Gavin Griffin(credit: Wikipedia)
Gavin Griffin became the youngest person to date to win a WSOP bracelet when he took down the $3,000 Pot Limit Hold’em championship in 2004. In 2007, he won more than $2.4 million at the European Poker Tour’s Grand Finale in Monte Carlo. Now, he’s on top of the poker world with his first World Poker Tour title. Griffin just proved victorious at the WPT’s Borgata Winter Poker Open. This puts the 26 year old pro in elite company. He’s the only person to win poker’s triple crown – WSOP, WPT and EPT titles.
Griffin defeated 506 other players in the $10,000 WPT No-Limit Hold’em Main Event at the New Jersey casino including professionals such as John Juanda, Vanessa Rousso, Jared “WacoKidd” Hamby and Men “The Master” Nguyen. The final table alone included two of the toughest players in the game today – Lee Watkinson and David Tran.
Watkinson, who plays online at Full Tilt Poker, won the Pot Limit Omaha tournament at the 2008 Aussie Millions less than a month ago. Tran, a cash game specialist, has earned more than $1.7 million in tournaments during his career including recent cashes at the World Poker Open and the LA Poker Classic.
Tran was the chip leader as the final action got underway with more than 5.2 million chips. However, Griffin was breathing down his neck with 5.1 million. Ervin Prifti, a Pennsylvanian, was on the short stack and hit the rails in sixth position. Tran claimed the rest of his chips to move a bit more ahead of the pack.
Lee Watkinson bowed out on the thirteenth hand. His pocket sevens came close to trumping Noah Schwartz’s pocket eights, but the river sealed his fate. The pro would have to content himself with $282,779 and fifth place. Schwartz, a youngster from Florida who got his start online – he’s best known as fouruhaters on PokerStars, hit the rails next. His departure came at the hands of Tran, who was starting to really pull away from the rest of the pack.
Griffin doubled through Thomas Hare, crippling the local player. On the very next hand, Hare, who likes to see a lot of flops, put his few remaining chips in the middle, and saw that he was up against it. His K,3 proved to be no match for Griffin’s dominating K,Q. Hare took more than $380,000, his biggest cash to date by far, home for the third place finish.
As heads-up play got underway, Griffin, despite his elimination of Hare, was still a bit of an underdog. He held just 6.5 million chips to Tran’s 8,695,000. However, in just three hands Griffin, who often sports pink-tinged hair in support of breast cancer, a disease which his galpal, Kristin, has survived, turned things around. He brought us chip stack up to an impressive 13 million, nearly crippling the Vietnamese-born player.
Tran, who counts David “The Dragon” Pham amongst his pals, doubled through the youngster several times, proving that he would not be pushed around. On the very last hand, Tran went all-in with a Ks,8s. Griffin called and flipped over a Qs,Jc. The board came down as Ac,9d,8s,Qd,10d to take the lead in the pot and the WPT title.
Here are the results:
1) Gavin Griffin - $1,401,109
2) David Tran - $737,685
3) Thomas Hare - $381,137
4) Noah Schwartz - $331,958
5) Lee Watkinson - $282,779
6) Ervin Prifti - $233,600