Ivan “zufo16” Zufic turns $500 into $843k in WSOP Mini Main Event

Posted on: August 19, 2020 09:32 PDT

After a full dozen opening flights, the WSOP’s Event #63: $500 Mini Main Event kicked off. This effective day 2 was the final day of the enormous event. The players put 15,205 entry fees into the pot. All in all, it came to $7,222,375. This far exceeded the $5 million guarantee the WSOP made for the event.

A little over two thousand players returned to scrabble and scratch their way to the bubble ($1,356 min-cash starting at 1,600 players remaining). From there it would be onward to the bracelet, the glory, and the mountain of cash. The mountain for first was $843,460 high.

In the end, it would be the relative unknown Ivan “zufo16” Zufic who would be quarrying that mountain after a brisk heads-up exchange with Suraj "M26GreenWood" Mishra (2nd - $586,157).

As with all bracelet events Zufic also received a buy-in to the WSOPE for his first-place finish. What time he will be able to cash that ticket in remains in the hands of the plague-gods for now.

Vilchez bubbles with queens

With their usual reliability, GGPoker had to call a brief delay to kick-off. They put this down to overcrowding on the servers stating, “Seating is a bit delayed in some events (140k+ players online) - no need to panic right now. It's known and is being worked on.”

Once they had shooed the gremlins away and turned everything on and off again, play got started with 3,500 - 7,000 blinds and a 900 chip ante.

It took just an hour and a half to get things down to the bubble. Then, Jesse "SamsHofbrau" Vilchez became the bubble boy when he got it in with QQ pre-flop against the 45o of “ilovesoobin”. “Ilovesoobin” picked up the wheel on the turn, and everyone but Vilchez was in the money.

Some of the bigger names who made a few bucks in the tourney include Daniel Negreanu – cashing yet again, Bertrand “ElkY” Grospellier, Daniel Dvoress, Chance Kornuth, Michael Addamo, and Hun Wei Lee.

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Final table to bracelet glory

From there it took another eleven hours to confirm the final nine. This contained a couple of recognizable names (rare in an event of this size): Daniel "BaccaratKing" Neilson, Oleksii "Cold_play" Kravchuk, and Fedor Kruse — who has managed a half dozen cashes at this year’s series.

The final hand was a classic coin flip between Mishra’s deuces and Zubic’s A9os. Unfortunately for Mishra, the ace of diamonds was the first card off the deck and was followed by four meaningless rags.

So, Zubic had won, and the WSOP had another bracelet winner.