Alexander Yen wins WPT Lucky Hearts with a dream flop

The main event of the WPT Lucky Hearts 2022 was decided this night in Florida and the first place in the tournament with almost 2,000 entries went to Alexander Yen, who outplayed Sweden’s Anton Wigg in the heads-up with a dream flop.

Guarantee easily exceeded

The Main Event of the Lucky Hearts Open in Florida was a complete success. The tournament guaranteed $2,000,000 in prize money. More than three times that amount was played out. The tournament had almost 30% more participants than last year and was thus one of the largest WPT tournaments in Florida.

Familiar faces in the field

248 places were paid out and numerous well-known players made it into the money. Triple bracelet winner Jeremy Ausmus was eliminated in 7th place right before the final table, last season’s WPT Player of the Year Jacob Ferro finished ninth, Shannon Shorr was eliminated in 35th place and veteran high roller Erik Seidel made it to the 128th place.

The best-known face at the final table was Sweden’s Anton Wigg (he won EPT Copenhagen in 2011 and finished third in the $25k WPT Highroller final last year). He started the final table placed third in the chip count behind Josh Kay and eventual winner Alex Yen.

Josh Kay can’t flip

The final table was a rather unlucky affair for for Josh Kay. In a hand where over 100 big blinds went all-in preflop, Kay lost most of his stack. He held Q Q , opening with it from late position, and from the blinds Anton Wigg reraised with A K . A four-bet, an all-in and a call followed and after the board fell 9 5 2 K 10 Wigg managed to double his (already quite substantial stack).

Josh Kay was left with only a handful of big blinds and he lost them a little later – again to Anton Wigg. In this hand, too, all the chips went into the middle before the flop and Kay was favourite over Wigg, this time with AJs against KQo. However, the board brought two queens and sealed Kay’s dimise in 5th place.

Shortly after, Nicholas Verderamo was eliminated in fourth place against the clear chip leader Alexander Yen and almost 50 hands three-handed play followed without any elimination. Finally it was short stack Daniel Lazrus, who lost a flip with 6-6 against Alexander Yen’s K-J.

Wigg briefly takes control

The heads-up between Yen and Wigg started with a 3:1 lead for Yen. He even extended that lead. Then Anton Wigg found A-T on the button, raised to 2 big blinds and Yen reraised to 8 big blinds with K-Q. Wigg called and hit the board perfectly: T-8-6. Yen shoved all-in for effectively 27 big blinds and Wigg called his opponent’s bluff. The turn and river didn’t help Yen and after that hand the stacks were almost even.

Briefly Wigg even took the lead over the next 20 hands, but then lost several medium-sized hands in a row and Yen quickly regained a comfortable lead.

One perfect straight and it’s all over

For the final hand of the tournament, Yen then hit a dream flop to end it all.

Alexander Yen limped from the button with 9 7 and Wigg raised to 4 big blinds with Q Q . The flop fell 10 8 6 and gave Yen a perfect straight. Wigg bet pot and Yen called. After the 6 on the turn, Wigg shoved all in for almost double the pot with his overpair and Yen called immediately. Wigg had a few outs, but the 4 on the river was not one of them.

With that, Alexander Yen secured the title and almost one million dollars in prize money. Having already finished second place twice in the WPT, this was his first win in a major WPT tournament.

After the tournament, Yen was happy about his victory and had only good things to say about his Swedish opponent: “He is an incredible player. I really felt like the king-queen vs. ace-ten hand, I was going to give it away to him. I felt like at that moment he hand a lot of momentum and was out playing me, but I hit the dream flop and won.”

