$25,000 World Poker Tour Championship Proves Resilient in Wake of Black Friday

The 2011 World Poker Tour Championship, at the time the largest buy-in poker tournament on United States soil since the events of Black Friday, saw 220 players register for the event — an increase of 25 players from last year.

The host of the WPT’s The Raw Deal, Tony Dunst, who also played in the event, weighed in on why online poker shutting down in the country had little effect on the $25,000 WPT Championship. “Most of the professionals, who were going to be able to come up with the money or sell pieces of themselves, were not going to be greatly affected by money being wiped out online,” Dunst said.

While Dunst’s explanation worked for most players, it didn’t for Galen Hall, who went to the final table with a tiny chip lead over eventual champ Scott Seiver. Both players had nearly identical stacks of just over 5 million going into final-table play, having their nearest competitor outchipped by about 1.4 million. Despite cruising through the tournament, Hall almost didn’t even make the trip to Las Vegas to compete. The 2011 PokerStars Carribean Adventure champion was in Madrid just a couple of days before the WPT Championship began, where he made the final table of the EPT high-roller event and finished second in the tournament of champions. When he got back to his San Francisco apartment to gather some things before heading to Vegas, Hall realized that he was locked out of his place without a key.

With just the clothes on his back, Hall, who hadn’t done laundry for about two weeks, spent the night at a friend’s place and ended up catching a flight to Las Vegas in the morning so that he could register on day two of the WPT’s season-ending event. However, there was another problem with his quest — he had no American currency.

So, immediately after arriving in the desert, Hall spent all Sunday morning sending text messages in order to find a $25,000 loan. “I hadn’t planned on playing the event, because I figured it would be hard to sell action with Black Friday, but then I did well in Madrid, and I felt like I was playing really well,” said the 25-year-old Hall, who admitted that his day-two thought processes were a bit fuzzy after the trip to Vegas. “So, I sent messages to a couple of the big buyers, seeing if they would buy [the buy-in]. I sold out in like 10 minutes, so it was just a question of getting the funds.”

The man who came to Hall’s aid was Christian Harder, whom Hall, ironically, knocked out on day four, en route to ending the day with the chip lead. Despite his excruciatingly tough elimination, the tournament wasn’t a complete loss for Harder. He had a 7 percent stake of the California native, who went on to finish third, for nearly $600,000.

While Hall was a borderline no-show for the event, Seiver’s entry into the event was no surprise, as the WPT veteran was looking to end a long funk in big buy-in events. “It feels really good,” Seiver said shortly after the final six players were set. “I keep trying and keep banging my head against the wall, and I feel like this is the tournament that I will finally go through the wall. It’s pretty exciting.”

Seiver also was candid about what it took to do well against the stacked tournament field in the WPT Championship. “There is so much luck involved in ways that you can see and ways that you can’t see. To make a final table in these events, you just need everything to come together for a week, and it has so far. My game plan for the final table is to play well and play strong, get super lucky, and win every hand.”

When play was wrapped up for the evening on day five, Seiver said his strategy for the day off was to lounge around in bed and do nothing — an agenda that was made possible only because the field dwindled down to the final table a day ahead of schedule. His plan for rest and relaxation paid dividends, as he looked sharp en route to the victory.

Not joining Seiver and Hall at the televised final table was day-three chip leader, and monster-stack holder with just one table left, Sam El Sayed. The Lebanese amateur’s hyperaggressive style had enabled him to accumulate more than 7 million in chips when play was eight-handed, but his game plan of seeing a ton of flops and putting pressure on his opponents eventually failed him, and he exited in eighth place.

“The way I play, I need chips,” El Sayed said after finishing day three as the chip leader. “I don’t know how to play a short stack. I am aggressive, and I see flops. Tomorrow is a very important day, and you need to come with a lot of chips, so that the other player has to put his life on the line if he wants to play with you. Since I have 1 million in chips, I can put a lot of lives on the line.”

With the monster stack out of the way, it was all Seiver from then on out. Once three-handed play began, Seiver steamrolled his competition, eventually knocking out Hall, who catapulted into first place in the Card Player 2011 Player of the Year race with the performance. By the time heads-up play began, Seiver had jumped out to a 3-1 chip lead against Farzad Bonyadi, and he never relinquished control.

After making a straight on the river, Seiver got Bonyadi to commit the rest of his stack with two pair — and sealed the victory. For the win, the cash-game pro banked $1,618,344, bringing his career tournament earnings to $4.5 million.

Here is a look at the final-table results:

1. Scott Seiver $1,618,344
2. Farzad Bonyadi $1,061,900
3. Galen Hall $589,355
4. Roger Teska $371,665
5. Tony Gargano $278,749
6. Justin Young $225,654