The WPT Gardens $5,000 Main Event final table was set early today after a long Day 4 of the tournament. Six players are set to return later today at the host venue, the Gardens Casino in Hawaiian Gardens, Southern California, to play down to a champion.

The winner will take home a nice payout of $565,055, including a $15,000 seat into the season-ending WPT Tournament of Champions, and a brand new Mercedes-Benz SLC Roadster worth over $50,000.

Simon Lam is leading the final pack of six players after the fourth day of play. The overnight chip leader had accumulated a stack of 6.155 million by the end of Day 4 action to pack with a considerable advantage over his fellow contenders for the title. Popular poker pro Jake Schindler bagged the second largest stack, good for 4.45 million.

This will be Lam’s second WPT Main Tour Main Event final table. Back in 2016, the player finished 4th in the $3,500 buy-in WPT Borgata Poker Open Main Event, good for his best live tournament cash of $250,970. Overall, Lam has nearly $1.4 million in earnings from various live tournaments.

Day 4 Action

Day 4 of the WPT Gardens Main Event kicked off with 46 hopefuls still in contention. Saya Ono was leading the survivors. While the local player failed to keep her lead throughout the day, she managed to secure her spot at the official final table. She currently occupies the fifth spot in the temporary leaderboard with a stack of 3.445 million, good for 57 big blinds. In other words, even though she stands near the bottom of the chip counts chart, she is still running pretty deep.

The Day 4 hopefuls first played to the unofficial final table of nine. Men Nguyen was holding the largest chip stack when that stage of the game was reached with 3.635 million. The remaining nine survivors were then relocated to a single table. It took 98 hands of play for the official six-handed final table to be reached.

Nguyen maintained quite some momentum halfway through those 98 hands. However, to everyone’s surprise the player fell asleep at the table and spent more than 20 hands in that state. He eventually woke up, but Lam was already gaining momentum by that time and was eying the top of the leaderboard.

Despite his unexpected nap, Nguyen made it to the official final table with the third largest stack among the remaining survivors. The player will enter the final day of action with 3.935 million or 66 big blinds.

Aside from the chip leader, Lam, Schindler, Nguyen, and Ono, Jared Griener with 3.875 million and Craig Varnell with 1.955 million were the other two players to make it to the tournament’s official final table.

Six-handed action is slated to kick off today at 4 pm local time at the host venue. The hopefuls will play down to a champion. Each of them is guaranteed a minimum cash of $115,885.

Anthony Zinno, one of the notable members of global poker’s elite and one of the few three-time WPT Main Event winners, topped the field of another prestigious tournament after a nice run at the WSOP.

Zinno took part in another popular summer series annually taking place in Las Vegas and bested the field of the festival’s Main Event just a couple of days ago. The popular poker pro emerged victorious in The Venetian DeepStack Championship Poker Series CPPT $5,000 Main Event after surviving through five days of action and outlasting a field of 547 entries.

The tournament kicked off on Saturday, July 14, at The Venetian, one of the premium poker destinations across the Strip. The Main Event featured a guaranteed prize pool of $2 million. The guarantee was crashed due to the great interest in the tournament. An overall prize pool of $2,529,875 was thus created to be distributed to the top 63 finishers.

Aside from the champion’s trophy and all the accolades that a winner deserves, Zinno also collected the amount of $466,670. Including his latest live tournament cash, the poker pro now boasts a bankroll of over $8 million.

Zinno beat a stacked final table in the CPPT Main Event. The player faced the likes of former WSOP Main Event champ Martin Jacobson, popular high rollers Dan Shak and Stephen Chidwick, and former World Championship final tablists Bryan Piccioli and Jay Farber, among others. UK’s Ben Jones was Zinno’s heads-up opponent. The player eventually busted in second place for a consolation prize of $390,956.

Zinno said after his latest poker triumph that he could finally take a break from poker as he has been playing almost incessantly over the past several months.

Hot WSOP Streak

Zinno jumped into The Venetian Main Event action fresh from a nice run at the WSOP. The player finished in-the-money in 12 tournaments on the schedule of the world’s longest running poker series and made two final table appearances.

Zinno finished third in the $565 Pot-Limit Omaha 6-Handed for $57,300. He also scored a third-place finish in the $10,000 Limit Hold’em Championship for $129,186.

