Casey Sandretto Takes Down World Poker Tour Rolling Thunder Main Event

Casey Sandretto has received the ninth operating of the World Poker Tour Rolling Thunder no-limit maintain’em most important occasion. The Sacramento resident overcame a subject of 458 entries within the $3,500 buy-in match to earn his first WPT title and the highest prize of $246,600. He now has greater than $406,000 in whole match earnings to his title.

“It feels pretty great,” mentioned Sandretto after guaranteeing that his title can be added to the Mike Sexton WPT Champions Cup. “This is my first live tournament win. To have it at Thunder Valley, the best poker room in the country, in my opinion… and Ben Erwin being a superstar, and with WPT being the most prestigious tournament series, this is great. Couldn’t have been any better.”

This win additionally conveyed 1,080 Card Player Player of the Year factors to Sandretto. This was his first final-table end of the yr, however this victory was sufficient by itself to catapult him into 87th place within the 2024 POY standings offered by Global Poker.

The robust turnout created a prize pool of $1,465,600 that was break up amongst the highest 58 finishers. Plenty of massive names ran deep, together with two-time bracelet winner Shannon Shorr (51st), 2023 WPT World Championship winner Dan Sepiol (twenty sixth), WPT and PokerStars Caribbean Adventure champion Harrison Gimbel (twenty second), WPT champion Nam Le (14th), 2022 WPT Prime Championship winner Stephen Song (thirteenth), and WPT winner Soheb Porbandarwala (eleventh).

After the primary three days of play, the 458-entry subject had been narrowed to only six contenders. Yunkyu Song held the result in begin, with Sandretto in the course of the pack. Brock Wilson was the primary to fall, along with his pocket sevens dropping a preflop race to the A-Okay suited of 2004 WPT World Poker Challenge champion Michael Kinney. Wilson earned $60,000 because the sixth-place finisher, rising his lifetime match earnings to over $7.6 million within the course of.

Kinney additionally scored the subsequent knockout, along with his Q-10 overcoming the A-Q of Cody Weigmann (fifth – $78,000) to slender the sphere to 4. It can be one other sixty palms earlier than the subsequent elimination befell. Song, who started the day because the clear chip chief, had slid to the brief stack throughout four-handed motion. He bought his final chips in with AQ solely to seek out himself trailing the AOkay of Sandretto. A king-high runout ended Song’s match in fourth place ($105,000).

Travis Egbert was the subsequent to fall. He known as off his stack with prime pair of kings holding Okay2, solely to seek out that Kinney’s kicker performed with Okay9 on a Okay64Q7 board. Egbert earned $140,000 because the third-place finisher.

Kinney entered heads-up play with higher than a 2:1 chip lead over Sandretto as he seemed to earn his second WPT title practically twenty years after securing his first. Sandretto was in a position to shut the hole early. Then the ultimate two traded the chip benefit a few occasions earlier than they opted to make a deal that re-shaped the remaining payouts. The runner-up would earn $235,000, whereas the champion would take residence $246,600.

It was Sandretto who was out in entrance when the ultimate hand was dealt. With blinds of 150,000-300,000 and a giant blind ante of 300,000, Sandretto raised to 650,000 on the button with OkayOkay. Kinney known as from the massive blind with A2 and the flop got here down Okay32, Kinney check-called a continuation wager of 400,000 and the A on the flip gave him two pair. He checked and Sandretto wager 975,000 along with his set of kings. Kinney check-raised to three,200,000 and Sandretto known as. The 10 was dealt on the river and Sandretto moved all-in. Sandretto rapidly known as along with his set to convey the occasion to an in depth. As the runner-up, Kinney earned the $235,000 he negotiated for.

Here is a take a look at the payouts and POY factors awarded on the last desk:

Photo credit: WPT / Drew Amato.