Ian "potamophobia" Matakis Wins First Circuit Ring in PLO Championship for $87,386
Ian "potamophobia" Matakis battled his way through 669 entries to win his first World Series of Poker Circuit Ring in Event #12: $800 Pot Limit Omaha Championship. The guarantee for this event was set at $250,000, but they more than doubled that with the 335 unique entries and 334 rebuys putting $508,440 into the prize pool.
While this is Matakis' first win, he's no stranger to online poker glory. He has more than $1 million in online cashes, with almost $900,000 of that from the GGPoker network. This score looks to be his second-biggest online score after a $330,467 2nd place finish in High Rollers Super MILLION$ $10K, $20M GTD [2-day event] in June of 2020.
Matakis has also racked up almost $500,000 in wins on the live circuit, with more than $90,000 in wins from WSOP events over 11 cashes live and online. His biggest live cash was just slightly bigger than today's win at $100,417 for 2nd place in $600 No Limit Hold'em - EpicStack (Event #67) at the DeepStack Championship Poker Series, Las Vegas in 2019.
Top Nine Payouts
| Place | Player | Country | Prize |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Ian "potamophobia" Matakis | United States | $87,386 |
| 2 | Majki365 | Slovakia | $63,182 |
| 3 | Ludovic "Gr4vyB04t" Geilich | United Kingdom | $45,682 |
| 4 | Pwndidi | Austria | $33,029 |
| 5 | Natashenka | Russia | $23,880 |
| 6 | Tim "BeardOilGuy" Rutherford | Canada | $17,266 |
| 7 | Daniakak! | Slovenia | $12,484 |
| 8 | yirtilco | Turkey | $6,182 |
| 9 | Gaurav "Haversham" Sood | India | $3,974 |
The Day's Action
Action on Event #12: $800 Pot Limit Omaha Championship got underway at 2 p.m. eastern time, and it didn't take long to break the $250,000 guarantee. By the time late registration ended three hours into the game, they'd more than doubled the guarantee with $508,440 in the prize pool.
There were 335 unique entries in the event, and 334 rebuys to make that prize pool, but only 171 stacks were still in play when registration closed. It took about an hour to make it into the money, and among the players who came close but fell short was GGPoker OmahaSquad member Sasha "Poker Sasha" Liu. She had a stack that yo-yoed throughout the pre-money play, going from short stack to top five and back to short stack again several times. In the end, she busted just short of the money.
Bracelet winner Nick Maimone played a big stack into the money, and looked like he might make a deep run, but ultimately fell in 46th place for $2,281. Robert Le Roux made it a little farther, ending his day in 19th for $4,320.
When they made it to the final table, Matakis was actually second in chips. He was joined by Ludovic "Gr4vyB04t" Geilich on a shorter stack, as well as chip leader "Pwndidi".
"Daniakak!" and Tim "BeardOilGuy" Rutherford quickly left the scene, and short stack to start the final table, "Natashenka" wasn't far behind them. They played four-handed for around an hour before the chip leader to start the final table, "Pwndidi", ran queens into the two pair of Matakis to end their run in 4th.
They battled three-handed for a few more minutes before Geilich lost to the set of deuces for "Majki365" to set up heads-up play. They started heads-up nearly even in chips, but Matakis quickly took the lead, ending it a few hands in when he rivered Broadway to take it down.