Simon Brandstorm, a player from Sweden, managed to achieve his dream and win the World Poker Tour UK $3,300 Main Event, winning a total of $330,000. He topped the field of 690 entries and received the second biggest live cash of his career.
Brandstrom has been doing pretty well lately, and by “lately,” we mean the last couple of months. In fact, his biggest career cash was landed when he won the first-place prize of $1.4 million by winning the EPT Barcelona Main Event.
He also had a lot of success in WPTDeepStacks Barcelona this spring, where he won the title and earned $200,000 along the way. In fact, Brandstrom is the only player in the world to win both WPT DeepStacks and a WPT Main Tour title. It’s a huge success that many poker players dream of, but only Brandstrom managed to do it.
The guaranteed prize for the tournament was $1.5 million. However, that amount was easily surpassed as a total of 690 players applied to the tournament. In fact, they managed to create a prize pool of $2 million.
The first 100 players were awarded from the pool, and some of the names that made it to the money list included Adrian Mateos, Sam Trickett, Jeff Gross, Marin Jacobson, Bertrand Grospellier, and Matas Cibolas.
At the time the final table formed, Brandstrom had the highest number of chips. However, he had to face some really tough competition, including the former champion of PCA Maria Lampropulos and a German poker superstar, Manig Loeser. Let’s take a look at the final table results.
The Final Table Results
At the start of the fourth day, Brandstrom did not do that well, and James Rann overtook the chip lead. In fact, Brandstrom was down to only 13 BBs at one point. He decided to jam with an ace and an eight, against an ace and a queen from Loeser. Luckily for Brandstrom, an eight appeared on the turn and saved the day for him.
Other players to hit the rail before the final table was formed included Paul Jackson and Leo Worthington-Leese. When a total of six players returned to the final table, the first one to hit the rail was Paul Siddle from the UK, who earned a total of $76,000. Lampropulos busted in the fifth position, earning $98,500 along the way.
Fourth place was occupied by Matthew Eardley from the UK, and he is one of the four players that earned six-figure scores, winning a total of $128,500. Rann ended up third, earning $168,500, leaving Ryan Mandara and Brandstrom in heads-up play.
Brandstrom did not have the chip lead but eventually managed to get one, winning over Mandara, who settled for second place and a consolation prize of $221,650.
The year is still not over, and Brandstrom could easily go down in history as the best European player of 2019.