Duo made it big
The PokerGO Tour (PGT) Championship begins on Tuesday, but before that could happen, the two dream seats had to be awarded. And with the conclusion of the PGT Last Chance series on Sunday, those spots went to Samuel Laskowitz and Dylan DeStefano.
The PGT Championship is a freeroll with a $1 million prize pool open to the top 40 players in the 2023 PGT Rankings. In addition to these 40 players, two more would make it into the field via the PGT Last Chance series.
The PGT Last Chance Series consisted of six $10,000 buy-in tournaments held at the PokerGO Studio in Las Vegas. Players received PGT points based on how they performed in each event, and the top two point earners in the series who were not also in the top 40 of the season-long PGT leaderboard received Dream Seats.
Thanks to finishes of first, fifth and seventh during the series, Laskowitz finished the Last Chance leaderboard with 307 PGT points. As it turned out, his win in Event #3 would have been enough to win the Dream Seat. DeStefano had 276 points – he also had a win as well as a fifth-place finish and a 13th-place finish in Last Chance events.
Laskowitz finished 108th in the PGT overall standings, while DeStefano finished 117th.
Points still count
The top five in the PGT leaderboard are Isaac Haxton with 2,847 points, Chris Brewer with 2,490, Stephen Chidwick with 2,402, 2023 WSOP Main Event Champion Daniel Weinman with 2,300 and Alex Foxen with 2,103.
So these players were obviously well in the PGT Championship field, but the points they earned were important because their starting stacks in the tournament correlated with those points. Each player starts with 1,000 chips for ten points each. Haxton, for example, will have 285,000 chips.
The two Las Chance qualifiers have a starting stack of 100,000 chips. This works well because the bottom of the top 40 won't have much more. Maxx Coleman, ranked 40th, has 1,137 points in the PGT rankings. Just ahead of him are Jason Koon with 1,162 points, Orpen Kisacikoglu with 1,165 points, Arthur Morris with 1,183 and Juan Maceiras with 1,200.
The “bubble boy” of the championship was Jim Collopy, who finished 41st in the PGT rankings with 1,108 points.
The PGT Championship starts on Tuesday and ends on Wednesday. The winner receives $500,000 and the five other players at the final table receive shares of the other half million.
Photo credit: PokerGO.com
