Hastings wins $10k Heads-Up

Brian Hastings became the latest big name pro to get the WSOP monkey off his back after putting in an unstoppable showing in the revamped $10k Heads-Up for $371,498.

Hastings, who shot to fame back in 2009 after pwning Viktor ‘Isildur1’ Blom for $4.2m on Full Tilt’s nosebleed tables, came through a stacked 152-runner field for his first WSOP title.

After a bye in the first round, the 23-year-old saw off fellow youngster Jason Mo in the final match up, after already crushing Jim Rumptz, Emil Patel, Tommy Vedes, Amritraj Singh, Jeffrey Gross and Tommy Chen en route to the finals.

The $10k Heads-Up saw a drop in buy-in from Jake Cody’s $25k victory at last year’s WSOP, and Hastings didn’t even need to use his available rebuys to see off Mo. After taking an early lead, the CardRunners coach finished the job in 90 minutes, but he was quick to compliment Mo afterwards.

‘I just got off to a quick start. I had a hand where I overbet K-4 on a king-high board on the river and got paid off by second pair. Made a real big bet, like 225K into 160K or something like that. He rebought right away after that,’ said Hastings.

‘From there it was a little bit of back and forth, but I still had my rebuy chips and we just played a little bit of like 20 or 40 big blind poker for a while and I got lucky in some spots.’

‘I mean, my biggest days online are a bit bigger than this, but this is still no joke. It’s one of the bigger winning days I’ve had in my life. It feels great. I think the bracelet means more than the money to me honestly.’

Here’s how the $10k Heads-Up finished:

1. Brian Hastings  $371,498
2. Jason Mo  $229,722
3. Brock Parker  $130,606
4. Tommy Chen  $130,606
5. Chris Moore  $56,380
6. Jeffrey Gross  $56,380
7. Andrew Robl $56,380
8. Michael Drummond  $56,380