Daniel Santoro has joined an elite group of poker players including Phil Ivey, Erik Seidel, Barry Greenstein and Daniel Negreanu who have won a World Poker Tour Main Event after he bested a field of 189 to take home the $449,910 first place prize and have his name written into poker’s history books.
Santoro started the six handed final table third in chips with 1,155,000 of them in his stack and he quietly went about his business and picking up chips very efficiently. In the early stages it looked like Christian Harder was going to run away with proceedings after he eliminated Eli Berg on the third hand of play after finding pocket aces and then ten hands later his pair of kings sent the dangerous Andy Frankenberger to the rail in fifth place.
But Santoro, who hails from New York, took care of the next two players after being dealt monster hands himself. First he sent Steven Brackesy packing after the pair entered a raising war in a blind-versus-blind confrontation that saw Bracksey six-bet shove with just Ac4c and Santoro make the call with QhQs. Bracksey received no help from the board and he became the fourth place finisher.
Nearly three hours and 74 hands later Santoro was gifted the chiplead. He initially min-raised on the button to 160,000 only to see Bob Carbone three-bet shove for around 1,000,000 chips in the big blind. It turned out Carbone had made his play with pokcet tens but they were completely crushed by the AhAs of Santoro. A rather uneventful board kept the aces in front, setting up an potentially exciting heads-up match against Harder.
Going into the one-on-one battle Santoro held a 4,505,000 to 1,215,000 chip advantage and he soon opened up an even more substantial lead after whittling Harder down to less than 400,000 chips. However, Harder is an exceptional player and he staged a terrific comeback and event took the lead at one stage but the run good of Santoro was just too much for him to overcome.
The final hand, which was the 200th of the final table, saw Harder min-raise to 160,000, Santoro three-bet to 425,000 then call when Harder moved all in for just shy of 2,500,000. Harder turned over pocket tens and they were in a huge coinflip against the AcKs of Santoto. The tens stayed ahead right up to the river but the final community card was the Kc, sending the monster pot Santoro’s way and eliminating Harder in second place.
The next stop on the WPT calendar is in a couple of weeks time at WPT Jacksonville in Florida and the WPT Amneville is currently underway and has reached Day 2.
Final Table Payouts
1st: Daniel Santoro: $449,910
2nd: Christian Harder: $248,962
3rd: Bob Carbone: $166,271
4th: Steven Brackesy: $129,816
5th: Andy Frankenberger: $99,385
6th: Eli Berg: $83,580
