WPT500 Champion: Bradley Smith

The WPT500, the first event of the WPT Montreal, brought out a huge field of players. Thanks to five starting flights on partypoker and eight live starting flights at Playground, this edition of the WPT500 collected a total of 2,135 entries. From those entries, 303 players survived their respective starting flights to reach Day 2 and cashed this event. Day 2 play brought the field down to the final table. The nine finalists returned this afternoon to play for hundreds of thousands in cash prizes and a prestigious WPT event championship.

When play began at the final table, Stephane Nadot controlled the largest stack in play, however, he went through some major swings during the early stages of play, eventually exiting in seventh place. Following Nadot’s elimination, the players agreed to an ICM chop of the remaining prize pool, leaving $40,000 for the eventual champion. The bustouts proceeded quickly from that point until heads-up play between Mathyeu Provost and Bradley Smith.

Smith and Provost had drastically different paths through this epic event. Provost played the first live starting flight and bagged the Day 1 chip lead with a massive stack of 716,000 in chips. Smith started his WPT500 journey on partypoker, playing the first online flight and squeaking in to Day 2 with only 38,000 in chips, putting him ahead of just four other Day 2 qualifiers. But as fate would have it, these two would square off and play for all the chips at the end of Day 3.

When heads-up play began, Provost controlled the lion’s share of the chips, as he had eliminated most of the other players at the final table to build up a big chip lead. But Smith’s perseverance is second to none. Just as he found a way to survive Day 2, he found a way to battle back against Provost. Even after losing a big pot on the first hand of heads-up play, Smith kept his cool and stuck to his game. Although Provost applied all the pressure he could, Smith would not fade away. Eventually, the cards turned in Smith’s favour, and he started winning pot after pot. With the stacks nearly even, the decisive played out on a flop. Provost held , but he was up against Smith’s . The runout helped neither player, and Smith’s two-pair hand held up at showdown. Following that hand, Provost was down to only a handful of chips that went in preflop on the next hand, which also went Smith’s way. And just like that, Bradley Smith went from barely qualifying for Day 2 to becoming the WPT500 champion! Congratulations!