Waxman Wins WPT Tournament of Champions, Denying Elias
Coming off his record fourth World Poker Tour title and holding a sizable chip lead after a double knockout to end the penultimate day, Darren Elias entered the final table of the WPT Tournament of Champions as the clear favorite.
However, fellow American Matt Waxman maneuvered past Elias — thanks in large part to a very lucky hand — and three other former WPT champs to bank $463,375 and his first tournament win since 2013.
In addition to his prize money — which included $50,000 added to first place by the WPT — Waxman earned a pile of added prizes including a luxurious Hublot watch and a JetSmarter membership for private flights valued at $50,000.
"It was great," he said. "I had a lot of fun playing with these guys and I was thinking about not even playing, just because it’s a big buy-in and I wasn’t too confident with my game, but I just jumped in there, and I’ve been feeling pretty good lately.
"Even though there are only 80 players, the atmosphere, you can just feel the tension so it’s a real treat to play. To be able to win this thing is amazing."
Official Final Table Results
| Place | Player | Home Country | Prize |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Matt Waxman | United States | $463,375 |
| 2 | Matas Cimbolas | Lithuania | $265,590 |
| 3 | Darren Elias | United States | $177,060 |
| 4 | David Benyamine | France | $123,045 |
| 5 | Nick Schulman | United States | $89,290 |
Waxman is the second player to take down a WPT at Esports Arena Las Vegas at Luxor after Tom Marchese won a $25K high roller. The venue will serve as the permanent home for next season's WPT televised final tables.
It was really cool man, or really really cold, should I say," he said with a chuckle, referencing the chilly temperature in the venue. "But yeah, this arena is awesome. The lights, and I’m just huge on video games, so being into such a center that has big video competitions and I get to play poker here? That was awesome."
Final Table Action
Action moved relatively slowly early on and there wasn't much movement up or down the leaderboard aside from Waxman briefly taking the chip lead when he flopped a set against Elias and made a boat on the river, getting three streets paid.
Elias moved right back into the lead on hand 53 at the expense of Nick Schulman when the former opened cutoff and the latter jammed a little over 25 big blinds holding pocket fours. Elias looked him up with sevens and while a four fell on the flop, a seven followed on the turn.
Another pocket pair battle saw Elias show down the weaker pair when David Benyamine shoved in the small blind for 370,000 at 10,000/20,000/20,000 with pocket sevens. Elias woke up with fives in the big and turned a set once again, taking control of half of the chips in play going three-handed.
The $123,045 was Benyamine's biggest score since fourth place in the Poker Players Championship in 2013 for nearly $500K.
On the 85th hand of the final table, the most pivotal hand of the tournament went down. Elias opened to 70,000 in the small blind, Waxman made it 185,000 in the big and Elias put him all in for 1,025,000. Waxman called with pocket jacks but found himself staring at pocket queens and needing help. Waxman flopped an open-ender and turned a jack-high straight though.
Instead of Elias having 160 big blinds and a 5-1 lead heads up with Matas Cimbolas, Waxman doubled into the lead.
"The good news was if I lost the hand, I didn’t have to play with him anymore either,” Waxman said with a laugh. “But, it was nice. It was just a spot where the money’s going in and I’m glad that it worked out for me.”
Elias lost a few more pots and was close in chips with the Lithuanian at just over 25 big blinds when he three-bet jammed over Cimbolas' open. Cimbolas held ace-king suited and called, and Elias had been bluffing but held live cards with ten-eight suited. An ace-high flop sent Elias packing in what had to be a disappointing third-place finish, although with over $550,000 in cashes this week, he's got plenty to be happy about.
Cimbolas closed the gap to being down only 2-1 with that pot. The match progressed very slowly, with stacks hardly seeming to change. It seemed Waxman was winning just enough small pots to slowly bleed away Cimbolas' stack though, and after about 40 hands, Cimbolas was under 20 big blinds.
On the final hand, Cimbolas limped in and three-barreled off his stack on a king-queen-high board. Waxman found the call button with just queen-seven and Cimbolas could only muster ten-three for a pure bluff.
For Waxman, it's big boost to the bankroll since he's barely been playing poker lately. Although he has more than $3.6 million in tournament cashes, only about $300,000 has come in the past two years.
He's been helping to develop a poker app and has been traveling in Australia, New Zealand and Southeast Asia for the past few months. He even got a yoga certification. All that time away from the game had Waxman a little leery about playing in a stacked field like the ToC.
"I’ve been taking a lot of poker off and honestly, I was a little bit worried because lately I felt like I wasn’t keeping up with poker and people were studying a lot and getting a lot better," he said.
Waxman watched some streams and although he thought everyone was playing solid, he didn't think people were "doing anything crazy" that he didn't understand.
"It’s the same old stuff," he said. "I definitely feel like throughout my travels I learned a lot of things that helped keep me balanced and composed throughout the tournament and I’m very thankful to have acquired that."
His old skills, little zen picked up traveling the world, and a lucky result against the red-hot Elias proved to be enough to power him to $463,375 and make him the third winner of the WPT Tournament of Champions.
Reporting from Valerie Cross contributed to this article.
Photos courtesy of WPT
