With the calendar flipping over to April, the poker calendar is getting busier. The first World Poker Tour event of Season XXI, Rolling Thunder, is officially in the books, and two more WPT events are on the horizon over the next month. The latest Twitter beef-turned-high-stakes-cash-game-battle is underway. And another high roller series at the PokerGO Studios wrapped up, with Martin Zamani taking home a particularly devilish sum for his victory in Event 10.
With an eye towards keeping you, the reader, in the loop, we’re taking a look at some of the most interesting facts and figures that popped up over the course of the last week in poker.
$666,000
Martin Zamani won the second-largest live tournament prize of his career on Tuesday, taking down Event 10 of the United States Poker Open at the PokerGO Studios. The victory in the closing event of the USPO also earned Zamani just enough points to pass Ren Lin and earn Player of the Series honors. Over the course of the series, Zamani also had a third-place finish and a pair of 14th-place cashes for a total of $835,800 on the felt. With Player of the Series, Zamani also took home an additional $50,000 championship bonus.
3
Total number of hands, out of 75 total, played heads-up between Jeremy Joseph and Scott Eskenazi for the WPT Rolling Thunder title during which Eskenazi trailed. That represent just shy of 40% of the total hands played at the final table of the $3,500 WPT main event at Thunder Valley Casino in Lincoln, California. Joseph held a 1.6-to-1 lead when heads-up play began, but Eskenazi claimed the lead just three hands in. Joseph briefly pulled close to even when he called all in with pocket jacks and held against Eskanazi’s 
, but over the course of about 2.5 hours of heads-up play, Ekenazi never relinquished the lead. He won $361,660 including a $10,400 seat to the 2023 WPT World Championship at Wynn Las Vegas, while Joseph took home $234,000 as the runner-up.
$11,650
The minimum amount of money in total buy-ins David Uvaydov would have had to spend to successfully enter 32 out of the 33 starting flights in the $1.5 million guaranteed Mega Millions XXIV at the Parkwest Bicycle Casino. Uvaydov, who plays regularly at The Bike, pledged to enter all but one flight of the Quantum Reload event. That’s a particularly daunting task, considering there are three overlapping flights a day for 11 days from April 6 through April 16, sometimes necessitating multi-tabling for what Uvaydov’s after. The buy-ins are split between $275 sessions and $560 sessions that allow different percentages of the field to advance to Day 2, on Monday, April 17. Players can also buy in directly for $3,600 on Day 2.
Players who bag up chips at the end of a session more than once will receive $3,500 for each additional bag. After going 0-for-3 on Day 1A, Uvaydov got the first bag out of the way on Day 1B – locking up $600 and a guaranteed spot in the field for Day 2. 1C did not get Uvaydov another bag or his first $3,500 payout, as three additional entries netted him only a min-cash of $300. On Sunday, Day 1D, Uvaydov took his biggest financial hit to date in his marathon pursuit.
As a bonus, if Uvaydov does pull off playing 32 starting sessions, Tournament Director Mo Fathipour has promised to give Uvaydov a complimentary seat into the $1,700 WSOP Circuit event at The Bike in December.
$33,500
Matt Berkey’s slim lead, at least by scale, after three days and 19.5 hours of $200/$400 ($400 ante) heads-up play against Nik ‘NikAirball’ Arcot. Berkey jumped out to a major lead on Day 1 of the match, up $400,000, but Arcot reduced the deficit by more than half by the end of that night and continued to chip away in each of the two sessions that followed. The match was scheduled to continue on Saturday in Las Vegas, but Round 2 was delayed with Arcot falling ill.
10
The number of movies on Daniel Negreanu‘s must-watch movies in his preparation for the 2023 World Series of Poker. That list includes every Rocky movie, every one of the Creed spinoff movies from Rocky, as well as Rounders. It was part of a comprehensive plan Negreanu dropped on Twitter, detailing each step he intends to take to get himself ready for the WSOP.