PokerNews Performance of the Week: Darren Elias Wins Third WPT Title
Every week, PokerNews will bring you the top performance from the previous week.
While there were many great performances last week, two by American poker players clearly stood out among the rest including Daniel "Deoxyribo"Strelitz winning his first major title, the World Poker Tour L.A. Poker Classic for $1,001,110. However, Darren Elias shipping the World Poker Tour Fallsview Poker Classic $5,000 Main Event on Friday for C$429,384 ($335,436) is the PokerNews Performance of the Week thanks to this victory also representing his third WPT title to tie a record with four other players.
Elias joins a group of big names players to win his third WPT title including Chino Rheem, Anthony Zinno, Carlos Mortensen and Gus Hansen.
“It was a good tournament. I got dealt a lot of good hands in this one, a lot of big preflop hands,” Elias said to the WPT. “I kept getting aces and kings, I got pretty lucky to win. It was smooth sailing most of the way.”
However, it wasn't exactly "smooth sailing" for Elias. The American was almost eliminated in sixth place when he jammed 20 big blinds with pocket nines over Andrew Chen who opened with pocket queens. However, a nine spiked the flop and he was able to parlay this into a heads-up battle with David Eldridge. The heads-up battle lasted just a few hands with Elias coming out on top to win the title and etch his name into the WPT history books.
Elias' two other WPT titles both came in 2014 when he won the WPT Borgata Championship for $843,744, his biggest win to date, and later shipped the WPT St. Maarten for $127,680. After his second victory, Elias became the first player to win back-to-back WPT Main Events in the same season.
In addition to his trio of wins, Elias had several other close calls for WPT wins throughout the years with five other final table finishes.
| Date | Event | Place | Prize |
|---|---|---|---|
| Sept. 22, 2011 | WPT Borgata Poker Open | Fifth | $230,610 |
| May 2, 2012 | WPT Jacksonville BestBet Open | Third | $147,850 |
| Aug. 4, 2015 | WPT Choctaw | Third | $303,593 |
| April 24, 2016 | Monster WPT Tournament of Champions | Sixth | $58,300 |
| Oct. 5, 2016 | WPT Maryland Live! | Fourth | $113,905 |
Elias, who began playing poker online, has recorded over $8 million in tournament cashes almost evenly distributed between both live poker ($4,458,858 according to The Hendon Mob) and online poker ($3,804,230 according to PocketFives).
The race is now on for who will be the first poker player to win the fourth title.
