Florian Duta Claims Wynn Summer Classic Championship Title ($429,161)
One of the many summer poker series away from the Rio in Las Vegas wraps up at the Wynn. The Championship event of the Wynn Summer Classic kicked off last week with the first of three starting flights.
The $1,600 buy-in event with a $1.5 million guaranteed prize pool attracted 2,119 players, bringing the prize pool up to almost $3.1 million to more than double the guarantee.
A total of 224 players received a piece of the prize pool, and Florian Duta from Romania steamrolled through the final day to claim the victory and the first-place prize of $429,161 that came with it.
Final Table Payouts
| Place | Player | Country | Payout |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Florian Duta | Romania | $429,161 |
| 2 | Yuliyan Kolev | Bulgaria | $283,796 |
| 3 | Cy Williams | United States | $195,722 |
| 4 | Steven Van Zadelhoff | Netherlands | $139,801 |
| 5 | Kovoor Jayaram | United States | $103,556 |
| 6 | Jack O'Neill | United Kingdom | $79,966 |
| 7 | Richard Tatalovich | United States | $64,127 |
| 8 | Yosuke Iwata | United States | $52,998 |
| 9 | Yan Rao | China | $44,611 |
Final Day's Action
The third and final day of play began with Duta holding a sizable chip lead with 7.5 million – and he never relinquished the lead. According to the Wynn Poker Room Twitter updates, with seven players left, Duta had enough chips to nearly cover all of his six opponents combined.
Duta continued his destruction, sending out a short-stacked Richard Tatalovich in seventh place, and he was soon followed to the payout desk by Jack O’Neill who took sixth.
The next player to go was the first in the six-figure club. Kovoor Jayaram fell in fifth place at the hands of monster stack Duta to take home $103,000.
Dutch poker pro Steven van Zadelhoff, who is coming up on the one-year anniversary of his $1.6 million PokerStars WCOOP Main Event win, hit the rail next in fourth place. Van Zadelhoff added $139,801 to his nearly $1.6 million in live tournament earnings, just shy of his best live cash of $148,588.
Northern California’s Cy Williams finished in third place for $195,722, the largest live cash of his poker career. That left Bulgaria’s Yuliyan Kolev to battle it out heads up with Duta, but Kolev was unable to overcome the giant. For second place, Kovel took home a hefty $283,796 consolation prize, his largest live cash which put him close to $1.5 million in earnings, while Duta scooped the rest.
In addition to the Championship event, two $1 million guarantee tournaments also played out during the Wynn Summer Classic, both featuring a buy-in of $1,100. The first one was chopped by Kwun Li ($280,594) and Australia’s Dominic Coombe ($266,639). Other notable final table finishers included Thomas Boivin (3rd place - $149,961), Ian O’Hara (6th place - $60,632) and Upeshka DeSilva (8th place - $39,922).
Athanasios Polychronopoulos shipped the final $1,100 No-Limit Hold’em event for $231,507 to bring his live career earnings over $2.3 million. Phachara Wongwichit and Stephen Ma also got a piece of the three-way chop, taking home $204,728 and $204,404, respectively. Four-time WPT champion Darren Elias also made the final table, finishing in eighth place for a $37,365 payday.
The Wynn Summer Classic comes to a close with Monday's $400 No-Limit Hold'em $40,000 guarantee - one last change for the grinders to get a Wynn score before heading out of town.
