| Level: | 33 (200000/400000/400000) |
| Entries: | 1/910 |
| Prizes: | $1,767,596 ($1,865,500 Total incl Day 1 Pay) |
After three days of play, the Main Event is now over, and Travis MacMillan is the latest owner of a WSOP-C Main Event ring from Calgary. He overcame Victor Li in a short but hard-fought HU battle.
Li was the leader when they started the day, and he was still the leader when they got to heads up. Li was able to hang onto the lead through most of the final table, but MacMillan was running hot heads up.
The action got going early in the day when Tommy Nguyen found himself in a cooler just a few minutes after play began. He raised under the gun, then called off a shove from Sheraz Nasir with pocket sevens, only to run into pocket aces for Nasir. He couldn’t ground the rockets, and he was the first out from the final table.
Clavin Chow was next to go, followed by Gabriel Vezina. Vezina hit the rail after Li made an unlikely call with just ace-high on a nine-high flop. Vezina was ahead after hitting the middle pair on the flp with a seven, along with backdoor straight outs. Li found a queen on the turn and held to send Vezina out in 8th.
Nasir was left short after he rivered a full house, but Li had already turned a bigger boat and took a huge pot. Nasir was able to ladder over Nicholas Lee (7th), Jun Huang (6th), and Kyle Change (5th), but he ended his run in 4th place when his ace-four ran into the ace-ten for MacMillan.
They played three-handed for almost 2 hours before Kwong Au couldn’t find a diamond to complete his flopped flush draw, and lost to the top pair for MacMillan.
That set up the HU between Li and MacMillan. The big change happened when MacMillan called off his tournament life with a heart draw against middle pair for Li with just one card to come. It was a good one for MacMillan, as the king of hearts on the river gave him the double and the lead.
In the final hand, MacMillan raised to 1 million, then called when Li made it 4 million. Li fired 2.5 million in J♦7♥K♣ flop, and Li check-called for 3 million on the Q♦ turn.
When Li checked the K♣ river, MacMillan shoved a covering stack and sent Li deep into the tank. The hand started with about 6 minutes to play in Level 33, but Li was still in the tank after there were already 10 minutes gone in the break following that level.
MacMillan finally called the clock about 10 minutes into the break, and Li put in the call with about 5 seconds remaining on his 30-second countdown. Li’s queen was no good against the trip kings for MacMillan, and the game was over. Li scored $208,615 for 2nd while MacMillan pocketed nearly $313k for first place.
