After the nearly immediate elimination of final table short stack Patrick Chan, the torch was passed to Federico Butteroni. While seemingly everyone else played some pretty sizable pots, with big stacks mixing in three-bets, four-bets, and even some all-in shoves, Butteroni remained quiet and patient, looking for opportunities to get his short stack in the middle.

The Italian couldn’t find any of those opportunities through the rest of Level 35, but a few hands into Level 36, he did. The table folded to Butteroni, who moved all-in for 3,200,000 from the cutoff with Qc 9c. With the big blind being worth 500,000, the shove was for just over six big blinds, but despite the relatively small all-in amount, Pierre Neuville, who was in the big blind, eventually folded Ah 7h. That gave Butteroni a pass and a much needed bump to his short stack.

That pass helped, but after another full orbit of folds, Butteroni found himself even shorter than he was at the start of the level. Midway through Level 36, Joe McKeehen added to his final table kill list. McKeehen opened to 1,000,000 from the button and, with just 2,400,000 left in front of him in the small blind, Butteroni moved all-in. The big blind folded and McKeehen called, having the Italian dominated with As Ks to Ah Jc.

McKeehen scored the first final table elimination with ace-high and ace-king-high was good enough for the second knockout as well, with McKeehen’s kicker sealing Butteroni’s eighth place finish on a runout of 10c 6d 3d 9s 7d. The Italian took home $1,097,056 and McKeehen is now up and over the 70,000,000 chip mark, hovering near 150 big blinds.