Joe Tehan Wins NAPT LA Main Event 2025
With poker tournaments being a mix of solid strategy and fortunate luck, Joe Tehan has this week shown that a great mixture of them both can lead to poker greatness as he dominated the final table at the Pokerstars sponsored North American Poker Tour Los Angeles Main Event.
The final table which took place on Wednesday and saw Tehan seeming ease through his opponents has he completed a clean sweep of the final table, eliminating all seven of his opponents while on his charge to the winners title.
A look at how the final table action took place saw Jake Toole being the first player to run into Tehan after only an hour of play. Toole looked into his hole cards and was obviously willing to risk his tournament life on the pocket jacks that were looking back at him and so he pushed all of his chips into the centre of the table. The best was not enough to shake off Tehan, the player calling with his Ace/Queen.
The flop began an impressive run for Tehan, pairing the players ace which proved to be enough to eliminate Toole in 8th place, taking home $60,000.
An hour and a half passed with the table all looking to trade major blows to each others stacks but has the 90th minute fell, Team PokerStars member Jason Mercier ran his Ace/King into the pocket tens of Tehan, which once again the poker community cards favoured Tehan, seeing Mercier sent to the rails and crashing out of the tournament with $84,857 for his 7th place finish.
Unlike the last elimination, the play didn't begin to flow from that point, the next player hitting the spectator stands only a matter of moments later, former UB poker pro Michael Binger being the next victim of the running Tehan.
Finding pocket tens in his hole cards, Binger pushed in entire stack into play, only for Tehan to show that he was not about to lay down his Ace/Jack and he called the all in bet.
The flop fell dry for both players but the turn left the eyes of Binger watering as an Ace hit the board and sealed the deal for Tehan, sending Binger home with $114,000.
With five players left, the tournament saw two more PokerStars sponsored professional players sent home without the title, Anh Van Nguyen and Ray Henson both moving all in pre-flop only to see Tehan call the action, leaving the pot to be contested by three players.
Nguyen showed Ace/Queen, Henson revealed his Ace/Jack before Tehan turned over his K
5.
The community board started off well for the contenders as the flop showed very little to help Tehan after 9-9-4 was brought into play. But the story didn't end there are with the way that Tehan was running, you can already guess what happened next…
That's right, the turn presented a King and that was once again the end of the tournament for those who were trying to challenge Tehan during his run, the river offering nothing to help any player involved and two more PokerStars backed players were sent to the cashiers desk together.
Ray Henson finished the tournament in 5th place and picked up $145,000 while Anh Van Nguyen took 4th place and cashed for $195,000.
Down to Al Grimes, Chris DeMaci and Joe Tehan, the crowd really began to rally for Tehan after the showing that he was offering up to those who had travelled to watch the action unfold.
Little did they know that their chants were going to keep Tehan running good at the tables…
Grimes was eliminated from the tournament next in third place, heading into what proved to be his final hand of the tournament with 8
7 and being called by the Jack/9 of Tehan.
As with all the previous battles that were done against Tehan, his opponent failed to be able to make a strong enough hand to dent the chip leaders stack and after Tehan hit yet another turn card to give him a pair of nines, enough to seal the heads up section of the tournament. Grimes took home $250,000 in tournament payout.
With only DeMaci left in the tournament that had the chance to prevent Tehan winning the tournament, Tehan was keen to use his huge chip stack to pressure his opponent into having to play a hand in which he would not usually play.
Carrying almost a 5:2 chip lead into the final section of the tournament, Tehan became the odds on favourite for the victory and as the action played out, it seemed less and less likely that there was going to be an upset to the way in which he was running when it came to the community cards.
The final hand of the tournament saw DeMaci enter into the game with King/4 while Tehan revealed that he was holding King/Ten, leaving him covering DeMaci's hand.
DeMaci took home $440,000 while Joe Tehan took home not only the title but also the $725,000 prize money.
Final Table Results
1st was Joe Tehan winning $725,000
2nd was Chris DeMaci winning $440,000
3rd was Al Grimes winning $250,000
4th was Anh Van Nguyen winning $195,000
5th was Ray Henson winning $145,000
6th was Michael Binger winning $114,000
7th was Jason Mercier winning $84,857
8th was Jake Toole winning $60,000
