Jake Daniels Wins Event #3 of PokerGO Cup for $200,000

The third PokerGO Cup event of the series, which cost $10,000 to enter, has been won by Jake Daniels for $200,000 and of course the 200 PokerGO Tour and PokerGO Cup Leaderboard points.

After a dramatic final table, Daniels got the better of multiple WSOP bracelet winner Jeremy Ausmus heads-up to take the title, with others such as Chris Moorman and Sean Winter falling just short.

Final Kicks Off With Role Reversal

With 80 total entries and 52 unique players, not everyone could get their hands on some of the $800,000 prize pool, with only the top 12 finishers making money. Jake Daniels enjoyed a decent Day 1, eliminating Dan Smith along the way, but only made the final table in fourth place of the six to grab seats. This was the same place that Sean Perry had entered play in the Event #2 final, and he had gone on to win. Daniels would do likewise.

Daniels made the first crucial elimination, taking out Brock Wilson in sixth place for a cash worth $48,000. Wilson was committed with pocket sixes, but the eventual winner won through with pocket kings, before doubling up through Daniel Weinand’s ace-ten with pocket jacks to take the overall lead.

Sean Winter was the unfortunate player to bust in fifth place, earning $64,000 for his efforts in the $10,000 buy-in NLHE event. Winter wasn’t the only player to bust in the hand, however, as former chip leader and America’s Cardroom Pro Chris Moorman also busted, albeit with more chips, finishing fourth for $80,000.

The hand saw Winter committing his stack with ace-five and Moorman calling it off with ace-queen, but Daniels also called, and turning over ace-king, had the dominating hand which would ride home in style to reduce the field to just three players.

The Chip Leader Falls

With three players remaining, Daniels had the chips and the momentum to carry through his plan. Weinand it was who busted in third place for $96,000, his second pair on a board showing ten-high by the turn not enough as Daniels’ top pair did the damage and sent the chip leader into heads-up with an astonishing lead of 9.5 million to just 475,000 chips.

That deficit might have terrified some players, but Jeremy Ausmus is not simply any other player. Heads-up, the American has a never-say-die attitude that has won him three WSOP bracelets, including one in Pot Limit Omaha which he took down at the expense of both Daniel Negreanu and Phil Hellmuth for $1.1m last Autumn. He was short-stacked going into that three-handed showdown but couldn’t come out on top in similar fashion here, instead winning $144,000 in second place.

The final hand saw Ausmus – who had doubled up twice – move all-in with ace-jack only for Daniels to call with jack-deuce and somehow get there, a deuce on the flop ending the tournament in his favor and proving Ausmus doesn’t always run well when he needs to.

“I Want to Win This Thing,” Declares Daniels

Jake Daniels picked up $200,000 for taking the title, as well as 200 points for both the PokerGO Cup and PokerGO Tour (PGT) leaderboards, and he nailed his colors to the mast in declaring his intentions after the event.

“I want to be first in points. I want to win this thing,” said the newest PokerGO Cup champion. “I’ve hired a couple of coaches and I’ve put in a ton of work in the last five or six months trying to get better because these guys are so stinking good. I had a nice deep run in Florida for a WPT a couple of weeks ago, made a final table there. I love the competition.”

“He had the perfect amount of chips to have to call with anything.”

Daniels will be some competitor to overcome in the next few days for the rest of the field. He was deferential about the magnitude of his double-elimination at the final table, however.

“Chris [Moorman] just has to call it off there,” he said, the British poker legend having ace-queen in a horrible spot. “I shove a lot wider than ace-king, and I was just lucky enough to look back and he had the perfect amount of chips to have to call with anything. It was a fun little sweat and really nice to hit the king and fade the queen and the five and the eight.”

Daniels is working hard to be the best version of himself in order to keep the pace with the high roller set, which he credits as being top-quality at present.

“I definitely think I have some holes in my game,” he said. “But I’m working on getting those holes out of there as good as I can. These guys are all really freaking good.”

With three events now in the can, Sean Perry has the overall lead, courtesy of two cashes, and one win in Event #2 being good enough for top spot. Perry’s ninth place finish in Event #3 earned him 32 PokerGO Cup leaderboard points, and those points represent his lead over other event winners Jake Daniels and Daniel Colpoys.

Staggeringly, Scott Ball has cashed in all three events, and that is good for 174 points in third place, one leaderboard ladder rung ahead of Cary Katz with 167 points.