Season capper
The field for the 2022 PGT (PokerGO Tour) Championship is set and just in time, as the two-day tournament begins today. The invitational, season-ending event for the PokerGO Tour includes the top 21 players on the PokerGO Tour leaderboard.
The $500,000 winner-take-all freeroll is unique in that players do not start with equal chip stacks. Instead, they take their seats with 1,000 chips for every 10 points earned in open PGT events this year. The big stack is Stephen Chidwick, who amassed 3,412 points and thus starts with 342,000 chips. Behind him is Phil Ivey with 309,000 chips and Jason Koon with 309,000.
When the tournament starts, the leaderboard order could change slightly – thus affecting the chip stacks – as some players were still involved in the final ARIA high roller event when the below list was posted:
- Stephen Chidwick – 342,000
- Phil Ivey – 309,000
- Jason Koon – 284,000
- Michael Duek – 240,000
- Sean Winter – 237,000
- Alex Foxen – 236,000
- Espen Jorstad – 224,000
- Chad Eveslage – 217,000
- Danny Tang – 214,000
- Mikita Badziakouski – 209,000
- Daniel Dvoress – 206,000
- Seth Davies – 200,000
- Isaac Kempton – 193,000
- Nick Petrangelo – 193,000
- Jeremy Ausmus – 191,000
- Paul Phua – 190,000
- Sam Greenwood – 189,000
- Daniel Negreanu – 171,000
- Adria Attenborough – 170,000
- Cary Katz – 167,000
- Benny Glaser – 165,000
Though Stephen Chidwick did finish the 2022 PokerGO Tour season atop the leaderboard, it is this tournament that will determine who is the season’s champion. The uneven starting stack format clearly gives the top season finishers an advantage, but these are all great players and nobody is starting so short that they have no hope. Blinds begin at 500/1,000 with a 1,000-chip big blind ante.
Top performers and bubble boys
Chidwick did not back his way into the leaderboard title, accumulating his points total on the back of a fantastic six wins in the PokerGO Tour’s high roller schedule and 32 cashes. His $6.3 million in earnings was not the highest, though. Espen Jorstad, seventh on the points leaderboard, earned over $10.2 million, as his World Series of Poker Main Event victory counts as part of the PokerGO Tour. Alex Foxen was second on the money list with just shy of $6.6 million.
Just missing the cut for the 2022 PGT Championship was Andrew Lichtenberger, who finished the season with 1,585 PGT points, just behind Benny Glaser’s 1,646 points. In the 23rd spot, two away from the tournament field, was Eliot Hudon with 1,500 points. Chances are Hudon is not overly upset about not getting into the tournament, as he just won the 2022 WPT World Championship yesterday and over $4.1 million.
Image credit: PokerGO.com
