The WSOP Main Event final table on the GGPoker side is set, and there’s one player — Damian Salas — who’s no stranger to this spot.
WSOP Main Event Damian Salas
Damian Salas is back at another WSOP Main Event final table. (Image: Twitter)
Salas reached the live Main Event final table in 2017 with 28 big blinds, good for sixth in chips. He never got much going though, and was eliminated in seventh place, winning $1,425,000. The Argentinian now has another crack at becoming a poker world champion.
GGPoker kicked off its 2020 WSOP Main Event on Nov. 29, and has now played down to the international final table, which will take place at King’s Casino in Razvadov, Czech Republic, on Dec. 15. That’s assuming there are no travel hitches along the way.
The final table includes nine players from nine different countries, all traveling during COVID-19 to the same location. And, none of those players resides in the country in which the event is being hosted. There are no guarantees issues won’t arise, as the WSOP is attempting to run its world championship event without a glitch.
On Dec. 13, WSOP.com in the US (Nevada and New Jersey) will host the same $10,000 freezeout tournament. Then, on Dec. 28, the nine players who make it through the WSOP.com online event will compete at the Rio in Las Vegas. The winners from the Rio and King’s Casino final tables will meet up at the Rio on Dec. 30 for a winner-take-all, heads-up finale with $1 million added to the prize pool. Whoever wins that heads-up match will be crowned the 2020 poker world champion.
Salas in Solid Position Heading into Final Table
Salas is hoping he’ll take the tournament down this time around. He reached the GGPoker final table, oddly enough, with the exact same number of blinds (28) as he did heading into the 2017 WSOP Main Event final table. But, this time around, he enters the final table third in chips.
Bruno Botteon holds the chip lead with 52 big blinds. If that name sounds familiar, chances are you were paying attention to this past summer’s WSOP Online Bracelet Series. The Brazilian finished runner-up in two bracelet events, and reached a third final table (sixth place finish in the $25,000 No-Limit Hold’em Poker Players Championship).
2020 WSOP Main Event Final Table (International) Chip Counts
Bruno Botteon (Brazil) 10,317,743
Manuel Ruivo (Portugal) 6,213,759
Damian Salas (Argentina) 5,653,528
“fullbabyfull” (Liechtenstein) 4,232,560*
Hannes Speiser (Austria) 3,515,744
Dominykas Mikolaitis (Lithuania) 3,165,440
Ramon Miquel Munoz (Spain) 3,035,940
Peiyuan Sun (China) 2,185,676
Stoyan Obreshkov (Bulgaria) 2,119,610
*Player’s real name isn’t yet publicly available.
The winner at the King’s Casino final table will take home $1,550,969. Runner-up pays $1,062,723, and each of these nine players have a guaranteed minimum payday of $75,360. Thomas Macdonald from the United Kingdom bubbled the final table, taking home $50,131 for 10th place.