From the moment a poker player enters the WPT hallway leading them to the World Championship, they’re surrounded by more than the traditional Wynn-Encore luxury. This year, everything is gold.
There's an intricate gold tree with gold coins spread at the bottom and a gold prize drum that offered everything from from hats to Golden Passports into the ClubWPT Gold Freeroll. Women in gold sequined dresses and gold gloves stand guard over every station.
Among the prizes: three jackpot opportunities offering the ultimate winner a $250,000 gold 2025 McLaren GTS (or $150,000 cash). The other two winners got a chance to win $50,000 in a carnival-style flying money booth.
Sunday, Richard Wilson, Josh Bobrosky and Rafael Orellana, all winners of the golden jackpot tickets, stood together on stage with WPT CEO Adam Pliska to draw mystery envelopes from a suitcase, a la Deal or No Deal.
Wilson, 26, pulled the winning McLaren ticket, kissed it, and held it in the air.
Watch it play out in the video below.
What would you do with a McLaren?
A Las Vegas magician, Wilson might have conjured up the winning ticket, but he didn't quite have a sense for what to do with the rabbit he'd pulled out of the hat.
“I don’t have a garage. I live in an apartment. I think this might be worth about all the other cars in the parking lot combined," he said. “I’m going to surprise my girlfriend at work.”
Better sense took over, and Wilson ultimately decided the McLaren might be too much car. He took the $150,000 cash prize instead, but not before getting a picture with his car.
Wilson won a Golden Passport in a drawing held by Brad Owen. Later, Pliska saw Wilson draw the jackpot ticket and said he seemed as “shocked then as he was right now” after winning the luxury car. Wilson said he thought every ticket said "jackpot," not knowing “there was a drawing for a $250,000 sports car, let alone (that) I’d end up getting it.”
“I thought I’d get a phone call since Wednesday when I pulled (it), someone’s going to say, ‘hey we made a mistake, you actually didn’t get the prize, so sorry, thank you for playing,’" he said.
Booth or no booth?
If a windy money booth had $50,000 inside and you got to choose between 30 seconds to collect as much as you could or keeping what was left after your opponent had 30 seconds, what would you choose?
Bobrosky chose to sit back and watch Orellana do the work and ended up ever so slightly ahead, picking up $25,111 to the $24,889 Orellana collected.
Watch it below.
Despite coming up a little shorter than his two fellow winners, Orellanal, a 27-year-old Vegas native was feeling “blessed.“
"I think my expectations were to try and aim for a hat and I came away with $25,000," he said. “I wanted to embrace the moment.”
*Photos courtesy of the WPT
