WSOP $500 Turbo Deepstack No Limit Hold'em win for Burneikis

Vladas Burneikis won his first World Series of Poker bracelet, and he did so in a tidy six hours of work — if he registered for the first hand dealt — in Event #49: $500 Turbo Deepstack No Limit Hold'em on GGPoker. Burneikis won $192,523 plus a WSOP Europe package valued at $15K after topping a field of 2,978 in the speedy event.

The Lithuanian, who previously had $208,000 in live cashes, had less than $11,000 of that come in WSOP events.

At the final table of this event, he overcame some experienced opposition like Boris Kolev, Jeff Cormier, Ezequiel Waigel, Guillaume Nolet and Jimmy Guerrero. All of those outlasted a slew of recognizable names who cashed, the likes of Steve O'Dwyer, Juha Helppi, Asi Moshe, Pascal Hartmann, Danny Tang and Jack Sinclair.

It was clear right from the early stages of the final table that this one was going to come down to Burneikis and Pierre "Malaska" Merlin. By the time it was seven-handed, they were the only two with more than a handful of blinds.

One player who did an admirable job laddering was Brendan "doji" Sheehan, who was the shortest stack to start the final table with only about five big blinds, yet he managed to sneak into fourth-place money as others fell by the wayside.

Burneikis and Merlin took turns knocking everyone else out until they were heads up with fairly even stacks. However, fortune only looked one way in this match and that was toward Burneikis. He caught several lucky breaks, including pulling out a miracle chop with six-five suited against sixes after a queen-ten-eight flop.

Unable to get back in it even in the spots that looked to be lined up for him, Merlin had to accept a second-place payout of a still-handsome $147K for getting by nearly 3,000 opponents.

(Article courtesy of World Series of Poker)