Keven Stammen Wins WPT Season XII World Championship

Keven StammenKeven Stammen has taken down the World Poker Tour Season XII World Championship held at the Borgata Casino Hotel and Spa over the weekend. He managed to outlast 328 players in a field that included WPT host Tony Dunst to win the $15,400 buy-in event.

Stammen had around a 2 to 1 chip lead going into heads up play, so he definitely fancied his chances and eventually got the job done. Heads up play lasted more than two hours and the final hand went down when his opponent, Kaverman, shoved on the button with 4s4d. Stammen woke up with Ac8s in the big blind and called. The flop was a good one for Kaverman, but the Ace that came on the river saw the pot go to Stammen who had his opponent covered. So, it was a classic coin flip, which ended the tournament.

Stammen went into the final table as the chip leader with more than 100 big blinds and basically went on to dominate what was a quality final table, with Dunst already a WPT champion, and several others who were regulars on the live tournament circuit. During the final day’s play, Stammen managed to only give up his chip lead once. Heading into the last day, Ryan D’Angelo was short stacked with only 24 big blinds, followed by Tony Dunst with 26 big blinds, and Curt Kohlberg was sitting with 31 big blinds. At the middle of the chip count leaderboard was Byron Kaverman and Abe Korotki, who both had stacks of over 50 big blinds.

Even though D’Angelo entered the final table as the biggest short stack, he managed to grind his way up the chip counts and further up the money list, eventually getting eliminated in fourth place. In his final hand, D’Angelo shoved in the small blind with 9s5c but Kaverman called his shove off with Qs2c after thinking about the decision for a few minutes. The flop of As-7h-6c gave D’Angelo a few more outs with his gutshot, but no miracle cards came on the turn or river, eliminating D’Angelo from the tournament.

With three players left in the tournament and with the blinds now at 60k/120k with a 20k ante, Dunst shoved on the button with Ac2h and Stammen made the call with Kh6h. The Kc-5h-3d flop meant that Stammen now had the lead, but it gave Dunst a gutshot in addition to an overcard he could catch to improve. Another King on the turn meant that Dunst was drawing pretty thin, and there was no lucky 4 on the river, sending Dunst to the rail in third place.

Here were the top five final payouts from the 2014 WPT World Championship:

1. Keven Stammen – $1,350,000

2. Byron Kaverman – $727,860

3. Tony Dunst – $452,729

4. Ryan D’Angelo – $363,930

5. Curt Kohlberg – $286,292

A big congratulations to Keven Stammen who played some great poker over the course of the six day event. In addition to the first place prize money, he also won a Hublot King Power Unico watch, Monster 24K headphones, and had his name engraved on the WPT Champions Cup.

This win has put Keven Stammen at the top of the 2014 Global Poker Index Player of the Year leaderboard. The $1.35 million dollar win makes it by far the biggest live tournament score in his career to date. Prior to this his biggest score was winning a $2,500 buy-in no-limit hold’em event at the 2009 World Series of Poker for $0.5 million dollars. His live tournament poker earnings now total more than $3.4 million.