The WPT Prime Championship has been won by Zak VanKeuren after the American defeated a field of 9,670 players to claim a prize of $1,162,350.
This incredible event was a warm up for the massive WPT World Championship but it still came with a $5,000,000 GTD prize pool.
Thanks to all the deserved support that the World Poker tour receives, this event was once again incredibly well-supported, coming tantalisingly close to beating last year’s record attendance.
Last year’s tournament was won by Calvin Anderson for $1,386,280 with a field of 10,512 entrants. This made it the biggest live poker event for buy-ins of more than $1,000 in history.
The inaugural event in 2022 attracted only 5,430 entrants, for comparison.
VanKeuren is so deep into the game right now, he even dreams about it. He also explained a bit about his training situation to reporters.
“I have dreams sometimes where I’m playing poker in a big tournament or something, and then I wake up. I guess I’m just thinking I’m in a lucid dream right now, and I’m just gonna wake up soon.
“Hopefully it’s still real life in about an hour. I have been studying with the right people the last few years, players who are really, really good – levels above me. Learning from them, spending more time with them and a lot of them are close friends now.
“Bouncing some hands off them, going through certain courses online. And that’s only the poker technical aspect.”
Action Recap
Nine players returned to the playing hall on the final day, with two of them on life support with less than 10 big blinds.
Justin Young was ticking along nicely with a 30 big blind stack but it all went wrong when he committed with ace-king only for Kevin Calenzo to wake up with pocket aces to send his rival home in ninth palace with a $114,000 prize.
Ralph Marquez wasn’t far behind Young — six hands, in fact — when he had to go with queen-ten for his final five big blinds.
VanKeuren thought his king-jack was good enough to call and a king on the turn meant Marquez was out in eighth.
Seconds later, VanKeuren dispatched Colin Hong with quad eights to move to the top of the standings.
An orbit later, and we witnessed VanKeuren make it a hat trick by ousting Ryan Stiner with a simple ace-queen over jack-ten.
Finally, play began to slow down somewhat after the flurry of bust outs.
Jim Casement was the next player to face the loss of all his chips. Three-bet jamming ace-queen for 23 big blinds in the big blind was standard but Calenzo called him off with ace-king and a miracle was needed.
But that’s the way it goes sometimes and a queen on the turn was all it took to flip the script and hand Casement a timely double-up.
Joe Ozimok was next to head home. Whittled down to only five big blinds he had to chance his luck and it didn’t work out when called off by chip leader VanKeuren.
It wasn’t all to go VanKeuren’s way, though, because only a few hands later Calenzo cracked his pocket kings to build his stack up to 31 big blinds, even if that was still quite a way behind the leader.
Undeterred, VanKeuren struck back when he flopped trips against Malik Zaman who could do no better than two pair. When Zaman’s kicker hit the turn he was happy to go with it only to be leaving the table when VanKeuren flipped over his cards.
Three-handed play wasn’t so interesting. VanKeuren kept on extending his lead while Calenzo and Casement went back-and-forth until the latter won a standard race to take us to the heads-up match.
VanKeuren’s lead was now three-to-one and even though Casement found a solitary double-up, it didn’t take long for VanKeuren to claim the title and a seven-figure prize.
It was officially hand 141 of the final table stage where we would see Casement risking his tournament with king-jack running straight into VanKeuren’s ace-king. No nasty surprises came and VanKeuren was crowned champion.
WPT Prime Championship Final Table Results
| Place | Player | Prize (USD) |
| 1 | Zak VanKeuren | $1,162,350 |
| 2 | Jim Casement | $759,850 |
| 3 | Kevin Calenzo | $560,000 |
| 4 | Malik Zaman | $420,000 |
| 5 | Joe Ozimok | $320,000 |
| 6 | Ryan Stiner | $240,000 |
| 7 | Colin Hong | $186,000 |
| 8 | Ralph Marquez | $145,000 |
| 9 | Justin Young | $114,000 |
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