Upeshka De Silva was one of the remaining nine players going into the World Series Poker final table. De Silva has been disqualified ahead of the kickoff for this main event. This is after returning a positive test for COVID-19 on Monday. He is a poker pro and was in position eight going into the final table. He confirmed the positive test on Monday morning through a Twitter post. This is after he had had a negative result the previous day.
World Series of Poker(WSOP) has always been known to cause headlines, including annulling an event that people knew as the main event early in December. This was due to covid-19. Upeshka De Silva’s disqualification will cause another huge stir because of his pro status in poker tournaments. The diagnosis may have now brought to an end his impressive triumph in the event.
De Silva was competing with a group of 705 players, and he dominated in the main event. He was among the several players who made progress to the final stages of the tournament this year. The annual event usually has a huge $10,000 buy-in. With the event taking place yesterday, De Silva was nowhere to be seen. Out of the nine players who had progressed to the final table, only eight were present at the distinguished table.
Players who had initially advanced to the final table
The following are the nine players who had initially qualified for WSOP final table and the Chips they had;
- Joseph Hebert aka kolebear with13,052,534 chips
- Shawn Stroke aka shades927 with 5,252,000 chips
- Ryan Hagerty aka Hagzzz021 with 5,071,572 chips
- Ye Yuan aka YUAN365 with 4,829,572 chips
- Michael Cannon aka geNet1x with 4,408,847 chips
- Gershon Distenfeld aka jets613 with 3,475,481 chips
- Ron Jenkins aka Samthedog76 with 2,476,746 chips
- Upeshka De Silva aka gomezhamburg with 2,151,969 chips
- Harrison Dobin aka Harrisond33 with 1,581 392 chips
All these players were required to undergo a COVID-19 test before the live event at the Rio All-Suite Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas. If any of them returned a positive test, then they would go on and miss the test.
On Sunday, rumors were being aired by podcaster Joey Ingram who was alleging that De Silva had to be disqualified from the event because of a positive PCR Test. An official statement was also released with information on COVID precautions that were implemented after a player had tested positive. However, De Silva’s name wasn’t mentioned in the statement.
Fortunately, De Silva won’t be leaving the main event empty-handed now that Caesars will pay him a sum of $98 813 after finishing in 9th place. This will be a worthy consolation prize from the $1,553 and 256 that the winner will get. Furthermore, the poker player’s condition doesn’t seem serious, which is a great relief.
2020 has been full of surprises, but everyone will be hoping that things will return to normal next year. What is more encouraging is how substantial online poker traffic has been this year.
