High Roller Champion: Tu Kham Tran

The $2000 + $200 High Roller started on Saturday and it boasted a $250,000 guaranteed prize pool. In the end it attracted a total of 177 runners creating a prize pool of $343,380, with the top 23 players in the money, with a min-cash in 23rd paying $4,000, and the top prize in first place paying out $75,000 plus the WSOP-C Playground champion’s ring.

Tu Kham Tran is a local tournament a cash game player who is known to have a “wild style of play”, often building a stack early in the game with his super aggressive style. Other times he is seen exiting the tournament room before the tournament reaches the first break of the evening. His approach in a higher buy-in event might have been a bit different as although he played his loose-aggressive game early on in the tournament, he tightened up and played solid in the latter stages. He is also is fresh off of another final table earlier in the festival in Event #3, The Monster Stack, where he finished in sixth place.

Tran was the Day 1 chip leader and finished Day 2 in second place. He played a good game today and stayed in one of the top positions throughout the entire day. When the final table was finally formed, he had one of the top stacks in play. As play went three-handed, the players looked at the ICM chop numbers but in the end, Tran said “let’s just play on”. He had the confidence and knew regardless what might happen, he was already making some decent money and wanted to just play down to a winner. None the less, a little while later, the three players once again looked at the numbers and this time all three agreed to making a deal. Once play opened up, Xiaoming Su was the first to leave, exiting in third place for a $45,860 payday.

Heads-up play took place between Aaron Olshan and Tu Kham Tran for less than one full level, and the final hand came to be when Olshan picked up and decided to move all in. Tran made the call with and the delaer proceeded to fan out the board.

The flop came and boom, Tran had flopped the nut flush. The on the turn and on the river were of no consequence, and just like that, The WSOP-C Playground High Roller crowned a champion, Tu Kham Tran.