After a brutally long final day, the $2,200 Wynn Mystery Bounty event came to a close with an ICM chop. Manuel Machado took first place and $410,485, and his heads-up rival Elliott Kampen took home $362,739 for second.
Those numbers do not include the bounties each made along the way.
The Wynn Mystery Bounty attracted 2,854 entries, an enormous turnout for an event that was in direct competition with similarly priced events across the strip at the 2022 WSOP. So many players in the action made for a huge prize pool of $5,708,000. Of that, $1,997,800 was set aside for bounties.
Each of the four Day 1s played down to 11% of the field. So, everyone who made Day 2 of the event had made the money. The other thing that happened on Day 2 was that every player had a bounty put on their head.
When a player collected a bounty by knocking another player out, they then got to spin a tombola to receive an envelope with the amount of that bounty in it. The more players you knock out, the more spins of the drum you get. In Kitty Kuo's case, three in one hand.
The format builds upon the success of a similar $1,600 buy-in event held in February of this year at the Wynn. The WSOP also tried a version at last year's series, to limited success.
The $50k coin-flip
In this event, the size of the bounties ranged in value from plenty of small $500 bounties up to a pair of $250,000 bounties (won by Paul Chauderson and Milos Ivanovic).
There were also three $100,000 bounties (won by Jordan Westmorland, Aaron Thivyanathan, and Calvin Anderson).
Having chopped, Machado and Kampen had to draw for their own bounties in one final high-stakes flip worth two zeroes — there was one envelope worth $500 left and one worth $50,000. Kampen pulled drew first... and pulled the $500 envelope.
With the final $50,000 bounty, Machado collected $67,000 worth of scalps, for a total payday of $477,485.
Wynn Mystery Bounty complete final table result
| Position | Player Name | Country | Payout |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1st | Manuel Machado | Portugal | $410,485* |
| 2nd | Elliott Kampen | United States | $362,739* |
| 3rd | Calvin Anderson | United States | $176,243 |
| 4th | Dennis Wilke | Germany | $125,105 |
| 5th | Anthony Ibrahim | United States | $92,628 |
| 6th | Cherish Andrews | United States | $72,105 |
| 7th | Andy Park | United States | $59,516 |
| 8th | Kevin White | United States | $50,503 |
| 9th | Kevin Calenzo | United States | $42,983 |
Featured image source: Wynn Poker Room
