GGPoker's "WSOP Paradise Parlay" promotion, in which players who won bracelets, made final tables, or logged a combined 10 cashes in live bracelet events in both the summertime WSOP in Las Vegas and the recently completed WSOP Paradise series in the Bahamas will likely collect just under $500,000 in total once all players meeting the promotion's qualifications have identified themselves to GGPoker. The promotion was a late add to GGPoker's "Road to Paradise" promotion.
No players won the largest payout of $100,000 being offered during the promotion, which required players who had already won a bracelet in a live WSOP event last summer to repeat the feat in the Bahamas. Five players cashed for $25,000 each in the middle level of the promotion, which required players to make a live bracelet-event final table during both the summertime WSOP and this month's Paradise series. Those five players were Josh Arieh, Isaac Haxton, Adrian Mateos, Erik Seidel, Dan Shak, and Adam Swan. (This revision adds Swan to the list. - hh)
Seidel was the only one of the six $25,000 winners to take home a bracelet from the WSOP Paradise series, when he won his 10th career bracelet and $1,704,400 in Event #7 of the Paradise series, the $50,000 NLH High Roller. The bracelet win moved Seidel into a four-way for the second-most career WSOP bracelets, along with Phil Ivey, Johnny Chan, and the late Doyle Brunson. Phil Hellmuth, with 17 bracelet wins, will likely lead that category for the foreseeable future.
Seidel's bracelet was one of 13 awarded in the Bahamas during the live portion of the series. Two events were conducted entirely online on GGPoker and were not eligible, results-wise, to be a part of the WSOP Paradise Parlay. One "ONLIVE" event allowed players to play a Day 1 ONLIVE flight online and then travel to the Bahamas, where the money spots were determined, and that event appears to have been included for Paradise Parlay eligibilty.
As many as 73 players may have qualified for bottom-tier $5K payout
A post-promotion tweet from GGPoker a week ago congratulated 60 other Paradise participants on already having collected $5,000 each for meeting the promotion's third-tier qualifications. Those players cashed at least 10 times combined -- in live events only -- between the summertime WSOP and WSOP Paradise series. In addition, players had to record at least one cash in both series.
PokerOrg has confirmed with GGPoker that the 60-player total mentioned in last week's tweet do not represent the final number of $5K winners. The promotion's terms require each player to notify GGPoker that they have likely qualified for a prize payout, and more winners are likely to come forward in the coming days and weeks, if they haven't already.
An extensive manual search by this writer through multiple online poker results databases indicates that the total number of $5K winners is more likely to end up around 73, rather than 60. This assumes that cashers in the "ONLIVE" event and finished with exactly 10 combined live cashes are eligible, though the final number will be well over 60 either way.
With the caveat that the below list is unofficial, these are the 73 players who this writer has determined as possibly being eligible for the bottom-tier payout. Nonetheless, the below list could include several different forms of compilation errors and does not represent any sort of official record. Similarly, it is possible that the below list still misses one or more players who actually qualified. Players who believe thay may have qualified and have not yet contacted GGPoker should research their own tourney results to verify eligibility.
GGPoker has already paid most of the winners who have notified the site that they qualified. For players with GGPoker accounts, the prize funds have been directly deposited into their accounts. For players in jurisdictions where GGPoker is unavailabe, prizes are being paid through the new WSOP+ app, which those players must use.
The list of possible $5K winners in the WSOP Paradise Parley includes these players:
- Aldemir, Koray
- Alt, Dinesh
- Barbero, Jose “Nacho”
- Battenfield, Chris
- Bohlman, Scott
- Brewer, Christopher
- Bronshtein, Yuval
- Bruschi, Renan
- Buchanan, Shawn
- Chen, Dong
- Collopy, James
- Cornell, Tyler
- Deeb, Shaun
- Deyra, Ivan
- Ding, Biao
- Dzivielevski, Yuri
- Engel, Alan “Ari”
- Eveslage, Chad
- Funaro, Frank
- Gavlik, Ian
- Gluszko, Tomasz
- Ha, Thai
- Hallaert, Kenny
- Harder, Christian
- Hellmuth, Phil
- Hendrix, Adam
- Hui, Phillip
- Hutter, Barry
- Israelashvili, Roland
- Kerber, Kelvin
- Kessler, Allen
- Konstas, Ioannis Angelou
- Kupin, Aaron
- Landvai, Tamas
- Lin, Tony
- Linde, Dylan
- Livingston, Alex
- Lonis, Jesse
- Mao, Renji
- Marcondes dos Reis, Rafael
- McNicholas, Euan
- Moscati, Vincent
- Negreanu, Daniel
- Obara, Jun
- Oganyan, Aram
- Papadopoulos, Kyriakos
- Pecheux, Erwann
- Petkov, Lachezar
- Pu, Weiran
- Peters, David
- Ramos, Felipe
- Reichard, Josh
- Rheem, David “Chino”
- Ribouchon, Florian
- Riess, Ryan
- Roberts, Christian
- Rodrigues, Michael
- Schroeder, Gabriel
- Shahni, Ali
- Song, Stephen
- Sotiropoulos, Georgios
- Tae, Lucas
- Taylor, Thomas
- Theodore, Kevin
- Tsinis, Arkadiy
- Ved, Kartik
- Vieira, Joao
- Wantman, Matthew
- Williams, David
- Yockey, Bryce
- Yu, Ben
- Zhou, Quan
- Zhu, Yueqi
If 73 $5,000 parlay winners turns out to be the correct total, then that would swell the overall payouts in the WSOP Paradise Parlay promotion to $515,000. The prizes, according to GGPoker, were funded through a separate marketing budget and were not directly deducted from the prize pools of the events.
