Since winning the Cardplayer Magazine Player of the Year award in 2012, Tom Marchese has been fairly quiet on the tournament trail; that was until last night when he took down the $100k Super-High-Roller tournament at the 2012 World Poker Tour Championship. The win added over $1.3 million to Marchese’s career earnings, a nice sum of money to pocket just days before the World Series of Poker gets underway!

The $1.3 million score is the largest of Marchese’s short career (he won the 2010 POY award in his first year of playing live tournament poker!) and is his first cash of over $100,000 since 2010 when he had six 6-figure scores. With the seven-figure payday, Marchese’s career tournament winnings are sitting at $3.8 million, not bad for just over two years of tournament poker!

The final table began with six players in the hunt, and one of those players destined to finish out of the money as only five players would get paid in the tournament. The unlucky bubble boy ended up being recent EPT Grand Final Super-High-Roller winner Justin Bonomo, who was the first player to hit the rail on Friday.

The next two players eliminated were the somewhat unknown Bill Klein and Daniel Perper, who finished 5th and 4th respectively, leaving three top tournament players to battle it out for the title: Marchese, John Juanda, and Andrew Robl.

Juanda was the next player to be eliminated when he ran Pocket 9’s into Andrew Robl’s Pocket Aces. Robl and Marchese then battled in what will likely go down as one of the classic heads-up duels in tournament history. The two started heads-up play with near-identical chip-stacks and it took 75 hands (along with numerous chip-leader changes and near eliminations) before Marchese would finish off Robl.

The final hand saw Marchese and Robl get it all-in pre-flop with Marchese holding Pocket 8’s and Robl and offsuit A/4. There wasn’t much of a sweat, as the flop came down T-8-5, giving Marchese the 2012 WPT Super-High-Roller title.

Here is a look at how the final table fared on Saturday:

* 1st place: Tom Marchese – $1,308,405

* 2nd place: Andrew Robl – $822,375

* 3rd place: John Juanda – $526,320

* 4th place: Daniel Perper – $394,740

* 5th place: Bill Klein – $263,160

* 6th place: Justin Bonomo – $0

The WPT Championship will be played on Saturday, with six players vying for the $1.2 million first-place prize. Here is a look at the chip counts and seating assignments for those players:

* Seat 1: Michael Mizrachi – 2,560,000 (43 BBs)

* Seat 2: Marvin Rettenmaier – 6,715,000 (112 BBs)

* Seat 3: Steve O’Dwyer – 2,035,000 (34 BBs)

* Seat 4: Nick Schulman – 1,555,000 (26 BBs)

* Seat 5: Trevor Pope – 1,480,000 (25 BBs)

* Seat 6: Philippe Ktorza – 895,000 (15 BBs)

Tags: Aces, Bill Klein, Bubble Boy, Cardplayer Magazine, Career Earnings, Duels, Eliminations, High Roller, John Juanda, Justin Bonomo, marchese, Perper, Poy, stacks, Sum Of Money, Tournament History, Tournament Poker, World Poker Tour, world poker tour championship, World Series of Poker

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