10th place. Play continued with Day 2 ending only when the final five players were reached.
Arieh, Tommy Le, and Ivan Deyra were pretty close in the top three spots. Meanwhile, Robert Blair and Gabriel Andrade lagged behind significantly.
Day 3 starting chip counts
| Seat | Player Name | Chip Stack |
|---|---|---|
| No. 1 | Robert Blair | 2,450,000 |
| No. 2 | Tommy Le | 5,300,000 |
| No. 3 | Josh Arieh | 6,330,000 |
| No. 4 | Ivan Deyra | 5,110,000 |
| No. 5 | Gabriel Andrade | 1,400,000 |
The final hand
When play got down to just Le and Arieh, Le was falling behind. With just 6.6 million to Arieh's 14 million, it would be an uphill struggle.
Still, Le dug his nails in and managed to keep the heads-up game going for a good long while before the hammer fell.
Le was down to 3.7 million with blinds at 80k/160k. Le made it 480k from the button and Arieh made it 1.4 million. Le called with 7♦️5❤️4♣3♦️ and the flop came K♦️5♦️J♠.
Arieh shoved and Le went into the tank. He had bottom pair, a diamond flush draw, and if a six came on the turn he had an excellent wrap-around draw to a straight.
Le called. Arieh flipped over A♠T♦️A♣2❤️ for a pair of aces. He also had a blocker to Le's flush draw and a redraw to a straight if any of Le's other outs came in.
They didn't.
The turn was the K♣ and the river was the Q❤️. Game over.
Le won $126,549 for second place.
2021 WSOP Event #39: Pot-Limit Omaha (8-Handed) complete final table results
Featured image source: PokerGO
