Spanish Pot-Limit Omaha Specialist Triumphs In World Series of Poker Paradise $100,000 High Roller

The pot-limit Omaha tournament scene has been booming in recent years, and that’s just fine with Lautaro Guerra. The Spanish PLO specialist has 38 recorded tournament scores, with 35 coming in events that featured just his preferred four-card poker variant. His two no-limit hold’em and one PLO/NLH mixed cash account for just $61,000 of his more than $4.9 million in career earnings, which makes him one of the elite performers of the burgeoning PLO circuit.

Guerra secured his largest score yet by taking down the 2024 World Series of Poker Paradise $100,000 buy-in pot-limit Omaha super high roller event, topping an elite field of 88 entries to earn his first gold bracelet and the $2,126,770 top prize.

This was fifth-largest winner’s payout in PLO tournament history, trailing only the $2,303,017 won by 2023 WSOP $50,000 PLO champion Jesse Lonis, 2023 WSOP $25,000 PLO champion Ka Kwan Lau’s $2,294,756 payday, the $2,270,000 Eelis Parssinen captured in the Triton Monte Carlo this fall and the $2,246,728 that David Eldridge walked away with for taking down the $25,000 PLO event at this year’s WSOP.

Given where this score falls in the PLO record books, it is little surprise that it is also Guerra’s largest tournament payday yet. It easily surpassed the $518,750 he was awarded for taking down the $25,000 finale in the inaugural PokerGO Tour Pot-Limit Omaha Series. That victory cemented his hold on the series champion for that first-ever PGT PLO Series.

While Guerra has only recorded 38 cashes since debuting on the scene in 2018, he has already closed out nine titles. That means he has come away with the title nearly a quarter (23.7 percent) of the time that he has made the money in a tournament. This latest triumph came with 960 Card Player Player of the Year points. With four wins and eight final-table finishes, he is now ranked 63rd in the 2024 POY race standings sponsored by Global Poker.

The top 13 finishers made the money in this event, which ran over the course of three days at Atlantis Paradise Island in the Bahamas. The tournament was slated to play down to a winner after two days, but action was halted in the wee hours of the morning when a champion had not yet been decided on day 2.

Day 2 began with 52 players still in contention from the 88 total entries made in this six-figure affair. The bubble burst when two-time bracelet winner Chris Brewer’s pocket kings couldn’t come from behind against the pocket aces of bracelet winner Pascal LeFrancois, who went on to finish sixth ($477,800).

Plenty of big names were sent to the rail on day 2, including five-time bracelet winner Nick Schulman (13th), bracelet winner and two-time Super High Roller Bowl champion Isaac Haxton (12th), six-time bracelet winner Jeremy Ausmus (9th), Poker Hall of Famer Patrik Antonius (7th), all-time Triton Poker titles leader Jason Koon (5th), and bracelet winner and 2023 Super High Roller Bowl PLO champion Jared Bleznick (3rd).

Bleznick received $1,170,360 as the third-place finisher. The recent High Stakes Duel 5 winner now has nearly $8.6 million in recorded tournament earnings.

Ben Tollerene took roughly a 2:1 chip lead into heads-up play against Guerra after knocking out Bleznick, but that gap was narrowed a bit by the time that tournament organizers had the final two bag up for the night at nearly 3:00 AM local time.

Action resumed at 2:00 PM the following day with Tollerene holding 29,800,000 to Guerra’s 23,000,000. After pulling even closer in the early going, Guerra managed a huge double up with AA102 against the QQ86 of Tollerene. The larger pair held up and Tollerene was left on fumes. He was soon all-in with 8754 facing the A665 of Guerra. The board came down Q10335 and Guerra’s pocket sixes earned him the pot and the title.

Tollerene was awarded $1,577,660 as the runner-up. This was the fifth seven-figure tournament payday for the former high-stakes online cash game grinder known to many as ‘Ben86’. He is now approaching $19.6 million in career earnings.

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

Photo provided by WSOP.

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