22-year-old poker professional Griffin Paul entered yesterday's final table of the WPT Seminole Hard Rock Poker Showdown Main Event with almost a third of the chips in play, however, early in the final table, the chip lead was traded back and forth between Joe Ebanks and Andrew Crooks.
Later on, after three players had been sent packing (Ryan Rivers, Brian Green & Shawn Nguyen), Ebanks and Paul were almost even at the top of the chip counts. Ebanks eventually eliminated Crooks in third place (pocket nines vs pocket kings of Crooks) to bring the chip lead into heads-up play.
Ebanks' lead only lasted for 8 hands though, as Paul scored a double up already on the ninth hand - winning a flip with ace-jack vs Ebank's pocket nines. Paul never let go of the chip lead after that. The battle came to an end on the 34th hand of heads-up play...
Paul limped for 400k and Ebanks raised to 1,5 million. Paul quickly called. The flop rolled out K
J
4
, Ebanks bet 1 million and Paul responded by moving all in. Ebanks quickly called with AJ but was behind the K9 of Paul.
The turn card was the 4, the river card the 6
, and Paul won the pot with two pair, king and fours. Griffin Paul received his first WPT Championship Trophy, $1,000,000, a $15,400 entry into the season-ending WPT World Championship, a pair of gold Monster 24k Headsphones, and a Hublot Oceanographic Watch.
1st: Griffin Paul - $1,000,000
2nd: Joe Ebanks - $615,000
3rd: Andre Crooks - $383,000
4th: Shawn Nguyen - $323,500
5th: Brian Green - $269,000
6th: Ryan Rivers - $217,500
