The record holder for youngest World Poker Tour champion can now add “youngest two-time winner” to his resume.
Randal Flowers bested a field of 335 players in the $10,000 WPT Festa al Lago Main Event at the Bellagio in Las Vegas, taking the top prize of $831,500. The 22-year-old online pro entered Wednesday’s final table with the chip lead and was able to survive to heads-up play with Michael “benvo123 “ Benvenuti for his second WPT title in as many years.
Flowers earned his first win in Barcelona, where as a 20-year-old he took down last season’s $5,000 WPT Spanish Championship for $386,170. Flowers was the only non-European at the final table in Spain, while in Las Vegas he battled a collection of tournament veterans and online pros from the US.
Flowers, who has hit up PokerStars for more than $1.3 million using the screen name “RandALLin”, outlasted online players Benvenuti and Jason “jakoon1985“ Koon, both of whom have career earnings into seven-figures between PokerStars and Full Tilt. Flowers also had to hurdle Noah “fouruhaters “ Schwartz and 2010 Legends of Poker champ Andy Frankenberger, who were each making their second WPT final table appearance.
It took them 12 hours to play down to a final table of six on Tuesday, and Flowers stated in a WPT post-tournament interview that he “knew the structure was going to be really fast,” and he wasn’t affected by the massive blinds due to his online experience. “I’m very used to playing short stacked in tournaments… It was more of my comfort zone out there, to be honest.”
Final results:
1st Randal Flowers $831,500
2nd Michael Benvenuti $564,200
3rd Noah Schwartz $344,968
4th Jason Koon $225,680
5th Andrew Frankenberger $161,200
6th Skip Wilson $112,840
