Rok Gostisa Wins 2021 World Poker Tour World Online Championships Main Event

The 2021 World Poker Tour World Online Championships $5,300 buy-in no-limit hold’em main event drew a sizable field of 1,177 entries, easily surpassing the $5 million guarantee to build a final prize pool of $5,895,000. In the end, the largest share of that money was awarded to Slovenia’s Rok Gostisa, who defeated three-time World Series of Poker bracelet winner David Peters heads-up to secure the title and the top payday of $959,493.

This was Gostisa’s largest recorded tournament cash, blowing away the $40,970 he earned as the champion of a $1,100 buy-in preliminary event at the 2017 WPT Five Diamond Classic series at Bellagio.

Vlad Darie came into the final table as the chip leader, with Gostisa sitting in the middle of the pack. Joao Simao was the first to fall when his pocket jacks ran into the pocket queens of Peters. The Brazilian, who won his first bracelet earlier this year during the WSOP Online festival, earned $76,713 as the ninth-place finisher. Peters then won a preflop race with K-Q against the pocket eights of Rodrigo Sirichuk (8th – $97,472) to narrow the field to seven.

Darie soon established himself as the clear second-largest stack behind Peters, who had surged to the top of the counts with his early knockouts. Darie scored a double knockout, with his A9 besting the KQ of Manuel Fritz (7th – $123,182) and the AQ of Talal Shakerchi (6th – $156,421). Darie flopped the nut flush to leave his pair of opponents drawing dead.

Peters picked up pocket aces against the pocket kings of Philipp Hofbauer (5th – $202,734) to score the next elimination at the final table. Bruno Volkmann (4th – $296,185) also saw his run in this event ended by Peters. Volkmann shoved with a gutshot straight draw, holding J10 after a Q88 flop. Peters made the call with A8 for trip eights. Volkmann improved to a straight on the 9 turn, but the 9 on the river gave Peters a full house and the pot.

Peters took a sizable lead into three-handed play, with his 151,489,579 in chips being nearly three times as many as the next largest stack belonging to Darie. It took a little over an hour for Gostisa to go from the shortest stack at the start of three-handed play to closing out the win. He won a flip with A-4 against the pocket threes of Peters to get the ball rolling. Darie fell to the bottom of the leaderboard, and was the clear short stack when his A7 got all-in facing the 88 of Gostisa. Darie was unable to come from behind and was eliminated in third place, earning $453,677 for his strong showing.

With that Peters took just shy of a 2:1 chip lead into heads-up play against Gostisa. Things evened out in the early going. Eventually, Gostisa was able to edge his way into the lead, and then expand it. He held roughly a 3:2 chip lead at the time the final hand was dealt. Peters picked up 66 on the button and raised to 5,000,000. Gostisa three-bet to 20,000,000 with the 1010. Peters called and the flop came down 654. Gostisa moved all-in and Peters called. The turn brought the 8 to keep Peters in the lead, but the 10 on the end gave Gostisa the superior set to secure the pot and the title.

Peters earned $660,482 as the runner-up finisher, falling just short of his first WPT main event title. He now has more than $39.3 million in lifetime tournament earnings, which places him fourth on poker’s all-time money list.

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

Photo credit: partypokerLIVE.

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