2020 WSOP GGPoker Hands of the Week: Dvoress Plays for the Win, Not the Ladder

August 11, 2020

Chad Holloway PR & Media Manager

Playing for the Win
Scoring His First Final Table K.O.
Steamrolling the Final Table
Final Hand of the Tournament

The 2020 World Series of Poker (WSOP) online bracelet events are running now through September 6th. The series is comprised of 85 WSOP gold bracelets on the digital felt across two different clients: WSOP.com and GG Poker.

Each week, we’ll highlight a “Hand(s) of the Week,” which very well could include bad beats, lucky suck outs, and game-changing swings. In the first week of the 2020 WSOP online series, we shared two big hands played by

Playing for the Win

After a weeklong hiatus, the final table of the 2020 WSOP GGPoker Event #48: $1,500 Millionaire Maker played out this past Saturday as the final nine runners in a 6,299-entry field battled it out for a $1,489,289 first-place prize plus the shiny gold bracelet.

However, the structure resulted in a bunch of incredibly short stacks at the final table. Even the chip leader, Daniel Dvoress, had only 30 big blinds, while the average stack sat at just 11 bigs.

As PokerNews’ own Mo Nuwwarah pointed out in his in-depth feature on Dvoress:

“Even a brief run of bad luck could see Dvoress out in a flash. Luckily for the high-stakes vet, he can draw from some relevant experience, though he'll have to dust off skills he seldom uses these days. He specialized in hyper-turbo sit-n-gos several years back, which made him comfortable playing shallow-stacked poker.”

Indeed, Dvoress did draw from that experience on his way to winning the title, the seven-figure prize, and his first WSOP bracelet. The Canadian put on a clinic of what it means to aim for the win as opposed to trying to simply ladder up.

“As a textbook example of how ICM affects final tables, the players competed into very shallow waters right off the bat with five out of nine stacks starting off below the 10 big blind mark,” the PokerNews recap of his victory reads. “With each jump being worth at least $40,000, laddering up was on many a player's mind, which resulted in plays like Ronny Kaiser folding his blinds to leave himself half a big blind. Dvoress, meanwhile, put his chip lead to work, relentlessly flinging his chips around to put the pressure on the other finalists.”

Below is a look at some of the hands that helped propel Dvoress to victory.

Scoring His First Final Table K.O.

Dvoress gets his first final table knockout.

Dvoress maintained his big stack at the final table despite not getting a knockout until six players remained in Level 30 (2,000,000/4,000,000/400,000). It happened when Neville "NevSlater" Endo Costa raised to 8,000,000 from early position, leaving a little over a million behind. Dvoress was in the big blind and reraised to get the remainder in the middle.

Neville "NevSlater" Endo Costa: A♦8♥
Daniel Dvoress: J♠6♦

The J♥9♠9♣ flop have Dvoress the lead and he locked up the hand when the J♣ turn improved him to a full house. The meaningless 9♥ was run out on the river and Endo Costa exited in sixth place for $288,356 while Dvoress added to his lead.

Steamrolling the Final Table

From there is was all Dvoress as he proceeded to singlehandedly eliminate the rest of the competition all in the same level. First, he won a flip with pocket eights against the queen-jack of Alejandro “pepealas” Caridad and then used five-four to make a full boat to best the ace-deuce of Michael “MrFabulous” Nugent, who bowed out in fourth place for $556,095.

With three players remaining, it was Level 31 (2,500,000/5,000.000/500,000) when Anatoly "Mr_Deer" Filatov moved all in on the button for a little over 40 million and Dvoress called to put him at risk from the small blind.

Anatoly "Mr_Deer" Filatov: A♠K♥
Daniel Dvoress: 5♣5♥

The 6♠J♦4♥8♦10♥ board failed to improve the Russian pro, leaving Dvoress and Caio De Almeida heads-up for the bracelet. Two hands later it was all over.

Final Hand of the Tournament

In the first hand of heads-up play, Dvoress and De Almeida saw a flop of 9♥7♠2♦ together. De Almeida checked, Dvoress bet 5,000,000, and De Almeida check-raised to 13,000,000. Dvoress shoved and the Brazilian folded.

Left with just a little over 25 million, those chips quickly flew in the middle in the subsequent hand. Dvoress beat him to the pot with a call.

Caio "Ez4ENCE" De Almeida: K♦8♦
Daniel Dvoress: K♥Q♠

The 6♣5♦3♣ flop left Almeida in need of an eight or runner-runner help. The 7♥ turn opened up a straight draw as well, but after a lengthy peel, the river card came up short with the 3♥ to eliminate De Almeida in second place as a millionaire for $1,072,428.

The combination of short stacks and a fast structure suggested there’d be a lot of variance, so Dvoress’ start-of-the-day chip lead was far from a guarantee that he’d actually win. However, that lead combined with his experience and willingness to put the pedal to the metal while others may’ve pulled back a bit in the hope of laddering up proved to be the winning recipe he needed.