Esa Homayun Wins Mega Millions XXIV At The Bike

The Parkwest Bicycle Casino near Los Angeles, California closed out its massive Winnin’ O’ The Green festival with a bang. The huge series spanned from Feb. 28 – April 18 and encompassed the venue’s World Series of Poker Circuit stop. It concluded with the $1.5 million guaranteed Mega Millions XXIV event, a tournament that spanned 13 days and featured over 30 starting flights and day 2 direct entry.

When registration closed, 4,817 total entries had been made, building a prize pool of $2,147,490. 2,560 entries were made at the $275 buy-in price point, with another 2,078 at the $560 level. Then, another 179 entries were made for $3,350 on day 2. Nearly half of a million dollars were also paid out via day 1 in-the-money finishes and to players that qualified for day 2 multiple times during the starting flights.

Nearly two weeks after cards first got in the air for this massive tournament, one player finally dragged the last pot. That was West Hills, CA resident Esa Homayun, who secured $266,470 for the win. This was by far his largest live tournament score yet, blowing away the $8,847 he earned for a fifth-place finish in a $400 buy-in event during the 2021 Venetian DeepStack Extravaganza I.

The final day of this event began with just seven contenders remaining after David Uvaydov was knocked out when his A-K failed to outrace the pocket nines of Steven Kim. According to the venue’s tournament blog, Uvaydov committed to play in at least 32 of the 33 starting flights of this tournament to see if he could turn a profit. He ended up finishing eighth overall for $35,885. After coming out of the starting flights with just over $1,000 in net losses, he ended with nearly $35,000 in total profit.

Homayun bagged up the chip lead heading into the final seven, with Jason Wasser as the clear short stack. Wasser ended up outlasting Sean Wingruber (7th – $45,765), Manas Gandhi (6th – $58,300), and Michael Tabriz (5th – $75,495) to make the final four. At that point, the remaining players agreed to a real that redistributed the remaining prize money as follows based on their stacks at the time of the deal.

There was still nearly $80,000 in prize money that the final four set aside to play for, along with the title. Homayun went on to bust Kim (4th – $162,070) and Millard (3rd – $188,405) to take more than a 3:1 chip lead into heads-up play with Wasser.

In the final hand, all of the chips got in preflop with Wasser holding K4 to Homayun’s Q9. The board read KJ103 by the turn, giving Homayun a king-high straight and leaving Wasser drawing dead. Wasser earned $174,360 as the runner-up finisher.

Here is a look at the final table results:

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