Courtenay Williams Takes Down the Colossus for $542,540

After four days of intense play, the American took the lion’s share of the $6,664,102 prize pool which was divided between the top 2,326 finishers.

Williams kicked off the final day with the eighth largest stack and the Los Angeles resident had already locked up his first WSOP cash. He has a live tournament record going back 12 years but had never cashed in any WSOP event, until last night.

When asked if he’s happier about the handsome payday or the bracelet win, he said:

“I honestly don’t know which means more. I think the bracelet is really cool, the money is really cool, at this moment they are both equal.”

He also pulled off a great line in the first level of the final table when he forced a fold from his opponent who had the best hand.

“I found out about that hand at the first break. I think I talked him into a fold, which played into some other stuff later. When we got a heads-up, it played to my advantage because I think he thought I was going to be bluffing a lot.” 

Action Recap

The final table started off with everyone taking their time to settle in with Willliams breaking the deadlock in a big pot against Ramaswamy Pyloore. Pyloore found a good fold and nobody was out, but the temperature had definitely been raised more than a little.

Pyloore then sent home Justin Gutierrez in a king versus tens confrontation and Germany’s Sigrid Denckerleft the stage in eighth to leave a field of seven male players.

Ryan Leng picked up a much-needed double-up but it then all went wrong when a standard jam with ace-seven ran into the pocket tens of Kaiwen Wei and he was out for a prize of $94,760.

Pyloore then resumed his sun run, picking up pocket aces to knock out Brazil’s Antonio Trocoli Filho to leave five Americans fighting over the remaining prize pool.

Jason Blodgett was the player most happy to see this quick spate of eliminations as he nursed his small stack, but his joy didn’t last much longer.

Ace-two against the tens of Pyloore wasn’t enough and then there were only four.

Kaiwen Wei was one of the favourites given how well he’d been playing but his streak came to an end as quick as a flash. Matt Glantz opened with queen-jack and Wei jammed over the top with ace-four. A queen on the flop was enough to take the event to three-handed play.

Pyloore’s hot spell had left him with a nice lead while Williams was the short stack, but this turned around quickly.

William’s doubled through Pyloore and then Glantz was knocked out in a coinflip race with nines and ace-queen to take third place for $273,260.

The heads-up battle was a back-and-forth affair with no player seemingly a favourite. Pyloore then slipped behind considerably when he ran ace-eight into Williams’ pocket kings, to leave him with a stack only suitable for push-fold poker.

In the final hand, Williams hit a set with his pocket nines and Pyloore’s queen-four was dead and buried.

Courtenay Williams spends most of his poker time playing local events near his Los Angeles home, but we suspect that he might start branching out after this tidy payday.

“I live in LA now. I play a lot of tournaments at Bicycle and Commerce. It used to be Hustler in Commerce Park, but they don’t run that anymore, so whenever there are series there, I play multi-day events. 

“When I’m working, I’ll usually play a couple that rotate around my work.”“I’m usually off for a few months a year. I’ll come here for a week, but I barely fire in the WSOP. I usually fire the smaller stuff around the city.

“I wasn’t even going to play this on Saturday, because I had already busted twice. A couple of my buddies talked me back into playing, and here we are.”

Event #19: $500 Colossus Final Table Results

Mark Patrickson

Professional Poker Journalist

Mark Patrickson is a poker journalist with over ten years of experience. He writes for VIP-Grinders.com, sharing his deep knowledge of poker. He creates interesting content about poker strategy, trends, and news for poker fans worldwide. [more]