The World Series of Poker broke records in 2022 in Las Vegas, but while the WSOP.com Online Series doesn’t begin until September 10th, there have been plenty of gold bracelets handed out around Pennsylvania as a recent slew of tournament created winners. Who won in Pennsylvania and what happened across the state in terms of numbers? It’s time to dig into the event series and find out.
Previous Events Build Momentum
There’s no doubt that the statewide WSOP bracelet events taking place in territories where there is the facility to play on WSOP.com are some of the most popular to be taking place this year. Over the summer, a total of 29 online bracelets had already been handed to players from New Jersey & Nevada (13), Michigan (8) and now Pennsylvania has awarded another eight.
With players such as Norbert Szecsi winning his third bracelet in the $5,300-entry No-Limit Hold’em High Roller Freezeout, Manig Loeser proving he was anything but by taking down the NLHE BIG $500 for $127,153 and his second online WSOP bracelet in the past 24 months, the big names have cleaned up, with Brian Altman also capturing gold for the first time in the $400-entry NLHE Ultra Deepstack event.
With others such as Matt Szymaszek ($1,000-entry Pot-Limit Omaha Six-Max), Harry Lodge ($7,777-entry Lucky 7’s Online High Roller), Yevgeniy Minakrin ($1,000-entry NLHE Championship), Julien Perouse ($3,200-entry NLHE High Roller Eight-Max), Martin Stoyanov ($500-entry Turbo Deepstack) and Sane Chung ($500-entry NLHE Deepstack) all taking titles, Pennsylvania-based players couldn’t wait to get into the action once the tournaments opened up in the Keystone State.
The Early Events
In the opening Pennsylvanian event, 204 players sat down to play and with 66 rebuys, that created a 270-strong player pool and a prizepool of over $121,000. With players such as Dave Alfa (7th for $3,657), David Eldridge (12th for $1,688), and Zach Gruneberg (16th for $1,142) all making the money, it was a nine-hour battle for the bracelet which ended with Michael Duffy losing to Joseph Kuczewski for the $31 top prize.
Event #2 was a NLHE Ultra Deepstack event and it ended up being won by Christopher Perkins , who bettered Kyle Lorenz heads-up for the bracelet and $25k top prize. Others such as Ian Crampton (6th for $3,936), Colby Gatchell (15th for $1,106), and Huy Nguyen (27th for $783) can all be proud of their deep runs from 272 total entries and almost 11 hours of play at the virtual felt.
In Event #3, Mark Dellavecchio won the $500-entry PLO Six-Max WSOP bracelet, with 90 players and 62 rebuys in a frantic period of registration. With players such as David Zeigler (17th for $975), and Jack Roser (29th for $581) both scoring cashes, Dellavecchio defeated Robert Lavin heads-up after the eight-hour tournament concluded with him winning the $17k first-place prize.
The fourth event of the WSOP Pennsylvania Online Series saw Stephen Jarrett win through in the Online Deepstack Championship. Costing $600 to enter, a total field of 196 entries saw a prizepool of $105,840 divided between the top 36 players. Players such as Andrew Porter (10th for $1,471), Duane McCrory (19th for $846) and Ryan McCarroll (24th for $846) all cashed, but it was Jarrett who took the title and almost $27k for the top prize to go with it.
Jonas Wexler Becomes a Bracelet Winner
The fifth WSOP event of the series went to a well-known name in Jonas Wexler. Wexler took home the $19,614 top prize, finishing ahead of players such as Anthony Garofalo (2nd for $12,119) and Paul Kitchen (3rd for $8,333.68) in the top three positions. Wexler, who has an amazing five WSOP Circuit rings in his resume was the man to watch in the next event too.
In Event #6, the $1,000-entry NLHE Online Bracelet Championship a prizepool of $109,800 pay only the top 18 players, with Wexler eventually finishing second to Alex Schwint for the $27k top prize. Others such as Zach Gruneberg (13th for $2,130), and Erick Landwehr (17th for $2,086) performed well but didn’t quite make the latter stages.
Event #7 was the $777-entry NLHE Lucky 7’s event, and with a prizepool of over $80,000, the top 36 got paid. Among them were players like WSOP Main Event final table player Dan Ott (5th for $4,371), Andrew Porter (6th for $3,236), and Brendan LeMay (11th for $1,118) all got close, but the WSOP bracelet and $20k top prize went to Peter Williamson, who beat Ryan Messick to the title heads-up.
Messick would go one place better in the final WSOP PA event of their Online Series, with the eighth event of the series going his way. Winning the $500-entry NLHE ‘Summer Saver’ event, 200 entries made it into the books before Messick topped the $90k prizepool and won the top prize of $24,300 and the bracelet.
