Jordan “iMsoLuckyO” Morgan Wins WSOP $1,500 NL (Event #44)
June 25, 2014 12:57 pmAfter three days of action, including a marathon 8 hour-long heads-up battle against Evan McNiff, Oklahoma pro Jordan Morgan has finally taken down the WSOP $1,500 No Limit Hold’em (Event #44) to capture the top prize of $478,102, as well as career first gold bracelet.
The 30-year-old professional poker player used to earn a handsome living pre-Black Friday having notched up $1,196,539 online playing under the screen name “iMsoLuckyO.” Since the US clampdown on online poker, however, Morgan’s poker career has become more of a hobby, and as he explains:
“I love playing poker for a living, playing mostly at home in my office was amazing, and when that was gone my love of the game kind of dwindled – that’s kind of why I haven’t played as much, but this is awesome – this would make anybody love poker again. I’ve been back and forth to Mexico to play online, but I don’t love traveling all that much, so there’s only so much I’ll do in a year, its been part-time for me.”
Event #44 attracted a good sized field of 1,914 players to create a prize pool worth $2,583,900. Amongst the big name pros then cashing in at the tournament was Men Nguyen in 101st ($3,514), Max Silver in 76th ($5,012), Barry Greenstein in 58th ($6,718), Yevgeniy Timoshenko in 34th ($11,420), and Roberto Romanello in 13th ($21,575).
By the time the final table of nine had been reached, Evan McNiff (2.84m) and Jordan Morgan (1.89m) were way ahead as the chip leaders with Jason Johnson a distant third on a 916k stack. Morgan was subsequently able to take a 6.86m to 1.75m chip advantage over McNiff into heads-up, but there was to be no swift resolution to the match. In fact, heads-up play was stopped at 2:00 AM after around six hours of battle, and the following day it would take Morgan a further two hours before he was able to dispatch his last opponent holding 6-6 to McNiff’s A-K.
Jordan Morgan’s victory also came on the same day as his wedding anniversary, with the former Full Tilt Poker Red Pro, commenting: “This is my first tournament in a while. Today is my wedding anniversary, my ninth anniversary. I planned on being out here for only half the series – I’m pretty excited to fly home for my anniversary, I’m going to surprise her, she’s not expecting me.”
Final Table Results:
1 Jordan Morgan $478,102
2 Evan McNiff $295,727
3 Jason Johnson $204,464
4 Ray Foley $147,463
5 Bryan Dillon $107,800
6 Robert Chorlian $79,842
7 Joseph Iarussi $59,920
8 Ryan Spittles $45,554
9 Michael Anselm $35,063