The poker career of Kevin Saul has been most impressive. The 32-year Oak Park, IL native used to be an online poker professional, earning millions of dollars. His transition to live poker has been equally impressive. With over $2.3 million in live earnings, it includes cashes and wins throughout the world in various tournament series.
In the World Series of Poker, Saul has 11 career cashes that includes a 216th place finish in the 2011 Main Event for over $47,000. The only thing missing from his poker resume was a WSOP Circuit deep run. With only two cashes previously on the Circuit, Saul was determined to not only cash consistently, but to qualify for the WSOP National Championship sponsored by Southern Comfort 100 Proof.
On Monday, Saul accomplished both of those goals.
Coming into the final day of play, Saul was 13th out of the 16th remaining players after a losing a monster pot the night before to Ben Reason. Saul got Reason all-in before the flop with A-K against the pocket jacks of Reason. Saul drilled his ace but Reason spiked one of the two remaining jacks on the river, leaving Saul short on chips at the end of the day.
The beat didn’t phase Saul though. He chipped up early on Day 3 and actually entered the unofficial final table of ten as the chip leader.
Saul looked to take a massive chip lead when Lall Bharat moved all-in with A-K but ran into the A-A of Saul. With 25% of the chips in play on the line, the board ran out 9-5-2-4-3 and instead of having a huge lead, they chopped the pot.
Again, the beat didn’t phase Saul as he continued to chip up. His aggressive playing style continued to handcuff the other players as he had complete control of the table.
Four-handed, Paul Snead was all-in with A-Q against the pocket eights of Saul. Two eights on the flop sent another big pot Saul’s way with only three remaining. Cory Waaland was his next victim. Saul was able to catch an ace on the flop after getting Waaland to commit all of his chips with pocket sixes against Saul’s A-K.
With 12.3 million chips in play, Saul entered heads-up play with Lall Bharat holding 8,775,000 in chips. It took Saul less than 30-minutes to take out Bharat and claim the title.
In one single event, Kevin Saul not only got the big score on the Circuit he had been looking for, but he also got his first Circuit Ring and a seat in the National Championship.
Immediately, Saul was swarmed by his friends would were there to watch. Shortly after, his phone couldn’t stop ringing and his Twitter timeline was filled with congratulatory tweets.
However, there was one person he wanted to call himself. Before getting his winner photo taken, Saul wanted to take the time to call his father to tell him about his victory.
For someone that has won nearly everything in the poker world, it was clear that this victory truly meant something to him.
Full results from the final table were as follows:
1st - Kevin Saul $194,178, Circuit Ring and National Championship Seat
2nd - Lall Bharat $119,742
3rd - Cory Waaland $87,842
4th - Paul Snead $65,096
5th - Ben Reason $49,007
6th - Bobby Corcione $37,356
7th - Ethan Foulkes $28,662
8th - Pete Campo $22,654
9th - Stephen Dare $18,031