Jonathan Taylor wins 2013 WSOP event 14
Monday June 10, 2013 : CIRCUIT ACE TAKES NHLE HONOURS AT THE WORLD SERIES OF POKER
Jonathan Taylor adds a WSOP bracelet to his three circuit rings
Jonathan Taylor, a professional poker player from Alabama, is the latest World Series of Poker champion, having taken down Event 14, the $1,500 buy-in NLHE competition to add his first bracelet to a poker jewellery horde that already includes 3 WSOP Circuit winner's rings.
The poker pro has a total of ten Circuit cashes to his credit, including three winner rings achieved this year, and his Event 14 win boosts his bank balance by a useful $454,424, the main prize from a prize pool worth $2,455,600 It broke a bad string of cashless failures in the seven WSOP events Taylor had entered for this week, providing him with the funding to continue playing, with well over forty events still to start.
Taylor bested an entry field of 1,816 players to end up on the final table, facing Blake Bohn, Hunter Frey, Hiren Patel, Tommy Vu, Patrick Kubat, Jed Hoffman, Dan Gannon and Joseph Pergola.
Taylor, who played top level college football and holds a master’s degree in Accounting, took up professional poker just four years after graduating, disliking the nine-to-five routine of accounting work.
On the final table Taylor kept a low profile, quietly playing himself into the top four before stepping on the gas and powering through to meet Blake Bohn in the heads up holding a 2 to 1 chip advantage, which he leveraged into a convincing win over his last opponent.
Bohn's second placing brought him a pay-out of $281,049.
The event capturing most railbirds’ attention over the weekend turned out to be Event 16, the $10,000 buy-in Heads-Up No-Limit contest which saw Phil Hellmuth denied his fourteenth bracelet in an early exit, and an epic heads up between online high stakes stars Ben "Sauce 123" Sulsky and Phil "OMGClayAiken" Galfond.
The two went at it Saturday in a marathon one-on-one round in the event in which the lead swung several times before Sulsky finally managed to send Galfond to the exit in ninth place for $26,237…pin money compared to what this pro is using to turning over on the internet high stakes tables, but it doubled his investment in the buy-in and then some.
The event continues with the semi-finals, in which Don Nguyen will take on Sulsky. The victor of that match will then head to the final, where they will run up against the winner of semi-final number 2, featuring WSOP bracelet winner Mark Radoja and Justin Bonomo.
All the semi-finalists will start with 192,000 as they go after a first prize worth $331,190, but all remaining players will take home at least $110,485 for reaching this far in a tough contest.
