2024 PGT PLO: Samuli Sipila becomes series' first double winner

Finland's Samuli Sipila has become the first double winner of the 2024 PokerGO Tour PLO Series by outlasting all challengers in Event #7, $15,100 Pot-Limit Omaha Progressive Bounty in dominant fashion on Wednesday. Just three days after capturing his first PGT title, Sipila triumphed again over many of the best PLO players in the world.

As he did when he took down Event #4, $10,100 PLO on Sunday, Sipila again set a new personal best for a live-tournament score, though official online databases won't record it that way. He earned a combined $398,840 in the event, though only $159,340 came from the actual first-place payout. The remaining $239,000 he received from accumulated bounties, including from all four of his Day 2 finale opponents.

In roughly two hours of action, Sipila cleared the felt of his remaining foes. Jim Collopy was the last player to fall, while Nick Schulman finished third. Along with Eelis Parssinen's victory in Event #2, Finnish players have now won three of the PLO series' seven completed events.

Sipila started Day 2 with commanding lead

Day 2 was all but a wire-to-wire tale for Helsinki's Sipila, who like many other participants in the series, specializes in PLO and other Omaha variants. Sipila began Wednesday's action with nearly half of all the chips in play after bouncing Cliff Josephy (seventh) and Daniel Negreanu (sixth) to close out Tuesday's action. Negreanu held the lead through the first part of Day 1 but faltered late to just miss out on the five-player, live-streamed finale.

As it turned out, no one was able to stem Sipila's rush, though Collopy came close. Collopy began as the short stack and moved north with double-throughs against Sean Winter and Christopher Frank, but in both cases, Sipila moved in to bust Winter and Frank to pick up bounties on the cheap. Sipila picked off the remaining short stack, Schulman's, soon after.

Despite Collopy's surge, he still trailed Sipila by a 2:1 margin when heads-up play began but briefly took the lead before Sipila regained control. In the next-to-last hand, Sipila made quads to take most of Collopy's chips. One hand later, Sipila had only a pair of tens when the board was complete, but that still edged Collopy's pocket eights, which never improved in a significant way.

The win gave Sipila a huge lead in the ongoing PGT PLO leaderboard race. He began the day officially just three points behind Dylan Weisman, though he was guaranteed to move ahead by some margin after making the Event #7 live-streamed finale. Sipila ended up nearly doubling his previous 274-point tally by claiming another 270 points with the win. His current 544-point total is almost double Weisman's 277, and more than twice as much as any other player entering the final three events.

Event #7: $15,100 Pot-Limit Omaha Progressive Bounty drew 74 entrants and generated a $1,100,000 prize pool. The top 11 finishers made it into the money.

Event #7: $15,100 Pot-Limit Omaha Progressive Bounty Final Table Payouts 

Data / featured image courtesy PokerGO