Event #85 of the WSOP online was the last tourney of the series to kick off. It's the final opportunity this year to pile in and chase the dragon and put a bracelet on your wrist.
Event #85: $500 Closer [Last Chance] came with unlimited entries, a 25,000 chip starting stack, and blinds which opened at 150/300/25 and went up every 8 minutes.
It took barely the length of the average pre-COVID workday to get down to one player. But by the time late reg closed, there were 4,012 entries in the pot. This put the prize pool at $1,905,700, with $272,504 up top.
The high speed of play meant that the event did not award the final bracelet of the series. The $10k MILLIONS event started a few hours before the Closer but ended up being the last tourney to finish.
The field was full of first-timers anxious to put their name on the roll call of bracelets. There were also plenty of old hands, weighed down with jewelry, who wanted one more bit of glitter for their wrists. The event went to one of the latter: a Michael “Hneves” Gathy.
This win put Gathy into the exclusive 4+ club; there are only about fifty other players in the world with that much WSOP bling.
Final table, last chance
Despite the small stakes, there were plenty of big names, players who were in it more for the trophy than the money.
Daniel Negreanu, Andrew Neeme, Jack Salter, Rainer Kempe, Manig Loeser, Dan Almeida, Pete Chen and Shankar Pillai were in from the offing.
The last of these, Pillai, managed to stay in until the final table. But there were very few other notables in the final nine. Other than Gathy, Pillai was the only previous WSOP champ. And they both made it down to the final three with relative unknown Yuan Yuan Li.
Li is a Chinese player with just a few cashes under his belt. Altogether they come to about $40k. He was out of his depth here. He managed to outlast Pillai, but once heads up with Gathy the game was all but over.
From roughly even chip stacks, it took just a few hands for all the money to get in.
Then Li shoved with Qs-7s pre-flop and Gathy called with As-3c.
The board didn’t even give Gathy a scare, missing both of their hands by a country mile. Li was sent home with a story, while Gathy took the glory, the gold, and the green.
Final table results
1st – Michael "Hneves" Gathy – $272,504
2nd – Yuan Yuan "SunnySummer" Li – $194,248
3rd – Shankar Pillai – $138,467
4th – Erik "KoiOfTheHill" Von Buxhoeveden – $98,704
5th – Luis Gustavo "DJLITTLESOUL" Kamei – $70,359
6th – Craig "mrfeeny" Mason – $50,154
7th – Paul "Wizardofodds" Hockin – $35,751
8th – Toni "FinBuddha" Ojala – $25,485
9th – Vitor "SPEWberg" Adiron – $18,166
Feature image source: Twitter
