Damian Salas Wins WSOP Main Event for over $2.5 million

In any year, winning the World Series of Poker Main Event is a difficult proposition. But in a year when Coronavirus hit the live poker events hard and a summer online version of the World Series already produced a high-profile winner, it’s more than tricky.

Those factors, along with the fact that Damian Salas had to win both an online poker multi-table tournament with thousands of entries as well as a live showdown at both King’s Casino in Rozvadov as well as the Rio Hotel & Casino in Las Vegas and the Argentinian has earned that most astounding accolade.

How did Salas achieve what many players will only ever dream of?

Salas’ story starts back in his homeland of Argentina, where he began his personal world tour to become champion. It’s worth mentioning that Salas has a personal history with the WSOP Main Event, too. Just three years earlier, Salas finished seventh for $1.4 million — at the time the biggest result of his career. Here he was, three and a half years later, playing online via GGPoker’s International leg of the 2020 WSOP Main Event in order to right that self-perceived wrong.

That WSOP Main Event featured 674 entries, each of whom paid the entry fee of $10,000. This time, unlike the Online Series in the summer, there were no re-entries. It was a pure freezeout in the grand old traditions of the Main Event, as it has been from 1971, the first year players paid to play down to a winner. A full 50 years on, Salas ploughed through a field a hundred times larger than the one back then when Binion’s Horseshoe hosted a single-table shootout for glory.

Salas may have started in a vast multi-table tournament, but oddly, that ‘shootout’ format would be one crucial to the Argentine’s poker dream being realised.

Battling his way to the final table, Salas would have to travel to King’s Casino in Rozvadov on the Czech-German border. That was anything but easy during the pandemic and Salas, nicknamed ‘Pampa’ back in his home country (it translates as ‘The Wild One, The Country Man’) left behind his wife and three children on his quest to bag the title. With overwhelming support from friends and family back home, Salas kicked off the final table in some style, eliminating Austrian player Hannes Speiser early on to give himself every chance of a chip advantage turning into victory.

Salas was off to a flyer and kicked on, busting Bulgarian Stoyan Obreshkov to reduce the field to just six men. The final table was supposed to have started with nine, but only eight had arrived, Chinese player Peiyuan Sun choosing not to travel an exhaustive route to Rozvadov, staying at home and collecting $75,360.

It became something of a South American shootout, with Brazilian player Brunno Botteon also wielding the axe. The two men seemed on a collision course from a long way out, and when Salas ended the hopes of Portuguese player Manuel Ruivo three-handed with a flush, the stage was set for the deciding heads-up of the International leg of the World Series of Poker.

Salas took a lead into heads-up and put it to good use early on. Botteon, however, fought back and sneaked himself into the lead. With the Argentinian flag draped over his chair and photo of his wife and children acting as a card protector, Salas would not be denied.

Grinding back into a chip lead, Salas had two pair on the river when his Brazilian opponent attempted an audacious bluff. Undeterred, Salas called it off to win the hand and the tournament, as well as the $1.5 million top prize.

Cue the confetti, the party atmosphere and the celebrations, but although Salas was the last player at the table, the title wasn’t won. He wasn’t World Champion yet.

That was because as well as an International, there was a Las Vegas-based Domestic leg of the unique, ‘hybrid’ version of the world’s oldest poker tournament in 2020… or rather 2021. Someone would be doing exactly the same as Damian Salas in America, playing from Nevada or New Jersey while online at WSOP.com.

As it turned out, the Domestic leg final table winner would have almost as good a story as Salas himself. Joseph Hebert won through to the final table and claimed a memorable victory in the memory of his mother, who had passed away from a pulmonary embolism in the summer of 2020 itself.

Hebert, who had told his mother, Linda, that his dream was to one day win a WSOP bracelet, took down a final table featuring Ryan Hagerty and Ron Jenkins, who Hebert beat heads-up. One player Hebert didn’t have to face was multiple bracelet winner Upeshka De Silva, who was unable to play due to COVID regulations.

The global COVID-19 pandemic would play a late part in the drama between Herbert and Salas, too, as the pair were initially scheduled to contest the bracelet for an extra million dollars in Las Vegas. Salas, however, couldn’t get into the United States.

With Salas’ arrival delayed due to COVID-19 restrictions, the heads-up match to end it all would have to be moved from 30th December to the 3rd January, making it the only WSOP Main Event that has ever gone across two calendar years.

When the final eventually took place, both men came into play with the same number of poker chips and it was the 45-year-old Argentinian who would seal the deal after a voyage that took him from South America to Europe and then, finally and with great difficulty, to North America.

The heads-up match took an epic 173 hands to reach a conclusion and as you might expect, the lead changed hands several times during that span of play. Hebert was at one point looking the more likely champion, with a massive 8-to-1 chip lead, but Salas battled back with remarkable resolve. Here was a man who simply wouldn’t be denied and when he won with king-jack against Hebert’s ace-queen to decide the tournament, the achievement of a lifetime belonged to the man from Argentina. Salas was World Champion and his epic mission, which he came so close to achieving 40 months earlier, was finally complete.

Exhausted, emotional and ecstatic, his interview with PokerNews after the conclusion of the Main Event was a window into the humble yet heroic poker player’s world.

Who will become the World Series of Poker Main Event winner in 2021, or rather the second champion awarded the title this year? It’s going to be a lot of fun finding out, but no-one will ever win a world title quite the way Damian Salas did in Argentina, Rozvadov and eventually in Las Vegas.