At its fourth consecutive run at the annual WSOP, on late evening of Thursday last week, the $565 buy-in COLOSSUS has finally wrapped up, and the one who managed to win the event's bracelet and $1 million first-place prize money was Roberly Felicio, a Brazilian restaurant owner.
The 49-year-old Brazilian Felicio, whose only previous cash at the WSOP was at 501st place at last year's Monster Stack event, despite having only one friend with him in Las Vegas, had a fairly loud and supportive rail. Even though they were strangers, his fellow countrymen cheered him on continuously as he rose at the top spot in the event.
Felicio said after he won, "That was the best part. I came here to Vegas with only one friend and being here, I had a lot of Brazilians cheering for me and also some professionals. I think that was the difference heads-up. When I was down, I would look at the rail and the people that are there cheering for me. I'm sure that is what made the difference for me to get the title."
Felicio added, "I'm very happy, it was a tough final table with tough opponents. Heads-up was very emotional. But I'm very excited to take home my first bracelet, I still can't believe it."
Of course, Lady Luck was definitely on his side too, because runner-up Sang Liu was actually just one card away from bagging the event. Sang Liu had J-10 on a board of J-7-3-K against Felicio's J-8. The river revealed an 8, thus giving Felicio two pair and a commanding chip lead.
Sang Liu had to settle for second place, with his take-home prize money quite a long way from the top-heavy prize structure that awarded Felicio twice as much for making it to first place.
The main reason for the payout discrepancy was the $1 million guarantee for first place (on a $6.5 million prize pool), and also a disappointing turnout of only 13,070 entries. Even if that player field size is considered to be one of the biggest in the history of the WSOP, it was a long ways off from the previous three editions of the COLOSSUS, which had entrant numbers of 18,054 (in 2017), 21,613 (2016), and 22,374 (2015).
2018 WSOP Event #7 COLOSSUS $565 No-Limit Hold'em Final Table Results
Place
|
Player
|
Country
|
Prize
|
1
|
Roberly Felicio
|
Brazil
|
$1,000,000
|
2
|
Sang Liu
|
United States
|
$500,000
|
3
|
Joel Wurtzel
|
United States
|
$300,000
|
4
|
Scott Margereson
|
United Kingdom
|
$220,040
|
5
|
Timothy Miles
|
United States
|
$166,091
|
6
|
Song Choe
|
United States
|
$126,158
|
7
|
Gunther Dumsky
|
Germany
|
$96,431
|
8
|
John Racener
|
United States
|
$74,178
|
9
|
Steven Jones
|
United States
|
$57,425
|
Source:
https://www.pokernews.com/news/2018/06/roberly-felicio-wins-2018-wsop-colossus-for-1-million-31052.htm