WSOP 2016: Lawrence Berg Wins $1,500 Dealers Choice

The $1,500 buy-in WSOP Dealers Choice 6-Handed event attracted a total of 389 players to create a prize pool worth $525,150. Three days of action later, and it was Lawrence Berg who would eventually triumph over the field to capture a coveted gold bracelet, as well as the event’s $125,466 first-place prize.
The tournament is truly a test of a player’s all round abilities as whoever is on the button can pick from 19 different poker variants, including H.O.R.S.E., badacey, badeucey and five card draw. Commenting after an impressive victory which pushes his live career earnings to $351,425, the 38-year-old pro said:
“I called badeucy and badugi quite a lot and also Big O. I didn’t really like limit hold’em or no-limit hold’em.”
The Dealers Choice 6-Handed event paid out a total of 59 places, and amongst the big name pros booking a cash was Richard Ashby in 58th ($2,244), Jeff Madsen in 44th ($2,381), Eli Elezra in 38th ($2,588), Sorel Mizzi in 34th ($2,912), and Chris “Jesus” Ferguson in 19th ($4,069).
Lawrence Berg subsequently entered the tournament’s last day in pole position, and eventually progressed all the way through to heads-up play where he defeated Chinese player Yueqi Zhu to claim the WSOP title during a round of Omaha Hi/Lo. Commenting on the strategy that helped secure him the victory, Berg explained:
“Your stacks are very important as to which games you should choose. If you’re very short, you don’t want to get anted away in Stud. So, it’s better to take a bigbet game where you can move all in which makes it hard for your opponents to call. That way, you can steal antes and build a stack, sometimes without ever seeing a showdown.”
Final Table Results:
1: Lawrence Berg, $125,466
2: Yueqi Zhu, $77,526
3: Andrew Brown, $50,250
4: Paul Volpe, $33,393
5: Joseph Couden, $22,765
6: John Templeton, $15,932