Final Results WPT Lucky Hearts 2022

#	Player	Prize Money
1	Alexander Yen	$975,240
2	Anton Wigg	$650,180
3	Daniel Lazrus	$482,380
4	Nicholas Verderamo	$361,130
5	Josh Kay	$272,830
6	Omar Lakhdari	$208,025
7	Jeremy Ausmus	$160,095
8	Jake Daniels	$124,365
9	Jacob Ferro	$97,525
10	Saber Salum Penayo	$97,525
11	Thomas Carroll	$77,215
12	Matt Bond	$77,215
13	Joseph Crowley	$61,725
14	Andrew Esposito	$61,725
15	Matthew Zarcadoolas	$49,825
16	Jose Montes	$49,825
17	Ronnie Abro	$40,615
18	Carlos Rodriguez	$40,615
19	Manuel Amaro	$40,615
20	Yuriy Kozinskiy	$40,615
21	Howard Feingold	$33,440
22	Francis Anderson	$33,440
23	Jason Hickey	$33,440
24	Artur Rudenkov	$33,440
25	Cherish Andrews	$27,810
26	Loni Hui	$27,810
27	Nitis Udornpim	$27,810
28	James Carroll	$27,810
29	Danny Panagatos	$27,810
30	William Eitze	$27,810
31	Lazaro Hernandez	$27,810
32	Andrew Brinkley	$27,810
33	Corey Hochman	$23,360
34	Daniel Beers	$23,360
35	Shannon Shorr	$23,360
36	Galen Hall	$23,360
37	Kyle Bowker	$23,360
38	Daniel Starkey	$23,360
39	Carl Bevilacqua	$23,360
40	Robert Noel	$23,360
41	Min Zhang	$19,825
42	Bin Weng	$19,825
43	Lanny Vaysman	$19,825
44	Dan Stavila	$19,825
45	Jaime Cervantes	$19,825
46	Jean-Louis Santoni	$19,825
47	Lateshia Mullings	$19,825
48	Christopher Meyers	$19,825
49	Scott Zakheim	$17,000
50	Michael Gathy	$17,000
51	Frederic Normand	$17,000
52	Steve Blackmon	$17,000
53	Arian Stolt	$17,000
54	Michael Lech	$17,000
55	Ricky Flach	$17,000
56	Ian Gillespie	$17,000
57	Jay Sharon	$14,730
58	T.K. Miles	$14,730
59	Blake Whittington	$14,730
60	Ivan Saul	$14,730
61	Alex Nguyen	$14,730
62	Rommel Liscano	$14,730
63	Jonathan Kramer	$14,730
64	Frank Weigel	$14,730
65	Senhao Cao	$12,900
66	Ryan Stoker	$12,900
67	Dennis Stevermer	$12,900
68	Chad Himmelspach	$12,900
69	Athanasios Polychronopoulos	$12,900
70	James Pillon	$12,900
71	Gary Beller	$12,900
72	Jeffrey Epstein	$12,900
73	Alberto Destrade	$11,420
74	Ren Lin	$11,420
75	Matthew Holmquist	$11,420
76	Michael Miravi	$11,420
77	Matt Higgins	$11,420
78	Sumeet Wayachal	$11,420
79	Donald Stetzer	$11,420
80	Lunique Petiote	$11,420
81	Conor Hannan	$10,215
82	Cangir Elcin	$10,215
83	Scott Baumstein	$10,215
84	Badr Imejjane	$10,215
85	Spiro Mikrogianakis	$10,215
86	Frank Funaro	$10,215
87	Arthur Azen	$10,215
88	Michael Graffeo	$10,215
89	Carlos Bermudez	$10,215
90	Lester Rainey	$9,240
91	Jonathan Tamayo	$9,240
92	Jordan DeGrenier	$9,240
93	Matthew Ahmed	$9,240
94	Dmitry Savelyev	$9,240
95	Ioannis Patsourakis	$9,240
96	Michael Newman	$9,240
97	Trung Pham	$9,240
98	Raj Vohra	$9,240
99	Mike Gao	$8,450
100	Tommy Tran	$8,450
101	Chad Deberry	$8,450
102	Colby Covington	$8,450
103	Eric Afriat	$8,450
104	Aleksandar Petrovic	$8,450
105	Charles Joseph Jr Johnson	$8,450
106	Jeff Madsen	$8,450
107	Lazaro Rojas	$8,450
108	Brock Wilson	$8,450
109	David Forbes	$8,450
110	Naoum Zarcadoolas	$8,450
111	Michael Merisier	$8,450
112	Daniel Kusnerak	$8,450
113	Frank Stepuchin	$8,450
114	Endri Foto	$8,450
115	Jordan Semel	$8,450
116	Benjamin Scrogins	$8,450
117	Vincent Fiorenza	$7,815
118	Alex Jim	$7,815
119	Joseph Drory	$7,815
120	Edward Hislop	$7,815
121	Gueorgui Gatchev	$7,815
122	Z Stein	$7,815
123	Alon Yehudai	$7,815
