Tamas Lendvai Turned $600 Into $299,464 At The 2022 World Series of Poker

Tamas Lendvai is the latest gold bracelet winner crowned at the 2022 World Series of Poker. The Hungarian player defeated a sizable field of 4,913 entries in the $600 buy-in no-limit hold’em deepstack championship, earning his first gold bracelet and the top prize of $299,464.

“Since I’ve been playing poker I’ve been dreaming about this moment so what can I say… It means the world. It means everything and more for me and for my family," Lendvai told WSOP reporters after an emotional celebration of his win. “I did this for my dad, who’s battling cancer now. Dad, let’s do it.”

Lendvai now has nearly $2.4 million in career earnings, with this latest victory being his third-largest score yet. In 2011 he finished third in the European Poker Tour Grand Final main event for $816,327. The year before that he had taken down an Italian Poker Tour tournament for $311,000.

The big turnout for this event, which ran over the course of four days, resulted in the top 737 finishers making the money. A number of highly accomplished players made deep runs in this event, including two-time bracelet winner Eric Baldwin (111th – $2,436), 2019 WSOP main event seventh-place finisher Nicholas Marchington (15th – $14,119), and four-time bracelet winner Jeremy Ausmus (14th – $14,119).

The final day began with just seven players remaining and Alex Jim in the lead. Lendvai was the shortest stack coming into day 4, with just eight big blinds to play with when cards got back in the air.

Tsuf Saltsberg fell to the bottom of the leaderboard when his pocket aces were cracked by the A-10 of Frank Reichel in the early going. Saltsberg was eliminated shortly after that in seventh place ($46,347).

Lendvai doubled up through longtime online tournament grinder Jon Van Fleet to continue his clibm up the leaderboard. He then picked up pocket aces, which fared better for him than they did for Saltsberg, as they held up against the pocket queens of Abdullah Alshanti (6th – $60,196) to narrow the field to five.

Lendvai continued his surge by knocking out Daniel Marcus in fifth place ($78,793), with pocket fives winning a race against A-J. Van Fleet kept pace by busting start-of-day leader Jim in fourth place ($103,994). The chips went in preflop with Van Fleet’s A-9 leading K-10. Both players flopped a pair, bit aces remained best from there on out.

Van Fleet would ultimately be the next to fall despite earning that recent knockout. He lost a sizable chunk of his stack with pocket tens being beaten by a rivered pair of jacks for Lendvai’s K-J. Then came his final hand, which saw him open and then four-bet shove over the three-bet of Lendvai with A10. Lendvai snap-called and rolled over AA. Van Fleet was unable to come from behind and was eliminated in third place ($138,149).

Lendvai took a massive lead into heads-up play with Frank Reichel. It did not take long for him to convert his chip advantage into the title. In the last hand of this event, Lendvai open-shoved from the button with Q10. Reichel called with KQ. The board ran out 1094710 and Lendvai made trip tens to secure the title. Reichel was awarded $185,027 as the runner-up finisher.

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

Winner photo credit: WSOP / Alec Rome.

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