Stephen Song battled through a massive field of 5,430 entrants to win the $1,100 buy in WPT Prime Championship on Monday for $712,650.
The World Poker Tour also hosted its first ever WPT Ladies Championship final table at the same venue, Wynn Las Vegas, earlier in the day. Lina Niu came out victorious for $105,136. On Tuesday, starting at 4 p.m. PT, the series will come to its conclusion with the final table of the $10,400 buy in WPT World Championship, and one player will take home $4.1 million.
Final Table Action
When the final table began, Lara Eisenberg held a slight chip lead. The 2021 World Series of Poker bracelet winner from Bethesda, Maryland was in search of her second major tournament title, and her largest payday.
It didn’t take long before Giorgii Skhulukhiia to be eliminated in sixth place ($153,000) when he ran into Eisenberg’s pocket aces.
Alon Messica would soon after clip Albert Nguyen ($200,000) in fifth place thanks to having a better kicker on a flopped pair of aces.
Messica played exceptionally well at the final table and made some brilliant plays, including a sick call with queen-high facing a raise on the river, which you can see in the following video.
Four-handed play is where the pressure was intensified. With the difference between first and fourth place $447,000, the players were in stack protection mode. But that didn’t stop them from making some plays.
Two hours later, Messica’s run came to a conclusion in fourth place ($265,000) when his flush draw failed to connect against Young Eum.
With the tournament down to three players, Eisenberg and Eum would tangle in some epic pots. In the first hand, Eisenberg, holding pocket 10’s, had Eum all in with ace-queen.
If the pocket pair would hold up, she would be sitting on the chip lead heads up. Instead, an ace hit the flop and she was in third place with three players left and Eum was in the chip lead.
But moments later, Eisenberg got some revenge when Eum jammed all in against her preflop with 
and she called and then won with 
. Shortly after that, in another big pot, Eisenberg rivered a straight and was back to holding a big chip lead.
The two poker players played one final pot together and that was yet another race, this time with Eisenberg getting the best of it and sending Eum to the rails in third place ($354,000). That set up a heads up match between Song and Eisenberg, who held nearly a 3-1 chip advantage.
Early in the match, Song hit a couple of big hands including a monster pot he won with quad jacks. The contest had completed shifted quickly in his favor, and then on the 165th hand at the final table, he won a cooler when he turned a straight to crack flopped top two pair, which put an end to the tournament.
Eisenberg, a radiologist, received $481,500 for second place, but the champion of the whole thing, Stephen Song earned $712,650.
WPT Prime Championship Final Table Results
| Place | Player | Prize |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Stephen Song | $712,650 |
| 2 | Lara Eisenberg | $481,500 |
| 3 | Young Eum | $354,000 |
| 4 | Alon Messica | $265,000 |
| 5 | Albert Nguyen | $200,000 |
| 6 | Giorgii Skhulukhiia | $153,000 |