The World Poker Tour rolled on last week with the Borgata Poker Open at the Borgata Hotel Casino & Spa. A total of 1,179 players entered to try to get their cut of the $3,773,979 prize pool, and 110 players were eventually paid out. The man who finished first and ended up taking home the lion’s share of the money is Jesse Sylvia. Sylvia, who claimed his first World Poker Tour event, was especially impressive in this tournament as he entered the final table with the short stack. Size apparently didn’t matter as he made the most of what he had.
Previously, Sylvia was best known for finishing second to Greg Merson at the World Series of Poker Main Event in 2012, and he also has finished third a couple of times at the World Series of Poker. With his win at Borgata, Sylvia took home $821,811 for the six days of work. While it was tough going for Farid Jattin, who started the final table with the biggest stack (roughly half of the chips available), he was the first to be eliminated. Jattin, who hails from Colombia, would end up going home with $167,942.
Finishing second to Sylvia was Zach Gruneberg, who went home with $490,617, while Taha Maruf finished third at $300,031. Simon Lam was fourth with $250,970, while Chris Limo was fifth with $207,569 in front of Jattin.
Sylvia proved to be the biggest obstacle for Jattin during the final table, taking a few big hands from the player that came in with the big stack. Gruneberg later finished him off. Sylvia and Gruneberg then made short work of the rest of the table to set up a heads-up showdown. Silvia only had a lead of $100,000 going into this battle and the two went at it for 80 hands, in which Sylvia was the better player for the majority of the clash.
For this win, Sylvia gets 1,440 points towards the Player of the Year race while Gruneberg gets 1,200 points. Maruf will earn 960 points and Lam 720 points. There were 600 points for Limo and 480 points for Jattin. Sylvia is also going to have a seat at the season-ending World Poker Tour Tournament of Champions, along with a new watch from Hublot and a pair of golden 2K headphones from Monster. That is not a bad haul, but Sylvia is probably more excited about the money, and where he gets to go at the end of the season because of this win.
This was the fifth event of the year on the World Poker Tour calendar. Sylvia joins Seth Davies, Andjelko Andrejevic, James Mackey and Pat Lyons at the Tournament of Champions so far. The next event is the World Poker Tour Maryland Live!, which comes from the Maryland Live! Casino in Hanover. It is a five-day event from October 1st to the 5th with a buy-in of $3,500, which should draw some very good poker players.