This week’s poker news wraps up the final tournaments of the World Series of Poker. As that megaevent has come to an end, we have a few more big winners who took home bracelets.
Benjamin Kaupp Wins World Series Of Poker Tournament Of Champions
Benjamin Kaupp didn’t waste his opportunity to compete in the tournament of champions during the 2022 World Series of Poker. Kaupp was able to qualify for the $1,000,000 freeroll Tournament of Champions event after picking up a golden ring back in February during the $215 buy-in WSOP Online Circuit event. He earned $14,954 for the first-place finish as well.
That momentum clearly carried over to his Tournament of Champions event. He overcame a field of 470 entries to come away with the top prize of $250,000 along with his first gold bracelet.
Over his career, he now has over $360,000 in scores. This was by far the largest of his career as well, completely crushing the previous high of $53,072 that he earned from an 11th-place finish in 2011.
Gianluca Speranza And Shaun O’Donnell Win WSOP Online Bracelets
The 2022 World Series of Poker Online officially finished up, but not without two strong events to bring it all home. The first was a $5,300 buy-in no-limit hold’em freezeout high roller event that brought in approximately 245 entries. The $1,225,000 prize pool was split out amongst the top 35 finishers but nobody picked up more than Gianluca Speranza. Speranza needed just under 12 hours of competition in order to come away with his gold bracelet and the $324,625 prize.
Shortly after that was the final event, the $500 buy-in no-limit hold’em Summer Saver. This one saw a total of 1,648 entries compete for the top prize but nobody could take out Shaun O’Donnell. O’Donnell picked up his first career bracelet along with the top prize of $125,330.
For Speranza, his career tournament earnings grew all the way up to just under $4.9 million. As for O’Donnell, he is sitting at over $601,000 in career tournament earnings himself.
Dan Zack Wins World Series Of Poker Player Of The Year
The World Series of Poker has officially announced their best player of the year, with that honor being given to Dan Zack. Zack completely dominated the Card Player Player of the Year race in 2022, with a total of 4,530 points racked up. The race really wasn’t all that close down the stretch, with the closest competitor finishing just under 500 points behind him. The third-place finisher was a whopping 1,250 plus points away from him as well. Simply put, he earned this accomplishment.
Zack was able to make four final tables along with 16 cashouts throughout the year. He picked up two WSOP gold bracelets to top it off as well and had to undergo incredibly long heads-up matches in order to pull away with each of them.
Zack has consistently been close in the POY race over the past decade with 89 total cashouts since 2014. In the past 10 years, only Shaun Deeb and Daniel Negreanu have scored more points than him in this competition. It’s a well-deserved win for Zack who has consistently been towards the top of the rankings.