Ryan Laplante is one of the most outspoken poker professionals on Twitter today. He is always happy to share his honest opinion of things going on in and around the poker world, and Sunday was no exception.
Laplante took a screenshot of the tournament lobby for the World Series of Poker Online Event #25 $7,777 Lucky 7’s event. He tweeted the picture out with the caption, “without a doubt one of the worst payout structures I’ve ever seen.”
This tweet was posted at 7:45 p.m. PST. Laplante was airing his grievances about the tournament’s odd payout structure right in the middle of playing it. As the screenshot shows, 52 of the 113 unique entrants were still remaining.
Laplante’s complaint revolved around WSOP.com’s bizarre decision to pay the players who finished in spots 28-36 a prize of $7,797; just $20 more than the cost of entry into the tournament. This meant that a staggering 31.8% of unique entrants (36 of 113) were being paid. Even with the 38 tournament rebuys being accounted for and bringing the total to 151 buy-ins, the 36 spots paid still represented an extremely high 23.8% of players receiving payouts.
Responses on Laplante’s tweet were all in agreement that the structure was terrible. Comments ranged from humorous to disgusted. “Maybe the bubble pace of play will be faster for $20,” poker pro Kyle Kitagawa joked.
Ryan Laplante would earn far more than a $20 profit in the event
Had a smaller number of players been paid out, the minimum cash would have been far more significant than the ridiculous $20 profit it represented in this event. Fortunately for Ryan Laplante, he didn’t have to worry about the min-cash in this one as he was destined for a much deeper run.
The ‘Protential’ screen name worked its way up the chips leader board as Laplante grinded his way down to the final table. Laplante worked his way up from sixth in chips with seven players remaining to first in chips with six remaining. When the action was down to three-handed play, Laplante got all of the chips in preflop holding a pair of kings against David Peters’ suited jack-nine:
Laplante flopped a set of kings in the pivotal hand but was unable to hold the lead as Peters picked up a straight with running cards on the turn and river. The Minnesota native lost the remainder of his stack shortly afterwards to finish the event in third place for a cash prize of $120,638.
After producing a remarkable string of cashes in the WSOP Online Series in 2020 but failing to advance to any final tables in that series, Laplante has made two WSOP final tables in the 2021 series. Seven appears to be his lucky number this summer as Laplante finished in fifth place for $27,350 in the Lucky 7’s $777 buy-in event earlier this month. Laplante now has 10 WSOP final table appearances to his name to go along with his WSOP bracelet win in 2016.
Securing a six-figure score helped take the edge off of Laplante’s payout structure frustrations. “I spoke a little too soon,” Laplante joked after his elimination with a retweet of his original complaint.
Featured Image Source: Flickr - World Poker Tour
