Canadian Player Mark Radoja Wins WSOP $10k Heads-up NL Event
Professional poker player Mark Radoja won yet another World Series of Poker (WSOP) bracelet when he defeated opponent Don Nguyen at the final table of the WSOP $10k Heads Up NL event. Radoja won a grand first place prize of $330,000 and the second WSOP gold bracelet of his career. He had won his first bracelet in the WSOP 2011 $5k Shootout event.
Radoja had to defeat a number of prominent poker pros such as Johannes Meyer, Ankush Mandavia, Ari Goott, Alexander Venovski, Phil Hellmuth, who had won the WSOP bracelet 13 times, and Justin Bonomo before defeating Nguyen. As the runner-up of the event, Nguyen won the second place prize of $204,000.
Radoja, a 27-year-old poker pro from Canada, began playing online under the moniker “xqsays.” He usually played high-stakes heads up single table tournaments and a few multi-table tournaments. Speaking about his experience playing Sit ‘N’ Gos, he said: “It’s absolutely tremendous for my advantage in this field. When they introduced that, it gave us Sit N Go players a huge advantage because we can now play a bit shallower poker. I never try and pretend to be one of the best deep stacked poker players, but my game is pretty good from about five big blinds to 35 – 50 big blinds. At that stake, I feel about as comfortable as I could be.”
Radoja, who won his first WSOP bracelet playing a shootout tournament in 2011, voiced his opinion that it is a perfect tournament format as it requires a high level of skill. Stating that shootouts are tough, he said that even good poker players avoid shootout tournaments, which is why this particular tournament had a field of just 162 players. He said that he feels honored to be a top shootout player because this format requires a very good combination of luck as well as skill.
A native of Guelph in Ontario, Radoja won all the first seven matches before emerging as the finalist and ultimately playing heads up against Nguyen. He beat Phil Hellmuth in the eighth round and Justin Bonomo at the semi finals. Referring to Hellmuth, he said: “You really got to play well against that guy. He’s the best in the world.” However, he feels that some of his previous opponents were tougher.
Nguyen began as the chip leader, but despite his chip disadvantage, Radoja slowly made his way back into a lead position. Referring to his comeback, he said: “I just had more and more hope and adrenaline. To me, this is a big deal for me. I care about winning. I care about the money, but I’m a competitive guy and second is the worst feeling ever. It’s nice the next day, but it’s just a dagger.”
The pro has become the fifth Canadian poker player to win a WSOP bracelet this season. He expressed his opinion that Canadians have been successful because they are really good at playing poker. The players who finished third and fourth were Justin Bonomo and Ben Sulsky, who won $110,485 each.
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