Casey Sandretto Takes Down World Poker Tour Rolling Thunder Main Event

Casey Sandretto has won the ninth running of the World Poker Tour Rolling Thunder no-limit hold’em main event. The Sacramento resident overcame a field of 458 entries in the $3,500 buy-in tournament to earn his first WPT title and the top prize of $246,600. He now has more than $406,000 in total tournament earnings to his name.

“It feels pretty great,” said Sandretto after ensuring that his name would be added to the Mike Sexton WPT Champions Cup. “This is my first live tournament win. To have it at Thunder Valley, the best poker room in the country, in my opinion… and Ben Erwin being a superstar, and with WPT being the most prestigious tournament series, this is great. Couldn’t have been any better.”

This win also conveyed 1,080 Card Player Player of the Year points to Sandretto. This was his first final-table finish of the year, but this victory was enough on its own to catapult him into 87th place in the 2024 POY standings presented by Global Poker.

The strong turnout created a prize pool of $1,465,600 that was split amongst the top 58 finishers. Plenty of big names ran deep, including two-time bracelet winner Shannon Shorr (51st), 2023 WPT World Championship winner Dan Sepiol (26th), WPT and PokerStars Caribbean Adventure champion Harrison Gimbel (22nd), WPT champion Nam Le (14th), 2022 WPT Prime Championship winner Stephen Song (13th), and WPT winner Soheb Porbandarwala (11th).

After the first three days of play, the 458-entry field had been narrowed to just six contenders. Yunkyu Song held the lead to start, with Sandretto in the middle of the pack. Brock Wilson was the first to fall, with his pocket sevens losing a preflop race to the A-K suited of 2004 WPT World Poker Challenge champion Michael Kinney. Wilson earned $60,000 as the sixth-place finisher, growing his lifetime tournament earnings to over $7.6 million in the process.

Kinney also scored the next knockout, with his Q-10 overcoming the A-Q of Cody Weigmann (5th – $78,000) to narrow the field to four. It would be another sixty hands before the next elimination took place. Song, who began the day as the clear chip leader, had slid to the short stack during four-handed action. He got his last chips in with AQ only to find himself trailing the AK of Sandretto. A king-high runout ended Song’s tournament in fourth place ($105,000).

Travis Egbert was the next to fall. He called off his stack with top pair of kings holding K2, only to find that Kinney’s kicker played with K9 on a K64Q7 board. Egbert earned $140,000 as the third-place finisher.

Kinney entered heads-up play with better than a 2:1 chip lead over Sandretto as he looked to earn his second WPT title nearly two decades after securing his first. Sandretto was able to close the gap early. Then the final two traded the chip advantage a couple of times before they opted to make a deal that re-shaped the remaining payouts. The runner-up would earn $235,000, while the champion would take home $246,600.

It was Sandretto who was out in front when the final hand was dealt. With blinds of 150,000-300,000 and a big blind ante of 300,000, Sandretto raised to 650,000 on the button with KK. Kinney called from the big blind with A2 and the flop came down K32, Kinney check-called a continuation bet of 400,000 and the A on the turn gave him two pair. He checked and Sandretto bet 975,000 with his set of kings. Kinney check-raised to 3,200,000 and Sandretto called. The 10 was dealt on the river and Sandretto moved all-in. Sandretto quickly called with his set to bring the event to a close. As the runner-up, Kinney earned the $235,000 he negotiated for.

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

Photo credits: WPT / Drew Amato.

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