The big story of the 2021 WSOP Event #59: $1,000 Tag Team was the father-daughter team that made it all the way to third. Amanda and David Botfeld were the fan favorites after Botfeld the younger tweeted a photo of herself learning poker from her father 15 years ago.
"This is my dad teaching me how to play poker with lime green chips," Botfeld wrote. "15 years later, we have made the final table together in the @wsop Tag Team Tournament. Love you dad, and couldn't have done it without you."
Amanda Botfeld is the author of A Girl's Guide to Poker -- an introductory guide to the game.
Team Botfeld ultimately took third, leaving Mike Ruter and Samy Dighlawi to take shared custody of the Tag Team bracelet.
It was no mean feat to steal the show in an event that saw teams made up of Phil Hellmuth and Jeff Gross, Maria Ho and Nate Silver, Erik Seidel and his protege Maria Konnikova, and Jeff Platt with Brent Hanks in costume as Daniel Negreanu and Phil Hellmuth.
Team Ruter to the top
641 teams entered the Tag Team event. Only one could prevail. After the powers that be had gouged out their cut, the prize pool came to $590,490. $113,366 of this was earmarked for first place.
The rules required that each team of two players must check in at their first table at the start of their tourney run. Each player on the team has to play at least one full round of blinds at some point or else face disqualification. Apart from that, each player can tag in or out whenever neither has an active hand.
To get to first, Team Ruter had to find a way through Tomer Wolf and David Landell, for whom the cards were running hot in heads-up play.
"[Wolf] just kept smashing every board," Dighlawi said his post-game interview. "Every single board he had a piece of it. Every c-bet I make, he calls, or floats, and hits the turn. For like literally an hour and a half straight."
The first time Team Ruter tried the tag team event in 2019, it didn't go terribly well.
"We lasted about two minutes," Dighlawi told reporters.
"It was an hour and two minutes," Ruter chipped in. This time, they got to split $113k, while Team Wolf took home $70,074 for second place.
2021 WSOP Event #59: $1,000 Tag Team complete final table results
| Position | Player Names | Payouts |
|---|---|---|
| 1st | Mike Ruter and Samy Dighlawi | $113,366 |
| 2nd | Tomer Wolf and David Landell | $70,074 |
| 3rd | Amanda Botfeld and David Botfeld | $49,512 |
| 4th | Michael Newman and Robert Ormont | $35,542 |
| 5th | Alfie Adam and Vidur Sethi | $25,928 |
| 6th | Benjamin Miner and Dmitriy Uskach | $19,226 |
| 7th | Holly Babbitt and Michael Babbitt | $14,494 |
| 8th | Zachary Erdwurm and Steven Jones | $11,114 |
| 9th | Scott Johnston and Bob Fisher | $8,670 |
| 10th | Mike Lutz and Matt Krebs | $6,882 |
Featured image source: Twitter by WSOP
