Too much going on to jawbone right now. I’m going to do this chronologically because so many people are cashing in the same events.
Don’t think I’ve mentioned this for a while, but the Pacific Northwest Poker Leaderboard is compiled poker tournament stats for the states and provinces of Oregon, Washington, Idaho, Alaska, British Columbia, and Alberta. I try to put a report together every two weeks, but it’s a labor of love, so real life can slow me down sometimes.
James Romero GPI: 216 was 5th in a field of 107 at the Merit Poker./partypoker MILLIONS North Cyprus #13 $500K GTD NLHE High Roller. It appears as if the 50 re-entries (at $10.5K each) were not counted as part of the reported entries, the total prize pool was $1.44M. Romero went on to cash 68th at the World Series of Poker #17 NLHE Millionaire Maker. Romero holds at #5 on the PNW Poker Leaderboard.
Vancouver BC’s Harpreet Gill GPI: 3415 jumps more than a hundred places on the Leaderboard to #84 by taking 3rd place in another event at the same series, the $5.5K buy-in Merit/partypoker #23 $3M GTD NLHE. That tournament posted 556 entries and 283 re-entries, with a prize pool of $3.8M. It’s Gill’s best-ever cash.
On the other side of the world—at Round Rock, Texas’s The Lodge Millionaire Mayhem #4 $1.25M GTD NLHE Main Event Michael Bernstein of Edmonton GPI: 4384 placed 13th out of 1,621 to climb 350 places to #967.
World Series of Poker Event #4 $5M GTD NLHE The Reunion
The Reunion was the big kickoff event for the returning WSOP and it pulled in nearly 13,000 entries, making a prize pool of $5.45M from $500 buy-ins. Four players from the PNW made it deep enough to be picked up by my tracker. Out of Roseburg, Sandra Bratton GPI: 27964 came in 48th. That’s the top 0.4% for those of you thinking 48th doesn’t sound so hard. Bratton goes from #2375 to #1810. Ryan Stoker (Spokane) moved up nine spots to #165 with 42nd place, before going on to win a bracelet after stats were compiled for this Leaderboard (I’m not sure if WSOP Online stats will get rolled into Hendon Mob leaderboards, but congrats, Ryan). Stoker is GPI: 1667. Seattle’s Katsushi Yoshida GPI: 4095 picked up a best-ever cash for 26th place and rises to #1686, nearly 1200 spots on the Leaderboard. Also from Seattle: Cheang Yoo, the 25th-place finisher. Yoo GPI: 644 is up to #344 from #400.
Steven Sporre from North Plains, Washington got their first-ever Hendon Mob cash with a 4th-place in the Orleans 2021 Fall Poker $75K GTD NLHE. Sporre is GPI: 40274 and debuts on the Leaderboard at #4259.
From Renton, Maria Pearlie Tapang GPI: 17111 goes from #6439 to #2993 after taking 3rd place (their best-ever cash) in Venetian Deepstack Championship #6 $50K GTD NLHE MonsterStack. That event got 205 entries.
Back over at the Rio, it was Adam Hendrix GPI: 2 in another big buy-in tournament, the WSOP #6 NLHE 6-Max High Roller. Hendrix took 8th of 135, in a prize pool of more than $3M. Hendrix’s position on the Leaderboard stays at #24.
Sean Fitzpatrick from Mill Creek, Washington GPI: 26166 won the Rio Daily Deepstack Series NLHE 7PM on 3 October. Fitpatrick beat 134 other entries and climbs almost 900 spots on the Leaderboard, to #2054.
Out of Eugene, William Tinoco moves from #1863 to #1289 by taking 4th out of 263 in a Wynn Fall Classic $200K GTD NLHE. It’s Tinoco’s GPI: 12488 best-ever cash.
The first PNW bracelet of the season goes to Jaswinder Lally from Vancouver, British Columbia, in only his third recorded tournament cash, in WSOP #7 Dealer’s Choice 6-Max. Lally GPI: 6726 moves from #6535 to #643. Nice to see that particular bracelet come back to the PNW!
World Series of Poker Event #8 NLHE Deepstack
The first of the $600 buy-in events this year drew 4,527 entries, and there were only three players from the PNW who made it to the Leaderboard from there (others cashed but not for enough to make it into this report). Chris Niemeyer of Lake Stevens GPI:16110 came in 28th; putting them on the Leaderboard for the first time at #4071. Yakima’s Theodore Demoe GPI: 6810 made it to 21st, and has a new Leaderboard ranking of #3915. GPI: 11192 Marty Stephens from Coos Bay placed 16th, their best-ever cash and a clip of 1500 places to #2382.
Moving up the Leaderboard from #18 to #17 is George Wolff, with a 6th place finish out of the 134 entrants in WSOP #9 Omaha Hi-Lo Championship and 23rd in the WSOP #25 NLHE 6-Max. Wolff is GPI: 1129.
Portland’s own Wayne Harmon was 48th out of 1,790 entries in the Wynn $1M GTD NLHE. The prize pool was nearly $2.6M. Harmon GPI: 624 is up more than twenty spots on the Leaderboard, to #205.
Sukhpaul Dhaliwal from Langley, British Columbia GPI: 4562 took 5th in the WSOP #10 NLHE Super Turbo Bounty, beating 1,635 other players to move two spots up on the Leaderboard to #59.
