The World Poker Tour (WPT) wrapped up an exhilarating week in the beautiful city of Jeju, Korea. This event concluded with the final payouts to the remaining poker stars, including Daniel Merrilees who has won big in the WPT Korea High Rollers Event. He is just one of the many players who won an estimated ₩ 7,611,741,050 in prize money. This is equivalent to over USD 5.9 Million. Now that the tournament has finished and the winners have been announced, many are looking to see some of the highlights from this event and what will happen in the future.
Daniel Merrilees Wins WPT High Rollers Event
The final day of the WPT Korea High Roller event ended with a bang as Daniel Merrilees was crowned the winner of this tournament. High Roller events like this tend to be some of the largest events in the festival, with huge payouts that attract some of the most talented players. WPT Korea was no exception and brought together 47 of the best poker players in the game.
Entering this respected event required a buy-in fee of ₩ 17,000,000 or about $13,22K0. The prize was certainly worth it though as having so many players brought the prize pool to a massive ₩ 743,869,000 ($578,380.) However, not everyone would be able to enjoy that money. The WPT High Roller had a bubble of half a dozen players who would advance to the final table. Among these players was the UK poker star Daniel Merrilees.
He along with five other players advanced to the final table. Going in there Daniel Merrilees admitted that he wasn’t fully prepared for it and didn’t have a strategy. defined strategy. Instead, he opted to go with the flow and see what cards he was given.
this made competing in the final table a difficult experience for Daniel Merrilees, especially with Chinese player Ran Bi dominating the game. He managed to eliminate the four other players on the table, leaving just him and Daniel Merrilees to compete.
As the final hands were drawn, Daniel Merrilees revealed the Queens of Hearts and Clubs to compete against Ran Bi’s 9, 6, 3, and 8 clubs and his 6 of diamonds. Unfortunately for Ran, this wasn’t good enough to claim the championship and he was eliminated.
This was a huge moment for Daniel Merrilees as this was his first poker title in Asia. After this stunning win, he had a few words about his success.
“This is my first live tournament win so it’s really nice. I’ve been trying to win a live tournament for a long time and always came up a bit short. I was actually in Seoul, relaxing on holiday and I saw that the WPT was here so I couldn’t resist. I wanted to get that South Korean flag. It was a cool tournament, nice field, and nice to win it.”
Daniel Merrilees, WPT Korea High Roller Champion
Other Winners of WPT Korea
Daniel Merrilees isn’t the only poker player who walked away with a poker trophy. Chinese player Yin Tao also managed to snag a win from the WPT Korea Main Event. This tournament ran from July 17-22 and had a prize pool guarantee of ₩ 2,000,000. This made the event one of the largest prize pools for a non-high roller event in Asia.
With such a huge prize at stake, 758 players came to compete in this competition and Yin Tao had to compete against all of them to secure his prize. In the end, it was all worth it though as he secured a massive prize money of ₩ 295,000,000 or $229,370.
Yin Tao was far from the only Chinese player to make a name for himself here. Liu Yin also became famous for being only one of two players to win two events. Liu Yin managed to outlast 153 players in the NLH Survivor Bounty Event and then compete and dominate the Superstack NLH Turbo. These victories needed his prize money of ₩ 14,984,000 (USD 11,650) and ₩ 9,281,000 (USD 7,215) respectively.
Before the high roller event, the WPT Korea Main Event was the most anticipated event of the festival, drawing in a huge pool of competitors.
If you are interested in learning about the details of this event you can read our WPT Korea Main Event Update.