History has been repeated as India has got its 2nd WSOP bracelet! Last year, it was the Aditya Sushant – Nipun Java team claiming a historic victory in the WSOP Tag Team Event and now it is the Adda52 Team Pro Nikita Luther – German pro Guiseppe Pantaleo team that has taken down the Event #55 – $1,000 Tag Team NLHE, claiming a massive $175,805 (INR 1.20 Crore) for their win.
The Event #55 – $1,000 Tag Team No-Limit Hold ‘em drew a strong field with 1,032 entries generating a whopping prize pool of $928,800, which was paid out to the top 155 teams.
Luther, who is the Chief Operating Officer (COO) of Poker Sports League (PSL), holds $111,522 in total live earnings. She made her WSOP debut in 2017 and managed 3 cashes with her best cash coming from the $3,000 NLHE where she finished in 71st place for $8,173. Her best performance in 2017 remained her 5th place finish in WPT500 Aria where she earned a hefty $65,000 in the prize.
At WSOP 2018, Luther got off to the mark in Event #34: $1,000 Double Stack NLH where she finished 525th for $2,038. After that, she finished 17th in Event #54: Big Blind Antes $3,000 NLH for $18,495.
Talking about Giuseppe Pantaleo, he has been a regular at WSOP and holds 25 cashes at the series with $342,090 in total earnings to his name. His best WSOP cash came from The Little One for One Drop – $1,000+111 NLHE in 2017 where he ran deep and finished 6th for a hefty $101,041.
Day 3 of the Event #55 – $1,000 Tag Team No-Limit Hold’em of WSOP 2018 began with 28 surviving teams and the Team Bon Koo-Bienvenido Caballero held the lead with 828,000 in chips. The team of Pantaleo & Luther moved into Day 3 with a decent stack of 260,000. After several hours of grinding, Luther-Pantaleo pair managed to reach the coveted final table, with the team of Kazuki Ikeuchi-Hiroki Iwata-Sho Mori building a commanding chip lead into the final table.
Both Nikita and Pantaleo played aggressively at the final table putting pressure on the other teams. There was no looking back for them after they eliminated the team of Alex Rocha-Megan Milburn-Joanne Milburn in fourth place and increased their chip stack to eventually take the lead in the three-way play. Pantaleo then called an all-in bet to eliminate Manig Loeser-Joelle Parenteau-Daniel Weinand team in third place to eventually move into heads-up with the chip lead.
Pantaleo kept applying the pressure in heads-up and extended the chip lead. Finally, the Pantaleo-Luther team won the title. It was history made by Luther as she won the second WSOP bracelet for India. Not to forget, she became the first Indian female player to win a WSOP bracelet. She also earned a career-best cash of $87,902 (INR 60.16 lac), as the team won $175,805 in the prize.
On the last hand, Pantaleo moved all-in with 2d-2h and Iwata called with Ad-9d. While Iwata flopped a pair of Aces, a 2 on the river completed a set of twos and the Pantaleo-Luther pair won it!
Final table results:
- Giuseppe Pantaleo-Nikita Luther – $175,805
- Kazuki Ikeuchi-Hiroki Iwata-Sho Mori – $108,608
- Manig Loeser-Joelle Parenteau-Daniel Weinand – $76,797
- Alex Rocha-Megan Milburn-Joanne Milburn – $55,016
- Gabriel Neto-Carlos Caputo – $39,936
- Adam Lamphere-Ao Chen-Yijie Zhang – $29,380
- Salah Levy-Frank Mariani-Cord Garcia – $21,910
- Bon Koo-Bienvenido Caballero – $16,565
Online Poker News (OPN) congratulates Nikita Luther for this historic performance at the WSOP 2018 and we hope Team India wins more gold bracelets and make India proud in the poker world.