I’m including Tacoma’s Bin Weng GPI: 12466 in this edition of the Leaderboard even though the +47% ROI they made from their 5th-place finish in WSOP #11 NLHE Heads-Up Championship wasn’t nearly enough to get a mention, usually. (They’re going to make it into the next edition without a problem, from results posted since I ran this collation.) But you have to admire the sheer balls of someone with $12K in recorded tournament earnings and just three cashes, ponying up $25K to play heads-up matches with the likes of Adrian Mateos—Weng’s first match, Dan Zack—Weng’s third match and the player who knocked them out of the tournament, David Peters, and Cary Katz. I mean, jeez. Weng’s cash takes them from #3551 to #1296.
Vancouver, Washington’s Kevin Erickson almost won a bracelet in WSOP #12 LHE, losing heads-up to Yuval Bronshtein. The limit hold’em event drew 422 entries. Erickson’s third and best tournament cash leapfrogs him over more than four thousand other players on the Leaderboard to #784.
Landen Lucas, Portland still, according to Hendon Mob, GPI: 290 has a two-fer, with 10th place in the WSOP #13 NLHE Freezeout followed up by 33rd place (out of 5,326) in WSOP #17 NLHE Millionaire Maker. Lucas goes from #353 to #271 on the Leaderboard.
Puyallup’s Rafael Lebron GPI: 2927 was the next PNW player to win a bracelet, in WSOP #14 Seven-Card Stud, not the one where Phil Hellmuth threatened to burn down the Rio, the other one, where LeBron bested David Williams among others.It’s Lebron’s second bracelet, and the victory moves him up 19 places on the Leaderboard to #89.
World Series of Poker Event #15 NLHE 6-Max
Two PNW players made the last few tables of this 1,450-entry tournament. Just missing the final two tables at 13th place was Jonas Mackoff of North Vancouver, British Columbia, GPI: 4858. That’s goof for three spots on the Leaderboard, they’re now #40. 8th place was Kirkland player Jonathan Baylor‘s largest score GPI: 2704; it’s a climb of nearly two thousand places on the Leaderboard for them, to #1352.
The legendary Terrence Chan GPI: 10620 was at the final table of WSOP #16 LHE Championship, coming in 4th. 92 players put up the $10K entry fee; Chan remains at #33 on the Leaderboard.
It was a notable first recorded cash, in 8th at the Grand Poker Series #22 $500K GTD NLHE for Phillip Latimer of Moses Lake, Washington. Latimer debuts on the Leaderboard at #3475.
World Series of Poker Event #17 NLHE Millionaire Maker
In addition to James Romero (mentioned above) five other PNW players had significant cashes in the Millionaire Maker this year. Anchorage’s Kristy Becker GPI:16854 busted just after Romero, in 67th, and moves from #1436 to #1170 on the Leaderboard. Bruce Herman of Ellensberg, Washington #16814 achieved their best cash with 72nd, enough to climb more than 700 places to #1835. Vanessa Kade GPI:465 moves up six positions to #122 with a 75th place finish (followed by 19th in the WSOP #25 NLHE 6-Max). Climbing nine spots to #124 is Bellevue’s Dien Le, GPI: 179 who made the final two tables at 17th. And on the final table, picking up their best-ever cash was GPI: 6323 Adam Sherman of Seattle at 8th. Sherman goes from #903 to #359.
Seth Davies has to make an appearance in the Leaderboard each edition by contractual obligation, and this time is no excepton. with a 3rd-place finish in Aria High Roller 25 NLHE. 22 entries, looking at the payouts, there may have been a 4-way deal between Davies, Jake Schindler, Nick Petrangelo, and Stephen Chidwick. Davies GPI: 50 remains #1 on the Leaderboard and just keeps putting space between himself and everyone else,
339 players entered the Wynn $200K GTD NLHE and Seattle’s Brian Heeb came in 7th. Heeb is up nearly 200 places on the Leaderboard, at #1073.
World Series of Poker Event #21 PLO8/O8/Big O
Charles Coultas of Mill Creek, Washington GPI: 6961 was the 10th-place finisher in this event with 641 entries. Coultas climbs three places on the Leaderboard to #85. The winner of the bracelet was Dylan Linde, #6 on the Leaderboard and GPI: 112, bringing yet another bracelet to the PNW.
Darren Kennedy GPI:31626 of White Rock, British Columbia bested me by 79 places in the WSOP #27 HORSE, coming in 5th and moving up about eighty places to #313.
A Tale of Two—Maybe Three—Kaos
And that brings us to the the other PNW player who was at the HORSE final table: Kao “Flexx” Saechao. That’s the Seattle-area Kao, who placed 4th in the tournament and posted a number of other results the time period covered by this edition of the Leaderboard, including a min-cash in the Millionaire Maker. The problem is, Washington Kao’s results get mixed into those of Oregon’s Kao Saechao, not only the final table finish of the HORSE but even to the point where the results of both Kaos were attributed to Oregon Kao
Not to be outdone, Kerry Moynahan posted on Facebook that two other players with the his name cashing in an event at the Venetian last year.
In any event, I can’t reliable rank either Kao because there’s a mixup of results, and that throws everything else into flux. Not by much, but some. Anyway, great job, both Flexx and Kao. Between the two of them, they’ve got four WSOP cashes and a win in a Daily Deepstack in the past couple of weeks.
That’s all for now!