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David Larson Wins WPT Rolling Thunder Main Event

Season XVI of the WPT (World Poker Tour) Main Tour is currently underway and its latest stop was the WPT Rolling Thunder at the Thunder Valley Casino Resort, California. Just a few days back, we reported news of Dennis Blieden winning the 2018 WPT LA Poker Classic Championship, the previous WPT Main Tour stop, for $1 million.

The Rolling Thunder tournament was scheduled between 2nd to 6th March and the $3,500 buy-in Main Event saw a total of 440 entries, taking the total prizepool to $1,408,000. The event was ultimately taken down by San Jose’s David Larson, who bagged $295,128 for the first place!

David Larson first played a live poker tournament over 20 years back but has never won a major live tournament in all those years, making this his career best live cash and taking his overall career earnings to $325,268. His highest live cash before this was just $11,500.

The biggest achievement for Larson would’ve been beating 2015 WSOP Main Event champion Joseph McKeehen, who won $7,683,346 in that single event and has over $14 million in live career earnings. Larson doubled up through him in three handed play a couple of times and sent him packing at third place for $131,081.

He was then up against Ian Steinman in heads up, who rose up to a 2:1 chip advantage at one stage. However, it was just 6 hands later that Larson had a 3:1 lead. In what turned out to be the final hand, the board opened A-J-6-A-Q and both players had gone all in. Steinman held pocket Kings but Larson’s A-6 gave him aces full of sixes and made him richer by almost $300k.

Final results:

1. David Larson – $295,128
2. Ian Steinman – $201,428
3. Joseph McKeehen – $131,081
4. Ping Liu – $97,510
5. Andreas Kniep – $69,650
6. J. Alexander – $56,417
7. Paul McCaffrey – $43,322
8. Glenn Larson – $43,322
9. Pat Lyons – $30,228

For reports on similar poker tournament wins from across the globe, keep reading GutshotMagazine.com!

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