New Zealand’s Jack Lamberg has broken through for his first major poker title and almost $25,000 in prize money after taking out the WPT Australia $660 Big Bounty.
In only his third live tournament ever, the 21-year-old from Christchurch topped a stellar field of 403 entries and defeated Jerry Wang heads-up for his first Tier One trophy after a two-hour heads-up battle at the final table that also featured Toby Giles, Shem Goltz, Ali Ghezelbash and WPT Prime Gold Coast Main Event Champion, Yang Lei.
Speaking with PokerMedia Australia in the moments after his win, Lamberg said that he had always been fascinated by the game of poker as a teenager.
“I’ve always had a knack for odds and statistics and stuff like that,” Lamberg said, “and yeah … the fact that you can make money off it too is really nice.”
Lamberg admitted that finding big action back home had proven challenging, but when he learned that the WPT Australia series was on, he immediately put it on his radar.
As to whether or not he’d like to see the WPT return to the Land of the Long White Cloud, Lamberg added: “For sure, I’d love to see something like that come back … I wasn’t old enough to play the first one [back in 2019]!”
WPT AUSTRALIA $660 BIG BOUNTY ($660 buy-in, 403 entries, 46 players paid)*
| Place | Name | Country | Amount |
| 1st | Jack Lamberg | New Zealand | $24,841 |
| 2nd | Jerry Wang | Australia | $17,410 |
| 3rd | Toby Giles | Australia | $11,195 |
| 4th | Yang Lei | Australia | $7,447 |
| 5th | Ari Yoshinari | Japan | $5,731 |
| 6th | Kentaro Moriyama | Japan | $4,751 |
| 7th | Michael Tran | Australia | $3,990 |
| 8th | Shem Goltz | Israel | $3,240 |
| 9th | Ali Ghezelbash | Australia | $2,491 |
The PMA Live Reporting Team will be return tomorrow (Wednesday) from 2:30pm AEST for Day 1 of the $20,000 WPT 20th Anniversary Super High Roller, before moving into social media coverage of the $5,400 WPT Australia Main Event on Thursday.
For more information, including full results from the WPT Australia series, visit worldpokertour.com and starpoker.com.au.
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