A cool million (plus)

Michael Addamo’s scorching 2021 continued this week, as he won the World Series of Poker Event #38: $50,000 High Roller No-Limit Hold’em 8-Handed and its $1,132,968 first prize. It was the third WSOP gold bracelet of the Aussie’s career.

the field was stacked

It was a small field, as tends to happen with buy-ins of that size, with just 81 entries. That also meant, though, that the field was stacked; the final table included such poker luminaries as Justin Bonomo, Erik Seidel, Sam Soverel, and Mustapha Kanit. Also making the money (top 13) were Dan Smith and Anthony Zinno, who currently sits in second place in the 2021 WSOP Player of the Year race.

Despite deep and fairly even stacks going into heads-up (Bonomo had a slight lead on Addamo), the one-on-one match didn’t last all that long. On the final hand, Bonomo raised to 450,000 with T-9, Addamo re-raised to 1.8 million with K-J, then Bonomo four-bet all-in for over 11 million chips. After some thought, Addamo made the call, just covering Bonomo.

The flop was Q-J-T, giving Bonomo bottom pair and a straight draw and Addamo middle pair and a better straight draw. The T on the turn put Bonomo into the lead with trips, but the A on the river gave Addamo a straight and the win.

Can’t stop, won’t stop

As mentioned, Michael Addamo has been on one heck of a run lately. Only about a month ago, he won the $50,000 and $100,000 No-Limit Hold’em events of the Poker Masters, the final two tournaments of the series, to nab the coveted Purple Jacket.

He followed that up just days later with a victory in the $300,000 Super High Roller Bowl. And that’s not to mention second and third place finishes in $50,000 and $200,000 events at the Aria High Roller. For those five events combined, Addamo earned $6,108,000.

And now he has another $1,132,968 for his third WSOP bracelet victory, the largest WSOP cash of his career and fourth-largest overall. According to TheHendonMob.com poker tournament results database, Addamo has $15,544,225 in lifetime live tournament earnings, almost half of which has come in the past four to five weeks.

Still looking up on the leaderboards

Despite his resounding success as of late, Addamo is not all that close to claiming any Player of the Year awards…yet. On the PokerGO Tour, for which the Poker Masters and Super High Roller Bowl count, he currently sits in 7th place with 1,764 points, though he does have the highest total earnings.

In the World Series of Poker POY race, Addamo is 21st on the leaderboard with 1,184.61 points. For the WSOP’s “Velo” leaderboard, which counts just No-Limit Hold’em events, he is 9th.

Ali Imsirovic is running away with the PokerGO Tour race with 3,576 points. His 12 wins on the Tour this year are at least double what anyone else has. His closest competitor is Sean Perry, who has just 2,301 points.

Phil Hellmuth, who recently won his record-extending 16th World Series of Poker gold bracelet, leads the WSOP Player of the Year standings with 2,598.59 points. Anthony Zinno, who has won two bracelets so far this year, is the only player with over 2,000 points, totaling 2,186.30 to this points. There are still dozens of tournaments remaining, so the WSOP POY is far from decided.