Lonnie Hallett Takes Down The $1K Seniors Event After Winning A Crazy Hand 3-Handed

The WSOP Seniors event has had everyone talking over the past couple of days thanks to a couple of crazy hands. One of them took place on Day 4 which you can watch below, but arguably the craziest hand happened at the final table, with the eventual winner Lonnie Hallett the beneficiary. However, Lonnie wasn’t complaining, as he expertly navigated his stack to a first WSOP victory and over three-quarters of a million dollars in winnings.

Blind Betting 3-Handed

The crazy hand in question is more like something you’d see at your local $1/$2 game rather than a WSOP final table with hundreds of thousands of dollars on the line, but you have to take your hat off to the gumption shown by both players during this hand.

The hand starts off reasonably enough, with Hallett raising Q-4 from the button 3-handed. Heimiller decides to 3-bet his A-J from the small blind - again, another reasonable play. Baxter folds his 65o from the big blind, and things start to go off the rails slightly when Hallett decides to defend his Q-4. In his defence, he’s getting a good price, so we won’t drag him over the coals for this one.

However, things descend into madness when Heimiller decides to bet blind! He’s 3-handed for a WSOP bracelet, and he’s betting blind after 3-betting! No matter the strategic thinking, that takes a lot of guts. The flop couldn’t have been better either - Q-J-4; giving Heimiller middle pair and the nut flush draw, and Hallett top and bottom pair.

After deliberating for a few seconds, Hallett decides to raise his two pair - bumping it up from 5.5 million to 15 million. Heimiller then decides to rip his remaining stack; all 57bb of it, and Hallett snaps him off to set up a flip for a massive pile of chips. Lonnie had a slight advantage with 51% equity and managed to hold as the board ran out 3, 5.

A short heads-up match with Billy Baxter (who probably couldn’t believe he laddered up to 2nd after being short for most of the final table) later, and Lonnie Hallett bagged his first bracelet and over $760,000.

Winner’s Reaction

After sealing the win by hitting trip eights against Billy Baxter, Lonnie was in disbelief that he’d actually won the event! After celebrating with his rail he was walking around the table shaking his head saying “How did that just happen?” 

You could see how much it meant to the Canadian in his interview, “I just can’t believe it, such a huge field it's almost impossible to do, and somehow it happened. I’m grateful, can’t believe it, I’m so happy.” When asked about his competition at the table, Lonnie said, “I’ve played with Dan a few times before, and he’s always so tough,” “It was just incredible to play with Billy Baxter and to end up heads up with him, what more could you want.”

Lonnie’s rail brought a lot of atmosphere to the final table, cheering whenever he won a pot and celebrating with him after the winning hand. When asked about his rail, Lonnie said, “It’s good to have the rail here, keeps the energy up, keeps the focus up. They were fantastic, and we also had a big group watching back home and cheering on, so it was absolutely incredible.”

We’re sure they’ll be celebrating long into the night after such a big win.

Event #48 $1,000 Seniors No Limit Hold’em Championship Final Table Results

After such a success, will we see Lonnie in any more WSOP events this year? Does the high turnout of this year’s Seniors event mean we’ll see a record number of Main Event entries this year? Stay tuned for all the latest WSOP news and events.

Image Source: @WSOP Twitter