Shannon Shorr Wins The Kickoff Event At The 2021 Poker Masters

The 2021 Poker Masters kicked off this week, with the first of twelve high-stakes events on schedule being a $10,000 buy-in no-limit hold’em tournament. A total of 82 entries were made, building a prize pool of $820,000. In the end, the lion’s share of that money was awarded to eventual champion Shannon Shorr, who took home $205,000 for the win. The score increased his career tournament earnings to $9,157,400.

This was Shorr’s third title of 2021. He won a Seminole Hard Rock Poker Open $2,650 buy-in event roughly a month before this victory for another $186,261. Back in April he took down a $5,000 buy-in event during the Seminole Hard Rock Poker Showdown_ for $296,535.

In addition to the title and the money, Shorr was also awarded 480 Card Player Player of the Year points for his latest run to the winner’s circle. He has now made a total of six POY-qualified final tables this year, with $797,579 in earnings across those scores. As a result, Shorr has climbed into 15th place in the 2021 POY race, which is sponsored by Global Poker.

He also earned 205 PokerGO Tour rankings points as the champion of this event. This was his fifth qualified cash on the tour, bringing his point total to 363. He now sits in 49th place on the PokerGO Tour leaderboard, and has taken the early lead in the Poker Masters points race. The player with the most points accrued by the end of the series will be awarded the Poker Masters Championship, along with the Purple Jacket® and $50,000 in added prize money.

The final day of this event began with 2016 Card Player Player of the Year award winner and three-time World Series of Poker bracelet winner David Peters in the lead, and Shorr in second place. Ben Yu, another three-time bracelet winner, came into the day as the shortest stack with just more than eight big blinds. Shorr’s K-J outran Yu’s A-9 in the first hand of the day to narrow the field to six. Yu earned $41,000 as the seventh-place finisher. John Riordan followed not too long after, with his A-8 running into the A-Q of Shorr, who overtook the lead when his queens with an ace kicker earned him the pot and the knockout. Riordan took home $49,200 for his sixth-place showing.

Five-handed play continued for roughly two hours, but the stalemate ended when World Poker Tour main event winner Jonathan Jaffe’s pocket deuces lost a preflop race against the A-9 of Brock Wilson. A nine-high flop gave Wilson a lead which he never relinquished, and Jaffe hit the rail with $65,600.

Wilson got the last of his short stack in on a king-high flop with the K36 he had defended from the big blind. Peters had raised with KQ from the button, though, giving him a big lead when the chips went in. Wilson found no help on the turn or river and was eliminated in fourth place ($82,000).

Dylan DeStefano’s run in this event came to an end when his three-bet shove with Q9 from the big blind ran into the pocket jacks of Peters, who had opened with a raise on the button. DeStefano picked up both flush and straight draws on the flop, but failed to improve any further and was knocked out in third place. The $98,400 he earned for his deep run in this event was the largest live cash of his career.

With that, Peters surged past Shorr to take the lead going into heads-up play. The two traded the advantage a few times over the course of their nearly two-hour showdown. Peters nearly put things away when he had the lead and the best hand in one of the final showdowns of the event, but his A-9 lost to a flush made on the turn by Shorr’s A5 to see the stacks return to nearly even. The two agreed to a deal at that point, and ran a flip to determine the champion. Shorr ended up winning the hand with ten-high to secure the title.

Peters earned $147,600 and 400 POY points as the runner-up. This was his ninth POY-qualified final table of the year, with three titles won along the way. The 2021 U.S. Poker Open champion now sits in 12th place in the POY race. The 148 PokerGO Tour point he earned moved him into sixth place on that leaderboard.

Here is a look at the payouts and rankings points awarded at the final table:

Winner photo credit: PokerGO.

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