Shrikant Pillamarapu Wins the WPT® Prime Lodge Championship

Shrikant Pillamarapu sat down at the WPT® Prime Lodge Championship final table with the shortest stack. He left the champion.

He emerges victor of the $1,100 event at The Lodge Card Club in Round Rock, Texas for $148,527. He also gets a $10,400 seat at the WPT® World Championship in Las Vegas in December. And, he did it on a final day packed with the kind of hands that will be shared for weeks.

Here's the champion, the full payouts, and the three moments that made this final table.

Pillamarapu topped a field of roughly 1,084 entries in the $1,100 buy-in Main Event. It built a prize pool of about $1,051,480 and cleared its $1,000,000 guarantee. He started the nine-handed final table with around 25 big blinds. The last in chips. He only climbed from there.

His $148,527 came via a heads-up deal. With play down to two, Pillamarapu and Kenneth Quattrocchi agreed an ICM chop that locked up $148,527 and $126,733 respectively. Afterwards they played on for the title, the trophy, and the Vegas seat.

Pillamarapu won that, so the top line is his.

A straight flush. The hand of the tournament came heads-up.

The board ran out with four clubs, giving Quattrocchi the nut flush, ace-high, and he faced a huge river bet. Pillamarapu, holding the jack of clubs, had completed a straight flush on that same river. Pillamarapu moved all in, and Quattrocchi went deep into the tank and folded the nut flush.

It's a laydown rarely seen in poker, and exactly the right one, because it got beat. It's the kind of fold that defines a player's reputation.

The chop that got away. Three-handed, with the shortest stack, David Urban was offered an ICM deal by the floor and chose to play on. It didn't pay off. Urban busted in third for $75,000, which came in under what the chop he'd declined would have been worth. An example of shorter stacks usually wanting the ICM deal.

Aces folded on the clock. Deeper in the event a player ran out of time on the Action Clock and had to fold pocket aces before the flop. The strongest hand in poker, surrendered not to a read but to the shot clock. (Reported in WPT®'s coverage)

Pillamarapu's win is nothing short of impressive. He came in last in chips, spun his short stack up through the final table, took the lead heads-up after the deal, and closed it out by winning the final race.

Short-stack-to-champion runs are the stuff of legend. This was one of them.

The win comes with more than the cash. Pillamarapu's $10,400 ticket sends him to the WPT® World Championship at Wynn Las Vegas, December 13–20. It's the season-ending flagship and one of the richest tournaments on the calendar.

A fitting next stop for a player who turned the shortest stack at the table into a title.