Sergio Benso had long dreamed of winning a gold bracelet at a World Series of Poker event. He brought that vision into reality with a dominant performance in closing out the inaugural $1,500 Pick Your PLO tournament.
Benso surged to the chip lead early on at the final table and never wavered in outpointing Farhad Jamasi heads-up to claim the $196,431 first-place prize at the Horseshoe and Paris, Las Vegas.
As soon as he realized he had scooped the pot that gave him all the chips left in the event, Benso didn't even try to conceal his excitement. The smile he would be wearing for the next half hour, at least, came before hugs with everyone near. From dealers to tournament directors to media, he had to spread the joy.
Benso outlasted a field of 857, which generated a prize pool of $1,137,667, without a single person on his rail.
Final Table Results
Place
Player
Country
Prize
1
Sergio Benso
Italy
$196,431
2
Farhad Jamasi
United States
$130,904
3
Steven Liu
United States
$90,762
4
Justin Liberto
United States
$64,007
5
Maxx Coleman
United States
$45,925
6
Joshua Stewart
United Kingdom
$33,536
7
Jon Turner
United States
$24,931
8
Zachary Fischer
United States
$18,874
A Win For Joy
Benso was all by his lonesome, and he didn't mind. Benso's wife was at home in the Netherlands with their year-and-a-half-old daughter Joy.
"This is a great gift for Joy and I can't wait to travel and celebrate with them," the native of Genova, Italy said. "This is something you dream about all your life."
"I was like the solitary wolf. Not because I think I'm not nice or friendly, but I like to focus when I play. Solitary wolf, that's me."
"I was like the solitary wolf. Not because I think I'm not nice or friendly, but I like to focus when I play."
Benso certainly devoured the competition. This was a run of which he knew he was capable.
He has been posting cashes for some 20 years, with a significant number of them in Omaha variants, and has been coming to the WSOP since 2015, but had never captured a bracelet.
"I usually (mess) up on the last day, but not today," Benso said. "I got lucky and I played well."
Final Table Action
Only 10 players sat down for the final run to a title on Saturday, and half of them were eliminated in the first two hours of play.
The final table came together some 15 minutes into the day when Michael Lenz and Brevin Andreadis were erased in quick succession.
Meanwhile, in the first hand in which he was involved, Benso doubled up the dangerous Justin Liberto and entered the final table sixth in chips with less than 20 big blinds.
Then he went to work.
He got many of those chips back from Liberto with a scoop of a double board PLO hand, the last time his tournament life would be at risk on his march to the title.
Justin Liberto
Maxx Coleman was the short stack at the final table with only two big blinds after a tough beat, but he clawed his way back to respectability, deftly dodging danger to finish in fifth place.
Benso knocked out Jon Turner in seventh place, then gutted Liberto for more than 3,000,000 chips to vault into the chip lead when Liberto made a questionable call.
It was somewhat fitting that the two players who entered the day first and second in chips would eventually meet heads-up for the bracelet.
Jamasi and Benso led the knockout parade on Day 2, erasing players left and right as they climbed up the leaderboard. Jamasi took command and held a third of the chips in play entering the final day.
He still had around that number when heads-up play began, but Benso had become the overwhelming chip leader. And Benso was all but flawless down the stretch.
He didn't overplay his chip stack, instead he let Jamasi come to him in almost four hours of one-on-one. Jamasi won just a handful of pots that Benso invested any chips into aside from the blinds.
"I made a lot of mistakes in the first two days, everyone does, but it's about who makes fewer, and the last six hours I didn't make any," Benso said. "That's why I won it. The solitary wolf got it done."
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