Taylor Paur Wins Event #18: $1,000 No-Limit Hold'em ($340,260)
After navigating a field of 2,017 players over three days, Taylor Paur was crowned the champion of Event#18: $1,000 No-Limit Hold'em taking home $340,260 and his first WSOP bracelet.
We started the day with 14 players and all eyes were on Phil Ivey, even as Paur was the chip leader. He maintained the chip lead through out most of the day only giving it up for a brief time in heads up play. Paur remained dominate as we watched the eliminations of Phil Ivey, Nick Colbrese, Adam Sanders, Robert Deppe and James Epner to get to our official final table.
Just like the start of the day, Paur began the final table with the chip lead and put those chips to work early. It only took 13 hands to see our first eliminations when both Ryan Austin and Kyle Cartwright found themselves all in against Paur. Austin started the hand with more chips and as such was eliminated in 8th and Cartwright in 9th place.
The next person to go was Daniel Idema, in seventh place, just 10 hands later by DJ MacKinnon. Phillip Hui finished in sixth place after being pretty quiet during the day's play. He tried to make a move when action folded to him on the button but unfortunately for him, Alex Barlow in the big blind woke up with queens.
DJ MacKinnon was our next casualty leaving in fifth place after he found himself all in with kings against Paur's aces. Following MacKinnon, was Alex Barlow in fourth place. Barlow was on the extreme short stack after MacKinnon and he doubled up Tai Nguyen a few hands earlier.
Paur began three-handed play with a significant chip lead (5,000,000) over his opponents, Roy Weiss (745,000) and Tai Nguyen (475,000). Paur continued to dominate play at the final table raising or reraising almost every hand. The only play Weiss and Nguyen had was to move all in. Which Nguyen did one time too many, leaving the tournament in 3rd place.
Paur entered heads up play with a 4:1 chip lead over Weiss. Paur remained in control of the match until Weiss caught some lucky cards to take the chip lead for a short time. However, when the players went to dinner, Paur was back on top with 4,250,000 of the 6,000,000 chips in play. Weiss changed his strategy at dinner time and instead of calling most of Paur's bets, he began moving all in on every hand. At one point, Weiss took over the lead and had Paur all in for his tournament. Luckily for Paur, he won that hand and five hands later claimed victory over Roy Weiss, our second place finisher.
| Place | Player | Prize (USD) |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Taylor Paur | $340,260 |
| 2 | Roy Weiss | $211,794 |
| 3 | Tai Nguyen | $147,220 |
| 4 | Alexander Barlow | $106,027 |
| 5 | DJ MacKinnon | $77,491 |
| 6 | Phillip Hui | $57,324 |
| 7 | Daniel Idema | $42,962 |
| 8 | Ryan Austin | $32,608 |
| 9 | Kyle Cartwright | $25,041 |
That concludes our coverage of Event #18: $1,000 No-Limit Hold'em. Stay with PokerNews.com for all the latest coverage coming to you from the 44th Annual World Series of Poker.