Darren Elias Joins an Elite Group with Three WPT Titles

Last week saw Ema Zajmovic become the first female WPT champion and this week Darren Elias joined a small group of players with three WPT titles. It has been a history-making sweep through Canada for the WPT.

Elias was the last player standing in the WPT Fallsview Poker Classic, outlasting the rest of the field to put his name on the WPT Champions cup for the record-tying third time. He joins Gus Hansen, Carlos Mortensen, Anthony Zinno, and Chino Rheem as the fifth player to earn that honor.

“It was a good tournament, I got dealt a lot of good hands in this one, a lot of big preflop hands,” Elias said. “I kept getting aces and kings, I got pretty lucky to win. It was smooth sailing most of the way.”

1st: Darren Elias – CAD $449,484* (US $335,436*)
2nd: David Eldridge – CAD $300,982 (US $224,613)
3rd: Jean-Christophe Ferreira – CAD $193,583 (US $144,465)
4th: Andrew Chen – CAD $143,199 (US $106,865)
5th: Manig Loeser – CAD $107,399 (US $80,149)
6th: Abdull Hassan – CAD $86,184 (US $64,316)

*First-place prize includes a seat into the season-ending WPT Tournament of Champions.

Day 3 began with 22 players remaining with a shot to join the WPT Champions Club including Elias attempting to put his name on the WPT Champions Cup again. Action got underway quickly with the elimination of Anthony Dalpra in 22nd place in early action and he was followed by David Cloutier in 21st, falling short in his attempt to make a third WPT Fallsview final table.

Jonathan Jessop and Mark Zajdner were also eliminated in the first hour of play to set up the last two tables of the main event. It took one hour to lose eight players then another full 60-minute level to lose one more player. Canadian pro Marc-Olivier Carpentier-Perrault put his chips in the middle with the best hand, but his  lost to the Andrew Chen’s rivered flush with . Carpentier-Perrault’s elimination in 11th place set up the unofficial final table with two-time WSOP bracelet winner Kirsten Bicknell leading and trying to make it back-to-back female WPT champions.

Once at the unofficial final table, there were a handful of double ups, including David Eldridge cracking Bicknell’s  with , but it took more than 90 minutes to lose the next player. Chrishan Sivasundaram was the first to exit the unofficial final table and he was followed by Day 3 start of day chip leader Ronald Laplante in ninth place.

Buck Ramsay’s elimination in eighth place set up the WPT final table bubble and Jean-Christophe Feirrera was in danger of missing his seat on the main stage. He was all in with  against Bicknell’s , but a seven on the flop bailed him out while dropping her under two big blinds. Bicknell was eliminated on the next hand by Eldridge to propel him to the WPT final table with a huge chip lead, holding 5 million of the 14 million chips in play.

The six remaining players included three stacks of ten big blinds or less. Abdull Hassan was the shortest and his exit came soon after dinner when his  could not win a classic race against Jean-Christophe Ferreia’s . Eldridge continued his hot streak by sending out the next short stack, this time it was his holding against Manig Loeser’s . The hand knocked the main event down to four players and Eldridge held half of the chips in play.

But then Elias took control.

Andrew Chen made a valiant comeback attempt from less than ten big blinds, but his night was cut short after Elias correctly called Chen’s river bet with ace-high.

“I thought he had some kind of straight draw, 3 5, or 7 8, something where he had a lot of equity on the flop and then he missed and had to bet river,” Elias commented later. “I thought I had the best hand and went with my instinct and I was right.”

Chen hit the exit and fourth place and Ferreia fell to Elias two hands later.

Elias began heads-up play with a small chip lead and it took only three hands to finish the deal. The final hand of the tournament saw Elias’  hold against  to defeat Eldridge and earn his third career WPT title.

This result also impacts the Hublot WPT Player of the Year race; Elias now sits in second place behind Benjamin Zamani with a handful of events remaining on the schedule.

“I’m going to play LA but because of my wife being due, that will be the last one I play ’till Florida, I plan on playing Florida,” Elias said. “Maybe I can run down [Ben Zamani], but if not I’ll get second again.” (Elias finished second to Anthony Zinno in the Season XIII race.)

Elias picks up CAD $449,484 for his WPT Fallsview Poker Classic title, which includes a US $15,000 entry into the season-ending WPT Tournament of Champions. Elias will take home a WPT Champions Trophy, the WPT Fallsview Poker Classic trophy, and his name on WPT Champions Cup will earn a second diamond by it to represent his third victory.