Last night, on the final episode of WPT Venice Grand Prix, Russian poker player Rinat Bogdanov was crowned as the newest WPT Champion and awarded the €229,800 first-place prize, WPT Champions Cup, and a seat at WPT World Championship.
The episode began with four players remaining and all four about equal in chips with the two Italians – Andrea Dato and Aleesandro Longobardi – holding a very slight advantage, and Bogdanov and Dane Simon Ravnsbaek just behind. Bogdanov tried to start a climb up the leaderboard when he eliminated Ravnsbaek in fourth when his 10-10 dominated the 2-2 of the Danish poker player. However, true to the rollercoaster ride that this final table had been, Bogdanov would soon find himself back as the short stack, behind Dato’s massive chip lead and just slightly behind Longobardi.
Dato and Longobardi would go on to trade chips back and forth until Dato, who was on tilt after another river beat that had decimated his stack, pushed with K-4 and Bogdanov woke up with A-K, making for the easiest call he had made all night. The board offered no help to Dato, who exited in third place after entering the final table as the chip leader.
The heads-up match was fairly anti-climactic after such a dramatic final table of all-in races. Lasting only two hands, Bogdanov used his chip lead and some fortuitous cards to dispatch of Longobardi quickly and collect his largest cash to date.
Here are the full final table payouts:
1. Rinat Bogdanov – €229,800
2. Alessandro Longobardi – €111,700
3. Andrea Dato – €72,275
4. Simon Ravnsbaek – €52,565
5. Gianluca Trebbi – €42,705
6. Andrea Carini – €32,195
Make sure to tune in next Sunday at 8pm and 11pm local time on FSN as we start the journey toward crowning another WPT Champion when WPT returns to the US for the popular WPT LA Poker Classic.
