World Poker Tour Championship Winners
Mike Watson (poker player) Stanley Weiss; David Williams (card game player) Roy Winston (poker player). Season XVI of the World Poker Tour is ending in style. The long-awaited dates for the Tournament of Champions and the official season finale are here as the ARIA in Las Vegas, Nevada will host the Season XVI WPT Tournament of Champions festival from May 17-26, 2018. The parties agreed in November to move the Tournament of Champions to ARIA from the Seminole Hard Rock in Hollywood, Florida.
San Mateo, California's Pat Lyons continued the heater of a lifetime on Thursday, winning the World Poker Tour Legends of Poker title and $615,346 at The Bicycle Hotel & Casino in the Los Angeles suburb of Bell Gardens.
The professional poker player was coming off biggest score of his career after winning the 12th Annual Arizona State Poker Championship in mid-August for $241,700, but more than doubled his $553,933 in career tournament earnings, capturing his first major poker title at WPT Legends.
In 2007 the WPT and poker in general was at its highest, creating insane prize pools in the regular events and made the biggest win in WPT history at WPT Championship, which gave Carlos Mortensen almost $4 million in first prize.
World Poker Tour Champions
WPT Legends of Poker Final Table
| Place | Player | Prize |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Pat Lyons | $615,346 |
| 2 | Benjamin Zamani | $341,412 |
| 3 | Upeshka De Silva | $198,720 |
| 4 | Todd Peterson | $149,715 |
| 5 | William Vo | $113,105 |
| 6 | Rafael Oliveira | $85,760 |
Lyons began the final six on Thursday trailing only chip leader William Vo, but after Brazilian upstart Rafael Oliveira busted in just the seventh hand of the final table with jacks against Upeshka De Silva's trip sixes, Lyons moved into the lead.
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Vo was the next to go. The plucky senior was eliminated in fifth when he called off with ace-king high against De Silva's made pair of jacks, allowing De Silva to move slightly ahead.
Lyons moved back in front before Todd Peterson was eliminated in fourth, getting it in with ace-queen versus De Silva's tens preflop, and finding a queen on the flop, only to see De Silva make a set of tens on the river.
Despite doing all the heavy lifting up until that point, eliminating all three players at the final table, Upeshka De Silva was actually the next to go, getting it all in preflop with jacks against queen-ten another 93 hands later. The 2015 World Series of Poker bracelet winner said goodbye in third place when the river brought a queen.
Lyons took a better than 2 to 1 chip lead into heads-up play with Benjamin Zamani, who was coming off a second-place finish at the WPT Choctaw Championship Event in July, and had already earned enough points to take over the lead in the WPT Player of the Year race. Eighteen hands into the heads-up, Lyons shoved with a dominating ace-eight. Zamani called off ace-deuce and the board ran out a straight for the newest member of the WPT Champions Club, giving Lyons the WPT Legends of Poker title.
Lyons also earned a seat in the WPT Tournament of Champions, a Hublot King Power Unico Carbon and Red watch, and a pair of gold Monster 24K headphones.
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*Photos Courtesy of the World Poker Tour
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