Travis Egbert Captures WSOP Circuit Thunder Valley Main Event Title

Travis Egbert seems to enjoy quite the home-field advantage when playing poker at Thunder Valley Casino Resort near Sacramento, California. The Northern California native has earned all three of his live tournament titles at the venue, and also finished inside the top three at the most recent World Poker Tour Thunder Valley main event.

Egbert’s latest, and largest, triumph on site saw him defeat a field of 812 entries in the 2024 World Series of Poker Circuit Thunder Valley Casino $1,700 no-limit hold’em main event. Egbert earned $214,565 as the champion, his largest tournament score yet. He also secured his third WSOPC gold ring, with the full trio coming from his victories at this venue. Earlier this year he took down the $400 buy-in event for $14,270 and followed that up with a win in the $3,250 buy-in high roller for another $77,440 just days later.

Thanks to this marquee title run, Egbert now has nearly $858,000 in career earnings to his name, with more than half of that prize money coming from his three ring wins and one deep run in the WPT event at Thunder Valley.

In addition to the title and the money, Egbert also secured 912 Card Player Player of the Year points for the win. With three titles and six final-table finishes so far, he now sits in 115th place in the 2024 POY rankings presented by Global Poker with 2,300 total points.

This event featured a $1 million guarantee, which was easily surpassed thanks to the healthy turnout. The final prize pool of $1,230,180 was ultimately paid out amongst the top 114 finishers, with big names like bracelet winner Francis Anderson (34th), Andrew Ostapchenko (33rd), six-time WSOPC ring winner Scott Stewart (21st), bracelet winner and seven-time WSOPC champion Ian Steinman (19th), WPT champion and bracelet winner Pat Lyons (11th), and 2023 champion of this event Michael Persky (10th).

Michael Rossitto (9th – $16,875) was the first to fall at the final table, running A-J into the A-Q of Brock Wilson. He was soon joined on the rail by Colton Blomberg (8th – $21,800), whose Q-10 butted up against the pocket queens of Thomas Morris.

Jared Smith got all-in with AQ, only to find himself in rough shape against the AK of Greg Pincombe. SMith found no help and was eliminated in seventh place ($28,600).

Egbert scored his first knockout of the final table with A10 holding against the A8 of Kirk Acevedo (6th – $38,380). Egbert turned broadway and avoided the chop to extend his lead heading into five-handed action.

A classic preflop race spelled the end of Morris’ run, with his pocket eights unable to outflip the A-9 of Egbert. Egbert spiked a nine on the flop and held from there to send Morris packing in fifth place $51,905.

Wilson got the last of his chips in with the best starting hand in hold’em, but his pocket aces were drawn out on by the pocket queens of Xiong Thao. Wilson was ahead through the turn, but the Q on the end gave Thao queens full and the pot. Wilson walked away with $71,070, growing his career tournament earnings to over $9.8 million in the process. This was his 14th final-table finish of the year. With 4,448 total POY points, he has climbed to 17th place on the 2024 leaderboard.

Gregory Pincombe got all-in with pocket sixes trailing the pocket nines of Egbert . Pincombe picked up an open-ended straight draw on the flop, but had to fade a board pair with Egbert nailing top set. The turn brought a second seven to give Egbert a lock on the hand with nines full and Pincombe was sent home with $100,065 as the third-place finisher.

Heads-up play ended up lasting roughly five hours. Egbert began with a sizable lead, holding 26,000,000 to Thao’s 6,000,000 to start. After plenty of back-and-forth action, Egbert won a massive pot with flush over flush to take the lead ahead of the final hand. Thao limped from the button with A8 and then called all-in when Egbert shoved from the big blind with A10. The board ran out AJ264 and Egbert’s pair of aces with a ten kicker brought the event to an end.

Thao secured $142,540 as the runner-up for his first six-figure tournament score. The Sacramento resident now has nearly $214,000 in total cashes under his belt.

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

Photo credit: WSOP / Alicia Skillman.

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