Ivan "zufo16" Zufic Wins $843,460 & First Bracelet in Event #63: $500 Mini Main Event
After 16 strenuous hours of play on the Final Day of Event #63: $500 Mini Main Event, the tournament has come to an end with Ivan "zufo16" Zufic claiming his first WSOP bracelet, $843,460, and the World Series of Poker Europe package. This tournament was one of the ones during the GGPoker WSOP Online Bracelet Events which came with a guarantee and it wasn't insignificant either. The $5,000,000 guaranteed prize pool was crushed as a whopping 15,205 players took a shot at their share of the $7,222,375 which was collected in the end.
Zufic has one live cash previously dating back to the summer of 2019 according to The Hendon Mob and came 60th in Event #4: $500 NLHE - Super Turbo for $1,432 but when you look up his username, a bunch of online cashes show up. Although there's no guarantee it's the same person, that player's biggest cash on the online felt was $93,756. Zufic defeated Suraj "M26GreenWood" Mishra heads-up who doesn't have any live cashes but did finish in 218th place in Event #55: HK$8,000 NLHE Asia Championship.
Joining the two players on the final table were online high stakes player Fedor Kruse, Daniel "BaccaratKing" Neilson, and Oleksii "Cold_play" Kravchuk as the more familiar names.
Event #63: $500 Mini Main Event Final Table Results
| Place | Player | Country | Prize |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Ivan "zufo16" Zufic | Croatia | $843,460* |
| 2 | Suraj "M26GreenWood" Mishra | India | $586,157 |
| 3 | Daniel "BaccaratKing" Neilson | Australia | $401,635 |
| 4 | Daniel "GiveUp1905" Saugspier | Germany | $275,200 |
| 5 | Oleksii "Cold_play" Kravchuk | Ukraine | $188,567 |
| 6 | Derek "XrayEyes" Miller | United Kingdom | $129,206 |
| 7 | Troy "iLOVEfantaxo" Mclean | Australia | $88,532 |
| 8 | Royal "BLACKPAPAYAA" Pek | Singapore | $60,662 |
| 9 | Fedor Kruse | Austria | $41,566 |
*plus a WSOP Europe Package
Everybody Comes Together and Leaves
Out of 15 starting flights, 2,055 came together to battle it out for their share of the prize pool as 1,600 of them would get paid. It would take 90 minutes before the bubble had approached and Jesse "SamsHofbrau" Vilchez was the unlucky bubble boy when he got his queens in against the five-four of "ilovesoobin". Vilchez was ahead but the ace-deuce-eight-trey-king run out of the board gave "ilovesoobin" the wheel on the turn to burst the bubble.
GGPoker Ambassadors Daniel Negreanu, Bertrand "ElkY" Grospellier , and Felipe Ramos all cashed again. Joao Vieira, Daniel Dvoress, Chance Kornuth, Michael Addamo, Hun Wei Lee, Preston Lee, Sam Higgs, and Asi Moshe are just some of the many bracelet winners who cashes but couldn't add another piece of jewellery to their collection.
The Road to Victory
It would take almost 11 hours from when the bubble burst to get the tournament down to the final two tables. And then another hour or so before the final table bubble was done when Peng "FxxXp" Yang was eliminated by Zufic when the chips went in preflop. Yang flopped a pair but Zufic turned the higher one to get the field down to the final table.
Zufic started the battle with the chip lead but Mishra took it over when he eliminated Kruse. Shortly after he took it back until Neilson busted Troy "iLOVEfantaxo" Mclean while Royal "BlackPapayaa" Pek had left the final table stage already. But with the staggering blind levels running up into the millions, the chips kept flying back and forth.
He took out Derek "XrayEyes" Miller to gain a big chip lead but it didn't last long as the chips kept going around. Forty minutes later, Kravchuk was eliminated by Mishra for things to suddenly speed up as Daniel "GiveUp1905" Saugspier busted a few hands later. Less than 5 minutes from there on, Neilson's ace-king got rivered by Mishra who held ace-ten when he hit the straight.
Heads-up play started with pretty even stacks but Zufic quickly extended his lead over two big hands before Mishra shoved the last nine big blinds in with the ducks. Zufic called with ace-nine and found another ace on the flop to connect with for the tournament win.
PokerNews will be back on Tuesday, August 18, at 6 p.m. UTC for coverage of Event #65: $600 No Limit Hold'em Deepstack Championship so see you then.