Thursday, October 27, 2016 7:55 PM Local Time
Matt Lambrecht Wins His First Ring, Series' Last
Young pro gets his career off to a hot start, has a big score in his new hometown
Hammond, Indiana (October 27, 2016) — Matt Lambrecht is the champion of Event #13 at Horseshoe Hammond, defeating a field of 183 players to earn his first gold ring. He also collected the top prize of $14,275 and 50 points toward the season-long race for seats in the Global Casino Championship.
Lambrecht is 23 years old, and he’s a new Chicago resident who is just a couple months into what he hopes will be a long career as a professional poker player. Fresh out of Finance school at Southern Methodist University, Lambrecht came to Chicago to pursue the game full-time, and so far, things are right on script. “My plan was to win a ring within this year, and, uh… so, that worked out,” he said, grabbing the Jostens box to inspect his prize.
Although it’s new as a full-time profession, Lambrecht has been playing online and live poker since he was 18 or so. Now that he has more time to dedicate to live events, the results are starting to come quickly. This win was his third cash of the series at Hammond, though the two previous were both worth less than $1,000 apiece. Lambrecht said he played a lot of single-table tournaments surrounding last summer’s WSOP in Las Vegas, and that experience was likely of some use at a volatile final table on Monday.
Because it’s a one-day event, stacks are relatively short throughout these turbos, but Lambrecht found the conditions perfectly suited to his style. “Sure, it’s shallow, but it was pretty playable,” he said. “Even though we’re like 10 big blinds deep, people are conservative. So I was able to min-raise, and call, and see a lot of flops.”
Lambrecht said he won a huge pot with kings full to build a big stack in the middle of the day, and he entered the final table second in chips behind Gary Vick. Lambrecht outlasted both Vick and fellow-Chicagoan Jimmy Salaymeh to claim the series’ last gold ring and the first of his young career. His three cashes at Hammond earned him a combined total of $15,953 in winnings and 57.5 points, finishing the series in third place on the Casino Champion leaderboard.