Omar Eljach Is the Latest Main Event Champion
The World Series of Poker Europe (WSOP-E) is now in the books and Swedish player Omar Eljach is the latest owner of a coveted Main Event Bracelet. He made his way through the 763 entry field and a pretty stacked final table to stack up all the chips and his first bracelet win.
This was only Eljach’s 4th career win according to Hendon Mob, and by far his biggest. Not only was this win almost 10x his previous high score, it was nearly 3x his entire career earnings before his latest triumph.
Eljach is no flash in the pan however. He bagged just shy of €130k for winning a Pot-Limit Omaha event at EPT Barcelona this year, and he had a bit more than $500k in earnings prior to his Golden win in Rozvodov yesterday.
In fact, he was within sight of another bracelet earlier in this series. After his four-card win in Barcelona earlier in the year, he made another deep four-card run in the €5k PLO event at this year’s WSOP-E. Eljach made it all the way to heads-up, but had to settle for 2nd place to Ukrainian Roman Verenko.
Stacked Final Table
Eljach was having a great 2022 in the lead up to this Main Event, with an EPT title from Barcelona earlier this year, and a near-bracelet finish in an event earlier in the series. He was in a great position coming into the final table, sitting first in chips and on a career heater, but he wasn’t exactly going in as a shark swimming among the fish.
When he sat down to the final table, there were nine bracelets looking back at him, five of them in the possession of the formidable Shaun Deeb. Deeb had the second biggest stack coming into the final eight, and the perennial Player of the Year runner is a dangerous force at the tables. Deeb is a fierce competitor, especially on the WSOP felt. He has 130 cashes in WSOP tournament events, and in 2018 he bagged the Player of the Year award with two bracelets and five final tables. While he’s only won the PoY title once, he was in the running nearly every year in the 2010s, and is often hailed as WSOP’s Player of the Decade for his relentless runs at the Series.
Two more of the bracelets on the final table were on the wrists of Barny Boatman. The face of the original Hendon Mob, Boatman had more than $3.7 million in wins coming into this Main Event final table and he has wins in every decade since the 1990s. It’s possible Boatman has been playing professional poker longer than some of his competitors at this final table have been alive, but he’s a fierce competitor on any poker table in any decade.
Eljach also had to contend with two French bracelet winners across the felt. Alexandre Reard, who represents Unibet Poker, won his bracelet in last year’s COVID-delayed fall series while countryman Jonathan Pastore picked up his hardware in the summer this year.
Eljach was certainly playing well to get to the chip lead going into the final table, but he was clearly running well too. He dispatched one of the bracelet winners from the final table when he sent Reard home on a cooler with aces over queens. Boatman was the next to fall, sending his chips Deeb’s way and dropping another two bracelets off the final table roster.
It actually looked like Deeb might run away with it for his sixth bracelet. He took a big chip lead into three-way play, but the tables turned when Eljach flopped two pair and got some big river value against Deeb. That pretty much signaled the end for Deeb, and he had to settle for 3rd place. That set up a heads-up battle between Pastore and Eljach that see-sawed back and forth between the two players. Both players had huge chip leads with the other player near-felted, but it was finally Eljach who emerged the winner.
WSOP-E Main Event Final Table Results
| Place | Name | Cash Prize |
|---|---|---|
| 1st place | Omar Eljach | €1,380,129 |
| 2nd place | Jonathan Pastore | €852,949 |
| 3rd place | Shaun Deeb | €607,531 |
| 4th place | Vladas Tamasauskas | €438,978 |
| 5th place | Paul Covaciu | €321,838 |
| 6th place | Armin Rezaei | €239,466 |
| 7th place | Barny Boatman | €180,867 |
| 8th place | Alexandre Reard | €138,702 |
| 9th place | Timothy Adams | €108,024 |
Image Credit: wsop.com & Hendon Mob.
