WPT BPO Championship (Day 5): 1st Place – Jesse Sylvia ($821,811)

‘WPT BPO Championship’
Level 35 (200,000/400,000/50,000) 
Total Entries: 1,179
Players Remaining: 1
Average Stack: 35,370,000

The WPT Borgata Poker Championship is one of the longest standing stops in the history of the World Poker Tour and one of its most prestigious with players with names like Negreanu, Busquet and Paredes earning titles in this tournament over the years. Jesse Sylvia can now stand proudly next to those names after his exceptional performance at this tournament and the final table.

Sylvia has had his fair share of close calls in the past, most notably, his second place finish to Greg Merson in the 2012 World Series of Poker Main Event. That finish was worth over $5,000,000 to Sylvia, but to come so close to victory after literally months of waiting would be painful to any poker player. After years of almost, Sylvia finally broke through today and is the 2016 WPT Borgata Poker Open Champion as a result.

It looked like a somewhat foregone conclusion that Farid Jattin was going to walk out of the Signature Room with the title after starting play with 45 percent of the chips in play. Sylvia, on the other hand, was the short stack and had his work cut out for him. Following an early triple up, Sylvia was back over chip average and only built from there.

Sylvia started heads up play with Zach Gruneberg nearly dead even in chips and built up from the outset of play. The two battled back and forth for a few levels before Sylvia seized control when he got max value on a rivered flush. From there, it was only a matter of time before Sylvia would finish off Gruneberg and take the title.

For someone who started Day 2 with about 20,000 in chips, Sylvia made the climb back into contention look easy and worked a big stack to similar perfection. Sylvia qualified for this event via a live satellite and is now the newest member of the WPT Champions fraternity. From being known as one of poker’s more famous runner-ups, Sylvia can now proudly proclaim himself a winner without ever having to be mentioned in the “yeah, but” category ever again.

This concludes our coverage of this WPT final table and the BPO blog would like to thank the Borgata and the WPT for another exceptionally well-run event.