124	Noam Muallem	$7,815
125	Bradley Rogoff	$7,815
126	Landon Tice	$7,815
127	–	$7,815
128	Erik Seidel	$7,815
129	Steven Richardson	$7,815
130	Fares Santana	$7,815
131	Brian Gabriel	$7,815
132	Edward McPike	$7,815
133	Scott Hall	$7,815
134	Lee Markholt	$7,815
135	Armando Figueroa	$7,310
136	Jonathan Dokler	$7,310
137	Mike Vela	$7,310
138	Nick Pupillo	$7,310
139	Marc Sacheli	$7,310
140	Daniel Couzens	$7,310
141	Nghia Le	$7,310
142	Jon Borenstein	$7,310
143	J.J. Liu	$7,310
144	Chris Basile	$7,310
145	Sheddy Siddiqui	$7,310
146	Tyler Rueger	$7,310
147	Antonio Justiniano Santos	$7,310
148	Eric Salazar	$7,310
149	Mohammad Khan	$7,310
150	Joel Harwood	$7,310
151	David Goodis	$7,310
152	Justin Carey	$7,310
153	David Guay	$6,915
154	Leon Toledo	$6,915
155	Bradley Butcher	$6,915
156	Ken Weinstein	$6,915
157	Anthony March	$6,915
158	Paul Staples	$6,915
159	Jerry Wong	$6,915
160	Sean Shah	$6,915
161	Jarod Ludemann	$6,915
162	Marc Evanier	$6,915
163	Jeffrey Meyers	$6,915
164	Zachary Fischer	$6,915
165	Ilir Rugova	$6,915
166	Isaac Rcom	$6,915
167	Jean Gaspard	$6,915
168	Farhad Jamasi	$6,915
169	Catherine Griffin	$6,915
170	Timothy Capretta	$6,915
171	Joey Couden	$6,615
172	William Watson	$6,615
173	David Albrecht	$6,615
174	Marco Rodriguez	$6,615
175	Gregory Nerenberg	$6,615
176	Ory Hen	$6,615
177	Charles Odenz	$6,615
178	Vladislav Mezheritsky	$6,615
179	Daniel Swartz	$6,615
180	Georges Boyadjian	$6,615
181	Christopher McNamara	$6,615
182	Michael Gonzalez	$6,615
183	Chris Moorman	$6,615
184	Ali Turkan	$6,615
185	Jeffrey Tomlinson	$6,615
186	Hal Rotholz	$6,615
187	Anibal Salazar	$6,615
188	Michael Weber	$6,615
189	Chad Wassmuth	$6,405
190	Iuri Leite	$6,405
191	Calais Campbell	$6,405
192	Jesse Lonis	$6,405
193	Mark Wahba	$6,405
194	Rodney Turvin	$6,405
195	Greg Himmelbrand	$6,405
196	Mark Wiser	$6,405
197	Nicholas Immekus	$6,405
198	Nikita Kalinin	$6,405
199	Carlos Guerrero	$6,405
200	Roberly Felicio	$6,405
201	Lumni Zhuta	$6,405
202	Daniel Wirgau	$6,405
203	Christopher Dandrea	$6,405
204	Arturas Astrauskas	$6,405
205	Nadya Magnus	$6,405
206	Matvey Tevlin	$6,405
207	Michael Stonehill	$6,405
208	Yan Neiman	$6,405
209	Brian Nerney	$6,405
210	Philip Shing	$6,405
211	Angelina Rich	$6,405
212	Jeffrey Rolland	$6,405
213	Gregory Wilson	$6,405
214	Tim Reilly	$6,405
215	–	$6,405
216	Jeff Platt	$6,275
217	Michael Tait	$6,275
218	Akash Seth	$6,275
219	Ryan Eriquezzo	$6,275
220	Paul Leckey	$6,275
221	Randy Sim	$6,275
222	Alexander Farin	$6,275
223	Hassan El Hakim	$6,275
224	Mitchell Garshofsky	$6,275
225	David Berman	$6,275
226	Joseph Di Rosa Rojas	$6,275
227	Vincent Chauve	$6,275
228	Justin Saliba	$6,275
229	Akran Batu	$6,275
230	Luke Blindert	$6,275
231	Juan Endara	$6,275
232	Nicholas Bond	$6,275
233	Nicholas Nieto	$6,275
234	Valerie Novak	$6,275
235	Sheldon Gross	$6,275
236	Nicholas Potestio	$6,275
237	Jeremy Becker	$6,275
238	Ali Imsirovic	$6,275
239	Richard Basile	$6,275
240	Darryll Fish	$6,275
241	Chad Eveslage	$6,275
242	Nick Yunis	$6,275
243	Peter Kim	$6,275
244	Michael Laufer	$6,275
245	Tom Thomas	$6,275
246	Tyler Hirschfeld	$6,275
247	Thomas Vandenberge	$6,275
248	Tarun Gulati	$6,275

Images: WorldPokerTour.com