Savage cooler turns the tide in WPT Prime Lodge Championship

Shrikant Pillamarapu, WPT Prime Lodge winner 2026.

Posted on: October 13, 2026 03:34 PDT

If you’re a live tournament player, The Hendon Mob website is a great way to dig a little deeper on your opponents.

After you’ve checked out your seat draw you can look up the other names at your table and see who might be likely to cause you the biggest problems.

A crusher with a cool nickname and $11M+ in earnings? Be careful. An unknown with a single recorded result for under $400? Low-hanging fruit. Right?

Not always. And certainly not on Monday at the final table of the $1,100 WPT Prime Lodge Championship.

The guy with the awesome nickname and millions in winnings, David ‘The Dragon’ Pham, did make it halfway up the final table payout ladder with a run to 5th place and $43,500.

Full House of the Dragon: David Pham.

But that mystery man with a single $381 result, Shrikant Pillamarapu, provided a lesson in subverting expectations, taking down the whole thing for $138,127 — plus a seat in the $10K WPT World Championship later this year.

We’ll therefore be seeing him pull up a chair in the WPT’s end-of-season showdown in Las Vegas in December, but his days of being underestimated are likely behind him. Far from being the low-hanging fruit on Monday in Austin, Texas, Pillamarapu was the top banana.

Short stacks pull off the comeback

The Championship event drew a field of 1,074, creating a prizepool of $1,051,480. All 137 players who made Day 2 finished in the money.

By the time the final day, and the final table, rolled around Pillamarapu was looking the odd-on favorite to be first out. In last place with just 25bb in his stack, he had a mountain to climb if he was to overcome Pranay Reddy Patlolla (118bb), Vladyslav Shovkovyi (92bb), Preston Duron (68bb), Matthew McDowell (59bb), David Urban (50bb), Michael Jones (45bb) and Kenneth Quattrocchi (40bb).

The WPT Prime Lodge Championship final table.

REGINA CORTINA

And then, of course, there was ‘the dragon in the room’: 3-time WSOP bracelet winner David Pham, sitting on a workable stack of 45bb, $11M in winnings… and counting.

But reputations mean nothing to a deck of cards. By the time the field had thinned down to heads-up, it would be the two shortest of the day’s starting stacks still in with a shot.

Kenneth Quattrocchi held a decent lead when heads-up play began — some 27M to 16M — but it wouldn’t last. Pillamarapu pulled it back to near-even before a brutal cooler was delivered that swung the match hard in one direction.

Pillamarapu, left, and Quattrocchi heads-up for the title.

REGINA CORTINA

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Two-outer turns the tide

With blinds at 200K/400K Quattrocchi, with a slight lead of just a couple of big blinds, opened from the button to 1M with . Pillamarapu popped it to 2M with , Quattrocchi called and they saw a flop.

delivered Quattrocchi the nut-flush draw, and he was happy to call along when Pillamarapu c-bet 1.5M.

The on the turn was exactly what Quattrocchi was hoping for, and once again he called with his made nut-flush when Pillamarapu fired another 3M into the middle.

The on the river, however, was a killer.

Pillamarapu:
Quattrocchi:
Board:

With no paired board, the nut-flush was safe against everything barring a straight flush, but that’s just what Pillamarapu had. He moved all-in for 14.1M and Quattrocchi had little option but to call. The devastating bad beat left him with just 2bb.

To his immense credit he rallied, drawing back to within a 2:1 deficit but never again coming close to putting away his rival.

An ICM deal meant the original payouts of $162,840 (plus the $10K seat) for 1st and $102,000 for 2nd were flattened, with Pillamarapu receiving $138,127, plus the ticket and the trophy, and Quattrocchi $126,733.