David Williams came into a stacked WPT Championship Final Table with the second most chips behind David Benyamine. It didn’t take long for the six-person table to reduced to just three with Williams and Shawn Buchanan sharing the lead while last year’s Card Player Player of the Year, Eric Baldwin fought from behind a short stack.
With a 4-1 chip lead over Buchanan, Williams called his Q-Q shove with pocket nines. The board was good to Williams however as a nine fell on the flop. With no relevant cards on the turn or river, Williams took out Buchanan and secured his chip lead.
The battle wasn’t over however. Baldwin started crawling his way back to even over the course of the next 21 hands of the heads-up match before the final hand of the tournament saw Baldwin push all-in with A-5 and Williams call with deuces. The drama was high as Baldwin hit an ace on the flop made, but his celebration was cut short with a two on the turn. With no a rag on the river, Williams won the WPT Championship and the $1.5 million along with it. Williams’ mother, Shirley, was the first to congratulate her son as she ran down to hug him.
David Williams first made a name for himself in the poker world at the ripe old age of 24 when he took second in the 2004 WSOP Main Event after calling all-in with a full house (twos full of fours) against Greg Raymer’s boat (twos full of eights). As the largest poker tournament ever held at that point, even second place paid out nicely with $3.5 million.
After that impressive showing Williams went on perform well at major poker tournaments that included 65 career cashes and a WSOP bracelet in the 2006 $1,500 Seven-card Stud event.
The WPT Championship win puts Williams in 20th place on the all-time money list for poker tournament winnings with $7,893,304. This year’s WPT Championship had a significantly reduced field with only 195 entrants. But the massive $25,500 buy-in still builds a fat prize pool which amounted to $4,728,750.
While the WPT Championship Final Table includes only six players, there were some well known heavy hitters in the top that fell just short of the final table. Aside from Williams, the top nine players from the 2010 WPT Championship Final Table with payouts were as follows: Eric Baldwin, $1,034,715, Shawn Buchanan $587,906, David Benyamine $329,228, Billy Baxter $246,921, John O’Shea $199,888, Phil Hellmuth $152,856, Scotty Nguyen $105,823 and Nikolay Evdakov $75,252.
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