The first-ever World Series of Poker Circuit stop in Cyprus closed out its Main Event on Tuesday, serving up a $1,000,000 top prize to Germany's Harald Sammer after five days of play on the island.
WSOPC Super Circuit Cyprus offered 15 rings at the Merit Royal Diamond Resort, a growing spot every year for tournament series across the board. A livestreamed final table capped off a $5,300 Main Event that drew a total prize pool of $6,860,000 — smashing a $5M guarantee.
The first big story of the tournament happened on Day 2, when Ren Lin was disqualified from the event after it was discovered he offered real-time assistance to a friend in an online tournament. Lin was ousted, and subsequently apologized, but his future with the WSOP and GGPoker is still to be determined.
Sammer stages comeback
Daniel Rezaei had entered the finale with a comfortable chip lead, and it looked like he was going to close out the easy win — until Sammer found the hot hand.
It started at the tail end of three-handed play, with Bernardo Neves all in for his tournament life with 
against Rezaei, who held 
. The board ran out 
and the tournament was down to two with Rezaei holding over 54 million chips to Sammer's 14 million.
An all-in clash moved things along after Sammer flopped a straight with 
on a board of 
. Sammer tossed out a handful of his remaining big blinds, prompting a shove from Rezaei with 
and top pair. The board ran out with no trouble for Sammer and he was back in the game with 26 million chips to Rezaei's 43 million.
The next double came soon after, when Sammer fired a 19 million all-in bet into a 10 million pot with the top pair of nines. Rezaei made the tempting hero call attempt with the bottom pair of deuces and the chip counts flipped to Sammer's advantage for the first time.
Heads-up play continued for a total of more than two hours and Rezaei held on to hope throughout, but his stack dwindled. A late double almost got things going for him, but the end came when Rezaei looked down at 
. Sammer had 
and they traded bets until all the chips were in the middle. The runout brought Sammer a queen and avoided Broadway to seal the deal on the $1,000,000 win.
WSOP Super Circuit Cyprus Main Event final table results
| Place | Player | Prize |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Harald Sammer | $1,000,000 |
| 2 | Daniel Rezaei | $670,000 |
| 3 | Bernardo Neves | $475,000 |
| 4 | Ali Al Kubasi | $345,000 |
| 5 | Jonathan Kalmar | $250,000 |
| 6 | Konstantin Voronin | $185,000 |
| 7 | Radoslav Stoyanov | $140,000 |
| 8 | Andrei Spataru | $107,500 |
| 9 | Georgios Tsouloftas | $82,500 |
