30-year-old professional player takes home $681,758
James "Mig.com" Mackey, a thirty-year-old online and live poker professional player from Missouri, has claimed victory in the $3,700 buy-in World Poker Tour Choctaw NLHE competition after besting a field of 1,066 in the re-entry event.
The win brought Mackey a bank account boosting $681,758 in prize money, bringing his career earnings to well over $3.5 million. He also received a $15,000 entry into the WPT Tournament of Champions at the end of the current season.
It was not Mackey's biggest career pay day – the accomplished online player achieved that with a half-million dollar win in a World Championship of Online Poker tournament, and he can also boast a World Series of Poker bracelet achieved in a $5,000 buy-in NLHE a few years ago.
WPT champs Bastian Fischer and Craig Varnell led the final table in chip counts on the last day of the event, with Mackey at the lower end of the stacks, but he was able to chip up in several clashes, including a double up that sent Jack Duong to the exit, and at one point he jockeyed for the lead with Varnell.
Mackey turned out to be Varnell's nemesis at the three-handed stage of the game when the two clashed and Mackey was able to bust the former WPT champ out at third for $306,346.
That set Mackey against WSOP bracelet holder Benjamin Zamani in the heads up, with the Missouri ace holding a 3 to 2 advantage that he continued to build on, eventually eliminating Zamani at second for $412,234 after 36 hands.
Other paydays were:
Bastian Fischer $230,300
Jack Duong $175,122
Matthew Smith $134,720
Online Casino News Courtesy of Infopowa
