When looking through the 2014 November Nine, not many people gave Martin Jacobson a realistic chance to win. After all, he was sitting with 14.9 million chips – just the eighth-largest stack out of the remaining nine players. But through a combination of incredible poker skills and running good, Jacobson worked his way out of this hole and on towards the 2014 WSOP Main Event title.
By the end of the first day, when only three players remained, Jacobson, put himself in second place. His final opponents were Norway’s Felix Stephensen and Netherlands’ Jorryt van Hoof, with the latter holding the chip advantage.
Many would have picked van Hoof to win simply because the poker coach had the chip edge, looked confident and was playing aggressively. However, he lost a huge pot against Stephensen during three-handed play and things went downhill from here.
Once he busted out, it was Stephensen (58.5m chips) facing off against Jacobson (142m chips) for the title. Based on winning pots alone, this was a pretty even matchup, however, the difference-maker was Jacobson’s ability to win the big hands. The end was rather anti-climatic since it took the Swede just an hour to beat Stephensen.
Regardless of how easy the heads-up match was, Jacobson’s come-from-behind victory will definitely go down in WSOP lore. Furthermore, he’s also the first Swedish player to win the Main Event. Want more history? How about the fact that his $10 million payout ranks just behind Jamie Gold ($12m) in Main Event history.
His live tournament winnings have now surpassed $14.8 million, which moves him up to ninth place on the all-time money list. Jacobson also passed Chris Bjorin to become Sweden’s biggest all-time winner as well. Check out how the entire Main Event final table fared below.
2014 WSOP Main Event Final Table Payouts
1. Martin Jacobson – $10,000,000
2. Felix Stephensen – $5,147,911
3. Jorryt van Hoof – $3,807,753
4. William Tonking – $2,849,763
5. Billy Pappaconstantinou – $2,143,794
6. Andoni Larrabe – $1,622,471
7. Dan Sindelar – $1,236,084
8. Bruno Politano – $947,172
9. Mark Newhouse – $730,725