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Bin Weng and Jonathan Jaffe Win Big at Wynn Las Vegas in Special WPT Events to Benefit One Drop

Bin Weng and Jonathan Jaffe were crowned champions of the two special tournaments that the World Poker Tour held at the Wynn Casino in Las Vegas over the past week. The two tournaments raised a total of over $650,000 in charity funds that the One Drop Foundation will use towards assisting people in the most needy areas in accessing drinking water and that the Wynn Resorts Foundation will use to benefit a number of other community engagement and volunteer programs.

WPT EveryOne for One Drop $10K

This event was played from July 9-14 at the Wynn Casino in Las Vegas and featured a buy-in of $10,500. A total of 1,676 entries created a prize pool of $16.2 million, far exceeding the $10 million guarantee.

Among the notable players who finished in the money were: Isaac Haxton (198th), Erik Seidel (197th), Joe McKeehen (192nd), Andrew Moreno (186th), Chris Moneymaker (141st), Ethan “Rampage” Yau (127th ), Dan Smith (115th), Jeremy Ausmus (79th), 2022 WPT World Championship champion Eliot Hudon (66th), Adrián Mateos (57th), WPT Prime Championship winner Stephen Song (39th), 4-time WPT champion Darren Elias (19th) and Stephen Chidwick (16th), among others.

The winner of the tournament was Bin Weng, who collected the biggest prize of his career: $2.2 million. Weng is in the midst of his best year ever, having already made two final tables in WPT Main Events — placing fourth at the WPT Choctaw for $143K and winning the WPT Seminole Hard Rock Poker Showdown for $1.1 million. With these results he leads the WPT Player of the Year rankings, and has passed the $7 million mark for career live tournament earnings.

The final table consisted of a half dozen crushers, each of whom happily padded their bank accounts:

  1. Bin Weng 🇺🇸 –  $2,227,054
  2. Scott Baumstein 🇺🇸 –  $1,503,988
  3. Niko Koop 🇷🇺 –  $1,872,438
  4. Freddy Heller 🇺🇸 –  $956,000
  5. Dominik Nitsche  🇩🇪 –  $700,100
  6. Tom Cannuli 🇺🇸 –  $524,500

WPT Alpha 8 For One Drop $111K

After several years of absence, the exclusive Alpha 8-branded tournament returned and was played from July 14-16 at the Wynn Casino. With 45 entrants paying $111K each for seats at the tables, the total prize pool was $4.6 million, and it was split among the final seven players.

The lion’s share went to Jonathan Jaffe, who collected the biggest prize of his career: over $1.5 million. Jonathan is a regular player on the World Poker Tour, where he boasts 14 cashes, 4 final tables and 1 title (WPT Montreal in 2014). With his Alpha 8 win, he boosted his live tournament earnings to $9 million.

Here’s how the final table played out among those who made the money:

  1. Jonathan Jaffe 🇺🇸 –  $1,537,600
  2. Taylor von Kriegenbergh 🇺🇸 –  $1,042,100
  3. Dan Smith 🇺🇸 –  $701,700
  4. Aleksejs Ponakovs 🇱🇻 –  $485,200
  5. Michael Lim 🇺🇸 –  $350,100
  6. Iaron Lightbourne 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿 –  $273,200
  7. Isaac Haxton 🇺🇸 –  $222,600

WPT Big One For One Drop $1M

The crown jewel of the WPT-One Drop Foundation trifecta will be the return of the “Big One For One Drop,” which will feature a whopping $1 million price tag to enter, and which will be played from December 18-20 as part of the 2023 WPT World Championship. It will be the fifth edition of this event after previous installments of the tournament held in 2012 (winner: Antonio Esfandiari – $18.3M), 2014 (winner: Dan Colman – $15.3M), 2016 (winner: Elton Tsang – $12.2M) and 2018 (winner: Justin Bonomo – $10M).

How many entries will the new edition have? Who is most likely to emerge atop as a newly-minted multi-millionare among millionaires? Learn more in this article.

The full 2023 WPT World Championship schedule will soon be announced, with even higher numbers expected than last year, and the returning Big One For One Drop on top of it all. This will signal a perfect end to 2023, a year where live poker has broken numerous records, with more likely to fall at the Wynn in December.

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Santiago Garcia Mansilla
Written By.

Santiago Garcia Mansilla

Santiago is a longtime veteran of the poker industry, having written primarily about the game in Argentina since 2009. He has published hundreds of articles in Sudamerican Poker and Pokerlogia, and has provided live media coverage at the WSOP Main Event in 2015 and 2019. In addition to being a former columnist in PokerFace Magazine, […]

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