Ryan Eriquezzo Wins World Series of Poker National Championship

Ryan Eriquezzo won the World Series of Poker National Championship in front of ESPN cameras filming for a nationally televised August 7th broadcast, defeating a 147-player field to capture his first WSOP gold bracelet and the $416,051 first-place prize.

“I’m just so grateful for the opportunity, and so grateful I ran well. It’s humbling at the same time, you start to think it might never happen for you.”

Eriquezzo defeated Nikolas Stone heads-up to capture the biggest score of his career. Other notables that made the final table include Amanda Musumeci (8th – $48,576), Sam Stein (7th – $61,434), David “ODB” Baker (6th – $79,002) and Matt Keikoan (4th – $137,485).

Eriquezzo was one of 100 players to qualify for this million-dollar guaranteed event for free as a result of his performance on the WSOP Circuit. Eriquezzo won the WSOP Circuit Caesars Palace Atlantic City main event in early March for $191,194. Before that breakout win, the 27 year-old professional poker player was thinking of pursuing a new career path.

“It’s pretty amazing, because I was pretty disenchanted with poker around the time that the Caesars main event happened. I was ready to take another avenue, because I had worked really hard at this and I wasn’t really succeeding. The Caesars main event was going to be one of my last events as a professional. I won that,” said Eriquezzo. “I was really excited for this one, and we banged it out, it’s insane. The field was so hard, it was all elite players.”

When asked if he was still considering quitting given his two recent wins, he quickly said, “I’m not quitting poker now. My heart is back in it.”

Every main event winner on the circuit qualified to play for free in the event, as did the overall points winner for each stop and the 84 top points earners throughout the year on the circuit

In addition to the freerolling qualifiers, the top 100 WSOP points earners from the past two years were invited to play as well, but needed to put up a buy-in of $10,000.

“It’s just so prestigious. You have all these people who have grinded and traveled the country to do this, and you have some really sick top tier players,” said Eriquezzo. “The invited players were incredible. Eugene Katchalov and Sam Stein, these players that were just world class. Brian Rast was deep in it with chips. You get to play with these guys and see if you can hang with them, to see if you belong on this stage.”

Here is a look at the complete payouts awarded at this final table:

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