David Pham Wins 2018 Wynn Spring Classic Championship

Amidst all the controversy around Wynn Resorts and its CEO Steve Wynn resigning over allegations of sexual misbehaviour, it was good to see some well-fought poker battles back at the Wynn Casino. The 2018 Wynn Spring Classic was scheduled between 19th February and 11th March 2018, at the Wynn Las Vegas.

While there are a few lower GTD tournaments still to be played, the Wynn Classic Main Event has been concluded, with David ‘The Dragon’ Pham beating 984 runners to the championship title and being rewarded with the top prize of $240,254 for this massive effort.

The original guaranteed prizepool of the Main Event was of $1 million but a good response saw the prizepool being taken up to $1,431,720; a total of 107 players were paid out eventually, with a min-cash of $3,407. The $1,600 NLHE Championship began on 1st March and was wrapped up by the 5th.

David Pham is a US poker player with bucket loads of experience under his belt, having first played a live poker tournament way back in 1992 – over 25 years ago! He faced Kurt Jewell in heads up, another player who has been around the circuit for over a decade. This win turned out to be a milestone one for Pham, as he crossed the $10 million mark in career live poker earnings!

Final results:

David Pham – $240,254
Kurt Jewell – $158,250
Danny Wong – $108,095
Andy Su – $76,597
Noam Muallem – $56,410
Julian Parmann – $43,954
Alberto Sabogali – $35,363
Alexis Shankle – $29,307
Clayton Maguire – $24,711

This Wynn Classic championship event saw two major changes. First was the change to a single re-entry per flight, and second was the introduction of ‘big blind ante’. The big blind ante is basically the player in the big blind anting for everyone, rather than everyone doing so individually. The credit for this idea goes to poker pro Cary Katz and it’s slowly becoming popular in tournament structures around the country.

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