Keith Lehr becomes third 2018 Poker Masters champion, Short deck poker hits Las Vegas

The latest PM champion climbed up to the second spot on the Purple Jacket leaderboard, while Brandon Adams increased his lead with a 5th place finish.

The Event #3: $25,000 Pot-Limit Omaha generated a total of 37 entries, generating a $925,000 prize pool, with $333,000 for the winner. The L.A. native Omaha-specialist managed to outlast a super-strong field, to increase his all-time tournament earnings to over $3.1 million.

The final table of six was the deepest so far at the series, all of the players having over 50 big blinds. This, and the four shortest stack having similar amounts of ammo led to a slow start with plenty of limping. Johnathan Depa started the final as the chip leader, having over 100 bigs. He drew first blood when he eliminated Dan Shak with KKxx against the QQxx of Shak's. The commodity trader turned semi-pro walked away with $55,500 in 6th place.

The next player to be busted was the key character [3] of this year's Poker Masters. After finishing 4th in the opening event and taking down the second tournament, Brandon Adams got 5th in the PLO event and now stands with 510 points on the Purple Jacket Ranking, which gives him a solid lead.

Brandon was followed by fellow finalist of the first event, Ike Haxton, who busted against Depa when the latter managed to hit two pairs with a straight draw on the turn and river against the top pair of Ike's. "Hollywood Haxton" received $92,500 for his 4th place finish.

Another day, another final table for Adams

It didn't take the other short stack too long to follow him, as Ben Yu hit the rail minutes after the elimination of Ike's. He was busted by Lehr for $148,000.

After several hands went down without real confrontation, a big pot has finally developed between the remaining two, which went to Lehr's way thanks to a rivered flush over a turned set. Depa was able to win three all-ins to climb back but eventually had to settle for 2nd place, when his flopped two pairs were outdrawn by a higher two pair on the turn.

Jonathan walked away with $222,000, while $333,000 and 300 points went to the champions way.

Final results

Event #4: $10,000 Short Deck Poker

The newest form of poker has arrived at Las Vegas with the 2018 edition of the series. The 32-card version of the game generated 55 entries and the players wasted no time, putting their chips in the middle every other hand. The field has already got down to the final six, with German high-roller Dominik Nitsche having the biggest stack. He's closely followed by Andrew Robl, but Ike also sits at the final six, for the third time over the four events.

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Final table chip counts

You can follow the action-heavy finals live at PokerGO [5]!

As mentioned before, Brandon Adams has a confident lead over his peers on the Purple Jacket Rankings, but the competition still has two shots to overcome Adams.

2018 Poker Masters Purple Jacket Rankings: