Jonathan Poche Wins WSOP Circuit Hard Rock Tulsa Main Event

March 26, 2018

Jonathan Poche's live poker career started with a win in a World Series of Poker Circuit Main Event, and seven years later, he has ring No. 2 and another Circuit Main Event title.

Poche topped a field of 721 at the Tulsa Hard Rock stop that's quickly becoming one of the most popular on the tour. He won $216,307 in prize money nearly seven years after he took down WSOP Circuit New Orleans for $121,017. This gives Poche almost $650,000 in live cashes.

Official Final Table Results

The $1 million guaranteed event — it just surpassed the number with $1,081,500 in the pool — paid out to 81 spots. Recent RunGood champ Byron Abernathy, Tommy Vedes, Jeff Banghart, Will Berry, Ravi Raghavan and all-time rings leader Maurice Hawkins were among those who cashed but fell short of the final table.

Final Table Action

A tough final table emerged that featured the likes of six-time Circuit ring winner Josh Turner and Midwest standout Jeff Fielder, who won the WPTDeepStacks Championship for over $200K in December.

Charlie Adkins came in as chip leader according to the live updates and he scored the first knockout of the final nine with kings over the sixes of Mo Khan.

Poche then got lucky with seven players left. Attempting to put some pressure on the players in the blinds who had 20 big blinds or less, he shoved from the button with A♠6♠. Mike Horchoff woke up with the A♣K♠ however and called. A two-spade flop brought a sweat for Horchoff but it was a six on the river that sent him packing and vaulted Poche up to make his winning run.

Former leader Adkins then ran into a slide and wound up having to flip for all his chips with jacks against the ace-queen of Chad Smith. The board would bring an ace to doom Adkins and make Smith the leader with 4.5 million at 30,000/60,000/10,000.

Fielder made a big call to pick off an all-in bluff from Turner holding nines on a jack-high board, but it would only allow him to ladder into fifth. Short-stacked under 10 big blinds, he reshoved with queen-jack and didn't improve against the ace-ten of Smith, keeping Fielder's ring count at two for the time being.

While Poche swept up a series of pots to move into command with half of the chips in play, Turner slipped under 10 big blinds himself. Needing chips, he shoved on the button with 10♥9♦ but got looked up by Mashir Khan, who had J♦9♥ and hit trips for the knockout.

Three-handed, Smith and Khan went to war on a seven-high flop that saw Khan show down 8♣7♣ for top pair and a gutshot, but he needed help against Smith's pocket kings. The board ran out dead for Khan and Smith took a slight lead into heads-up play with Poche.

The players were deep-stacked with over 70 big blinds apiece. The match was all Poche, though, as he won every significant pot. On the final hand, Poche defended big blind and made trip deuces with 9♦2♦, and Smith tried to hero-call on the end with ace-king high and missed hearts. He saw the bad news and had to content himself with a six-figure score of his own while Poche nabbed his second ring.

Here's a look at all of the ring winners in Tulsa:

_{Photo courtesy of WSOP}

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