Steve Sung has a way of rising to the occasion evidenced by his win in the first $1k NLHE event at the 2009 WSOP when he bested the 6,000+ player field to win the first place prize of $771,338 and his first WSOP gold bracelet. Now Sung can call himself a two-time bracelet winner after winning another prestigious WSOP event, Event #52, the $25k 6-Max NLHE event, and over $1.2 million.

With a $25k buy-in the tournament featured a top-flight field of players – 175 in all—and an incredibly tough final table that included Phil Galfond, Richard “nutsinho” Lyndacker, Stephen Chidwick, and Dani “ansky” Stern. Rounding out the final table was up-and-coming German poker pro Maxi Lehmanski.

After his win Sung spoke to the media, telling Bluff Magazine, “It’s pretty prestigious but it hasn’t hit me yet,” Sung said. “I don’t even feel like the winner right now to be honest – I feel very grateful. Phil (Galfond) and I have a pretty crazy history, we used to play the biggest PLO, No Limit and mixed games online and we would play some crazy pots. I believed that he had no respect for me when we sat down to play today. He was surprised and confused that I was playing so tight.”

The reason Sung may have been so deferential to Galfond likely has to do with their back-and-forth heads-up duel that saw Galfond make a valiant comeback to even up the match before Sung once again took control of the match, eventually eliminating Galfond Moneymaker/Galfond style when the two got it all-in with Galfond holding top-pair and Sung having bottom-two.

For Galfond –one of the all-time greats in online poker—success in live tournaments has been few and far between, although it should be pointed out that Galfond plays an extremely limited live tournament schedule. Other than his recent runner-up finish and his 2008 WSOP bracelet win in what is considered by many the greatest final table of all-time, Galfond’s third largest cash is a mere $57,000 score for finishing 141st in the 2010 WSOP Main Event.

Here is a look at the final table payouts from the tournament:

1. Steve Sung – $1,205,324

2. Phil Galfond – $744,841

3. Dani Stern – $509,473

4. Stephan Chidwick – $353,780

5. Max Lehmanski – $249,291

6. Richard Lyndaker – $178,261

In addition to his two WSOP bracelets, Sung has a terrific live tournament resume that includes five Top nine finishes on the World Poker Tour, including two 4th place finishes and a runner-up finish at the 2008 Bay 101 Shooting Star Main Event. Sung also has eight WSOP final tables, that break-down the following way:

* Two 1st place finishes

* One 2nd place finish

* Two 3rd place finishes

* One 4th place finish

* One 7th place finish

* One 9th place finish

*Resources: www.wsop.com, www.thehendonmob.com

 

This entry was posted on Monday, July 1st, 2013 at 6:28 pm and is filed under Poker News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.