Ran Ilani and Ankit Ahuja Claim Six-Figure Victories in Venetian DSPS

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Jul 01, 2019 4 min read

As the Las Vegas summer tournament action charges on, more and more six-figure and seven-figure champions are crowned by the day. One of the biggest series in town away from the WSOP is the Venetian's signature DeepStack Championship Poker Series, where yet more career-defining victories were claimed last week.

DeepStack Championship Event #72 $3,500 NLH $2 Million Guaranteed

According to CardPlayer, Israel's Ran Ilani had just $316,465 in career earnings over 28 live cashes before besting a field of 650 in Venetian's $3,500 DSPS event for $419,731. Ilani's previous best cash of $88,000 also came at the Venetian, right about the same time last year when he took second in a DeepStack Poker Series $1,100 SuperStack event.

The win was a breakthrough one for Ilani, who has been a staple on the tournament scene since 2015, having notched 19 WSOP cashes during that time for a total just under $160k in winnings. Despite some deep runs there, he has yet to reach a WSOP final table. It has been a different story for Ilani at the Venetian, where he has received his biggest bankroll boosts.

DSPS Event #72 $3,500 $2M GTD Final Table Results

According to updates provided on the Venetian tournament blog, the event reached its hefty $2 million guarantee as the four-day affair drew 650 entries to bring the total prize pool to $2,047,500. Just 72 of those made it into the money places, the lowest payout being $6,757.

Ilani had his work cut out for him at the final table with the likes of Dylan Linde, Mohsin Charania, Elio Fox, Danny Tang, and Diogo Veiga also making the final ten. The 2018 Portuguese bracelet winner Veiga the first to fall in tenth place losing a flip and he was followed to the payouts by Tang, whose pocket aces couldn't hold versus Linde's pocket jacks.

Fox and Charania were the next two out, Fox exiting at the hands of Henri Buehler who had picked up aces in the big blind, and Charania losing a flip to Ilani. Dimitrios Farmakoulis made his exit in sixth when his ace-three suited couldn't catch up to Linde's pocket queens, and Steven Sarmiento was the next player eliminated after bleeding down during a long five-handed battle.

Ilani dominated the rest of the final table, dispatching one player after another, starting with Linde who ran king-ten suited into the ace-king of two different players and couldn't beat the turned ace. Canada's Troy Quenneville then ran his ace-jack suited into Ilani's pocket queens and failed to catch up.

That set up heads up between Ilani and another up-and-comer tournament pro in Buehler. In the final hand of the tournament, Buehler got his stack in with trip nines on a board reading 2?8?9?9? against Ilani's 10?7?. The J? river gave Ilani the straight that he was looking for though and with it, the win.

DeepStack Championship Event #75 $1,100 NLH MonsterStack

Over the weekend, another big event played out in the Venetian series, this one costing $1,100 to enter and drawing 2,233 entries. The $2,166,010 prize pool that was created in Event #75 $1,100 NLH MonsterStack smashed the $1 million posted guarantee on the event, and 225 players got a piece of the pie with the minimum payout being $3,466.

A total of 340 players returned on Day 2 Sunday, making for a long day of poker. They reached the final table after 14 hours, according to the Venetian poker blog, and the final table played relatively quickly.

The eventual winner, Ankit Ahuja of India heated up once play was down to ten, responsible for sending both Josh Boulton and Hugo Pingray to the rail in tenth and eighth respectively. He then got a double through Phachara Wongwichit to grasp firmly onto the chip lead that he would not relinquish.

After Wongwichit busted in sixth place, Ahuja proceeded to eliminate the next three players, including U.S. pros Ubaid Habib and James Romero, and took a 3-to-1 chip advantage into heads up with Jesse Cohen. The latter fought back to around even though and the two decided to call it a day and do an even chop for $266,824 each, with Ahuja claiming the victory.

Ahuja more than doubled his career live earnings with the score, previously having $239k to his credit, while Cohen adds to his more than $1.5 million in career earnings to bring him closer to the $2 million mark.

DSPS Event #75 $1,100 NLH MonsterStack Final Table Results

_{*Denotes a heads-up deal}

_{Images and tournament information courtesy of Venetian poker blog.}

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