On Wednesday, poker pro and former Full Tilt owner Chris "Jesus" Ferguson won his 6th WSOP bracelet and €39,289 in WSOP Europe Event #7 €1,650 POT-LIMIT OMAHA HI-LO 8 OR BETTER.
The event, which was played at King's Casino in Rozvadov, Czech Republic attracted a field of 92 players who battled it out over 2 days of play. While big stars such as Phil Hellmuth and John Racener were eliminated just before the money (14 players got to share the entire prize pool), Ferguson reached the 8-handed final table in 5th place.
When the cards were in the air, Poland's Artur Sojka's held a solid chip lead with 1,032,000 while Ferguson only had 179,000/15 big blinds to his name. After 30 minutes of so, Sojka increased his already big chip lead after eliminating Germany's Sebastian Langrock in 8th place. At this point, he had over half of the chips in play and about 4 times as much as Eldert Soer in second place.
Ferguson's winning streak started around this time of the tournament. First he doubled up though Sojka to 300k, then he doubled up again against Rex Clinkscales. Ferguson then eliminated Clinkscales a few minutes later to bring his stack to 900k.
The chip lead changed owner several times over the next two hours of play, but during that time Sojka never returned to the top of the chip counts and was eventually eliminated in 4th place for €11,693 (we can only imagine how disappointed he must be with that result after having almost half of the chip in play at one point).
20 minutes after Sojka hit the rail, Ferguson busted Eldert Soer in third place in the biggest pot of the tournament. "Jesus" enter heads-up play with a commanding 4-1 chip lead and used it very well, given that he got the job done in just 10 minutes! Ukraine's Stanislav Wright got €24,283 for his runner-up finish.
Ferguson, who returned to WSOP last year after lying low since the Full Tilt scandal emerged in 2011, talked to WSOP.com following his 6th gold bracelet victory, "I feel great. It's kind of surreal because I wasn't expecting to win this bracelet at all. I was just trying to sneak in, just trying to advance a little bit. And it just kind of happened. It's the best way."
Fina table results:
1 - Chris Ferguson - €39,289
2 - Stanislav Wright - €24,283
3 - Eldert Soer - €16,607
4 - Artur Sojka - €11,693
5 - Rex Clinksacles - €8,483
6 - Divanshu Kurana - €6,347
7 - Dario Alioto - €4,902
8 - Sebastian Langrock - €3,913