While the player failed to capture a WSOP gold bracelet this summer, he already knows very well what it feels like to claim the most coveted non-monetary prize in poker. He won his piece back in 2015 when he outlasted the elite field of the $25,000 Pot-Limit Omaha High Roller. That victory actually secured the popular poker pro with his largest-ever live cash of $1,122,196.

Zinno is one of just five players in the history of the World Poker Tour to have won three Main Event titles from the series’ Main Tour. He claimed his first title in 2013. It was followed by two more titles in 2015 to tie with Carlos Mortensen and Gus Hansen who were the only other three-time WPT title holders at the time.

When Justin Bonomo, who had a remarkable summer, finished off Fedor Holz in the $1 million buy-in Big One for One Drop on Tuesday, it signified the end of the 2018 World Series of Poker, which means it’s time to relive the best moments from what was an incredible month for poker.

It was a difficult task to choose the top moments as there were so many epic highlights this summer. John Hennigan’s series was so impressive that it got him inducted into the Poker Hall of Fame. “Magic” John Cynn won a 10-hour heads-up battle for the ages against Tony Miles to become world champion. And poker fans got to watch more Main Event coverage than ever before.

Those were all worthy highlights but, given how intriguing this year’s WSOP was, not quite exciting enough to make our “best of” list.

‘No Home Jerome’ Returns to WSOP

Phil Ivey, arguably the greatest poker player ever, had taken a lengthy break from tournament poker. That came to an end this summer when he grinded a full WSOP schedule to the delight of his many fans.

The man who once used a fake ID with the name “Jerome” to play poker in Atlantic City prior to turning 21, had arguably his worst WSOP ever with just four small cashes, but simply seeing Ivey in action was a treat to the poker community.

Poker Brat Extends Bracelet Record

Love him or hate him, poker fans can’t get enough of Phil Hellmuth. The Poker Brat, who already held the all-time record for WSOP titles, won his 15^th bracelet in the $5,000 No-Limit Hold’em event that took place during the Main Event.

Hellmuth won $485,082 for the victory, which salvaged an otherwise ho-hum summer for one of poker’s best tournament players ever.

Bonomo Does the Unthinkable

If neither a Super High Roller Bowl title for $5 million or a victory in the $10,000 Heads-Up Championship for $185,965 was your best moment of the summer, you know you’re on quite a heater.

Justin Bonomo’s top highlight came on the very last day of the 2018 WSOP when he beat Fedor Holz heads-up to win the Big One for One Drop, his second bracelet of the series, for $10 million, enough to overtake Daniel Negreanu as the all-time winningest tournament player with just under $43 million in career earnings.

Deeb ‘Running’ Well

Shaun Deeb had the best summer of his poker career, winning two bracelets and leaving Las Vegas as the Player of the Year leader with 10 bracelet events at WSOP Europe in the fall still to come. But the highlight of his 2018 WSOP wasn’t how well he was running metaphorically.

On June 7, the notorious slowroller was deep in two tournaments at the same time – Event #13, Big Blind Ante $1,500 No-Limit Hold’em and Event #14, $1,500 No-Limit 2-7 Lowball – which meant he had to literally run back and forth in between hands to prevent getting blinded out in either event. He didn’t end up winning either bracelet but finished 3^rd (Event #14) and 16^th (Event #13) on the same day. And he burned some calories.

Players Shine on Poker’s Biggest Stage

The 2018 WSOP Main Event had the second most participants in its 49-year history (7,874), a clear sign that poker is anything but a dying breed. But what made it such a special event this year was the performance of the nine competitors, including 2009 world champion Joe Cada, at the final table on national television.

Players at the final table, in most hands, acted quickly, a pleasant surprise for ESPN viewers who were frustrated with the constant tanking in recent years, and the crowd at the Rio was lively and interacted with their friends at the table.

Another highlight during poker’s most prestigious event was an insane hand that brought the tournament to its final table.

With 10 players remaining on Day 7, Nic Manion got it all-in pre-flop with pocket aces against the pocket kings of both Yueqi Zhu and Antoine Labat. He had Zhu covered and won the hand, leaving Labat with a small stack at the final table and Zhu out in 10^thplace.

It was a memorable and successful summer for the poker industry. If the 2019 World Series of Poker can top this year’s series, we’re all in for a treat.