David Dongwoo Ko Captures World Poker Tour Montreal Main Event Title

David Dongwoo Ko has received the 2024 World Poker Tour Montreal $3,500 CAD no-limit maintain’em major occasion on the Playground Poker Membership in Quebec. The 23-year-old poker professional primarily based out of Burnaby, British Columbia overcame a discipline of 882 entries to safe his first WPT title and the highest prize price $319,217 USD.

This was the biggest match rating but for Ko, topping the $50,800 he earned for a win in a £450 World Collection of Poker Worldwide Circuit occasion. The three-time WSOPC ring winner now has almost $400,000 in recorded match earnings to his identify after this newest victory.

“I actually needed to show to myself and to the world that I can compete in these larger stage tournaments, and as we speak I feel I did,” Ko informed WPT reporters. “Being a WPT Champion is one thing that can final perpetually, you recognize, in order that simply by itself means quite a bit.”

Not solely did Ko must contend together with his fellow poker gamers on the remaining desk, he additionally needed to wait out the affect of a passing storm that knocked out energy within the space. Play was halted for over two hours, however ultimately resumed at 11:00 PM native time.

After closing out the win, Ko was awarded 1,368 Card Participant Participant of the Yr factors. This was sufficient to catapult him up the rankings and into a hundred and fifteenth place within the 2024 POY race introduced by World Poker.

This occasion featured three beginning flights and three extra days of motion. The highest 111 finishers earned a share of $2,071,642 USD prize pool, with six-figure payouts for the ultimate 4. Amongst those who ran deep had been Mike Leah (57th), Xuan Liu (54th), WPT commentator Tony Dunst (thirty fourth, and three-time WPT champion Eric Afriat (nineteenth).

The ultimate day started with Ko within the lead and simply six contenders remaining. After a number of orbits of six-handed motion, the primary three eliminations happened in consecutive arms. Charles Kassin ran his pocket queens into the pocket kings of Tommy Nguyen to complete sixth ($65,326). Moments later, Tamer Alkamli’s pocket queens misplaced a preflop coin flip in opposition to the A-Okay of Ko (fifth – $85,878).

Rayan Chamas was the following to fall. The poker participant and on-line streamer, identified to many by his display identify ‘Beriuzy’, acquired all-in for round 16 massive blinds with Okay-7 going through the A-9 of Ko. Neither participant improved and Chamas was despatched to the rail in fourth place ($113,770).

Three handed play went on for a number of hours earlier than the facility outage that was beforehand talked about additional delayed the crowning of a champion.

Ko held the lead when motion picked up once more. It took greater than 4 hours for the following knockout to happen. Nguyen acquired all-in with Q-3 suited going through A-10 for Ko, who flopped journeys and held from there to enter heads-up play with roughly a 3:2 lead over Dan Stavila. Nguyen earned $150,470 because the third-place finisher.

The ultimate hand of the match started with Ko limping from the button for 500,000 with Okay3. Stavila raised to 1,800,000 from the large blind with Q6 and Ko known as. The flop got here down 1082 to present each gamers flush attracts. It checked to the flip, which introduced the 9 to finish each attracts. Stavila checked together with his queen excessive flush and Ko guess 2,450,000. Stavila known as and the river introduced the three. Stavila checked once more. Ko guess 7,200,000 and Stavila check-raised all-in for 16,025,000. Ko snap-called to lock up the pot and the title with flush over flush. Stavila headed to the payout desk to gather $205,520 because the runner-up.