Two events down and two runner-up finishes for Australia in the first WSOP APAC at Crown Melbourne after Jim Collopy’s victory in the $1650 Pot Limit Omaha event.
There was a degree to atonement in Collopy’s win after he finished second to Gus Hansen in the 2011 WSOP Europe Heads-Up event.
But it was mostly one-way traffic in this event. Collopy (pictured above with thanks to wsop.com) entered the final table as the chip leader and went wire-to-wire in an impressive display.
Along the way, he encountered some stiff competition including two of the hottest players in tournament poker, Dan Shak and Marvin Rettenmaier, along with five Aussie challengers. He collected $69,662 for his win over highly respected Brisbane player Minh Nguyen.
The local contingent also featured veteran local player Tino Lechich, WA’s Paul Sharbanee, Scott Reid from Brisbane and former ANZPT Melbourne champion Martin Kozlov.
While this may have just been a tournament, the glory of the gold WSOP bracelet is not lost on Collopy, who described the feeling of winning his first one as “awesome”.
The win marks the second bracelet for the US in the inaugural WSOP APAC after Collopy joined fellow American and good friend Bryan Piccioli on the list of winners. Collopy even wore the same Washington Bullets hat his friend wore when winning his bracelet the day prior.
While he grew up in DC, Collopy is now a bit of a world traveller who is currently living in Australia and balancing his time between poker and culinary school.
The $1650 Pot Limit Omaha event drew 172 runners, generating a prize pool of $278,000. The top 18 players finished in the money, including Caesars Cup captain Joe Hachem (17th) and his Team Asia Pacific teammate Jeff Lisandro (14th).
The final table included no former bracelet winners, but did include several past WSOP final table participants, including ninth-place finisher Marvin Rettenmaier and Dan Shak.
WSOP APAC event 2: $1650 Pot Limit Omaha results (172 players; 18 players paid; total prizepool $258,000 – Australian except where indicated)
1 Jim Collopy (USA) $69,662
2 Minh Nguyen $43,050
3 Tino Lechich $30,988
4 Scott Reid $22,712
5 Dan Shak (USA) $16,940
6 Paul Sharbanee $12,856
7 Mike Leah (USA) $9923
8 Martin Kozlov $7784
9 Marvin Rettenmaier (Germany) $6207
10 Tony Kambouroglou $5028
11 Joshua Budin $5028
12 Andrew Gaw (Philippines) $5028
13 Dean Yuen $4138
14 Jeff Lisandro $4138
15 Phillip Willcocks (NZ) $4138
16 Jacob Elmore-Dahl (USA) $3460
17 Joe Hachem $3460
18 John Dalessandri $3460
• Additional reporting with thanks to wsop.com
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