Pete Chen Wins WPT Beijing to Kick Off New Season
With the Monster World Poker Tour Tournament of Champions all wrapped up, the WPT wasted no time in moving on to Season 16, which began with Pete Yanhan Chen taking down WPT Beijing for $299,485.
The win pushes Chen, a Macau-based pro from Taiwan, past $1 million in lifetime tournament cashes. It's his biggest score to date, surpassing the $90,172 he cashed for at PokerStars Championship Macau Main Event, where he finished in sixth place.
Official Final Table Results
| Place | Player | Prize |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Pete Yanhan Chen | $299,485* |
| 2 | Chen Ke | $199,278 |
| 3 | Lu Yingqi | $128,101 |
| 4 | Zhang Wenbin | $84,974 |
| 5 | Tan Yancheng | $65,401 |
| 6 | Bryan Huang | $54,168 |
Includes $15,000 Tournament of Champions seat
The five-day freezeout event had a buy-in of roughly $3,500 and reached its cap with 400 total runners, making for a successful WPT main tour debut in China. By the time the unofficial final table rolled around, Chen had already taken over the chip lead from well-known pro Bryan Huang, according to the live updates.
Not content to simply sit on his stack and wait for the other players to make their moves under pressure, Chen began sweeping up seemingly every other pot to move from 2.6 million to 4.6 million without scoring any eliminations at the final table.
With seven players left, Chen won a big race with pocket nines against the ace-king of Xu Xin to take a truly massive lead into the official final table and final day of the event. Chen bagged 6.3 million at 25,000/50,000/5,000, good for more than half of the chips in play.
Huang also made the final table, but with a mere 16 big blinds, he was in shove mode early. Just 10 hands in, Zhang Wenbin called him with jacks and held up against Huang's 2♥2♦ to send him out in sixth.
Tan Yancheng took a bad beat when his A♥Q♦ was outdrawn by Lu Yingqi's A♣J♥ and a jack arrived on the flop. Left with just four big blinds, Yancheng managed one double but could muster no further momentum and busted in fifth.
With four players left, the shortest stack belonged to Chen Ke, but he got two lucky doubles through Wenbin. First, his dominated A♦2♣ prevailed against A♥Q♠. Then, he shoved 15 big blinds in with A♠Q♥. Wenbin woke up with kings. All Ke flopped was top boat as A♥A♦Q♠ hit the felt, giving him another double.
Wenbin had just six big blinds left but ran it back to almost 30. He got it in good for another double, this time through Chen, with pocket queens against K♦J♥. Not one, but two kings hit the board though, ending Wenbin's comeback bid and giving Chen about 9.7 million of 12 million in play.
Yingqi got his last nine big blinds in with J♥8♥ and needed to improve against Chen's A♦2♦. A jack-high flop gave Yingqi exactly what he needed, but an ace on the turn sent the pot to Chen to get him heads up against Ke.
The match took a little more than 20 hands, but despite one double, Ke ended up shoving in less than 10 big blinds with Q♥3♣. Chen looked him up with K♠4♠, and a board of A♥10♠10♣7♠9♣ later, Chen locked up the first WPT event of the season along with a seat in next year's Tournament of Champions.
Photo courtesy of WPT
