The World Series of Poker Horseshoe Hammond $2,200 High Roller is in the books and after two full days of play Javier Zarco came out on top as the champion.
Zarco defeated an extremely tough field of 132 entries to take him $70,931 and his first World Series of Poker Circuit gold ring. He is no stranger to tournament play, having over $2,400,000 in poker earnings, and almost winning his first WSOP Bracelet in the 2015 $1,500 Millionaire Maker when he finished 2nd place for $791,690.
"It feels amazing, I won a Venetian Deepstack once but I finally won a ring after finishing second four times in Main Events" Said Zarco with excitement after defeating WSOP Bracelet winner and two-time WSOP Circuit ring leader Michael Wang heads-up. "It honestly just went my way, doubling up the first hand" he explained.
He does travel around to play poker most of the time with only a few Circuit stops along the way, "I mostly just play here, I like this one, and the ones in Florida." He says he plans to play the Montreal World Poker Tour next before heading back to where he lives in London, England.
Final Day Action
Day 2 started with many of the 40 players that advanced busting out at a rapid pace with only just over two hours of play before there were only 27 players remaining.
Many well-known Circuit grinders were eliminated early in the day including, Nick Pupillo, Irene Carey, Marshall White, and Ben Grise.
The steady pace would continue as Zarco kept up with his aggressive style and building his stack, getting value when he made a set of jacks and also keeping the pressure on near the bubble when he bet enough to cover all of Artem Zverkhovskyy's stack on the river with just king-high and was snap-called by Zverkhovskyy's full house.
Final Table Action
The final table continued with the day's pace when only a few minutes in Wang sent both Steven Sarmiento out in ninth place and Jake Bazeley out in eighth place in the same hand after all three players had been all-in pre-flop and Wang rivered an ace.
Not even 10-minutes later it was Alex Ziskin who was eliminated in seventh place when he turned a straight and flush draw along with his flopped pair against Srinivasa Vadlamudi who flopped two pairs and he couldn't connect.
The action slowed down for the first time all day and it wasn't for another two-hours that Vadlamudi lost most of his chips to Zarco when his pocket pair couldn't hold against Zarco's two overcards and was eliminated in sixth place shortly after when he shoved into Zverkhovskyy's pocket queens.
Nadya Magnus was next to go in fifth place after a long battle of building her short-stack up but eventually fell short when she couldn't win the race with pocket nines against Michael Wang's ace-ten.
Zverkhovskyy had quite the roller-coaster of a day losing most of his chips on the bubble before doubling up when he made tens full. Ultimately he ended up finishing in fourth place though when he moved all-in with queen-jack and lost to Brad Albrinck's pocket nines.
Albernick avoided disaster when he checked back a full house against Zarco's quads but finished third place when he turned trips and shoved into Wang's flush on the river.
Heads-up was quite the battle with Wang coming in with more than a 5:1 chiplead but Zarco managed to double up the first hand and continue the fight. A little while later Wang and Zarco ended up getting all of the chips in the middle preflop and Zarco was dominating Wang with a better kicker on his ace-high which turned into two pairs to give him a massive chip lead. It was only a few hands later that Wang was eliminated in second place when he turned a double gut-shot straight draw and missed the river against Zarco's pair.
Final Table Results:
1: Javier Zarco- $70,931 & WSOP Circuit gold ring
2: Michael Wong - $43,839
3: Brad Albrnick- $30,349
4: Artem Zverkhovskyy- $21,567
5: Nadya Magnus- $15,744
6: Srinvasa Vadlamudi- $11,816
7: Alexander Ziskin- $9,123
8: Jake Bazeley- $7,253