We’d like to send a special shout out from all of us here at PocketFives.com to Justin Boosted JSmith, a sponsored pro of Full Tilt Poker. What’d he do to deserve all of his fanfare, you ask? Smith finished as the runner-up to German poker player Moritz Kranich in the World Poker Tour’s (WPT) Bellagio Cup VI, which played out concurrently with the final days of the World Series of Poker (WSOP) Main Event in Las Vegas. Smith, lest we forget, finished third in this tournament last year, marking a rare back-to-back final table appearance.

Smith and Kranich faced off heads-up following the elimination of Phil Ivey in third. Ivey, who bought into the Bellagio Cup VI at the last possible moment on Day 3 – when he received a meager 20 big blind stack for his $10,000 investment – appeared at a record-setting ninth WPT final table. Ivey only has 12 in the money finishes in WPT tournaments overall and, amazingly, three-quarters of them are for final tables.

Smith was a 2:1 underdog in chips entering heads-up play against Kranich and it took him 10 hands to win a pot. By that point, he had fallen to a 4:1 underdog, but told PocketFives.com that his online heads-up experience gave him a leg up on the competition.

Also going in his favor was that Smith ended the WSOP without a bracelet. “The hunger is there because the WSOP was over and I didn’t win a bracelet,” Smith told us. “That is a bit heartbreaking and surprising, so I came over to the Bellagio and had a shot at another $10,000 tournament. I’m comfortable at the Bellagio because I play cash games there.”

Despite not recording a bracelet, Smith turned in five in the money finishes at the 2010 WSOP, including an eighth place showing in a $2,500 No Limit Hold’em Six-Handed tournament for $55,000. The Big Game player has over $300,000 in career WSOP earnings.

The 2010 installment of the annual Bellagio Cup offered a more affordable $10,000 buy-in, down from $15,000 in previous years. Consequently, the field expanded to 353 entrants, although the first place prize dropped by $300,000 to $875,000. WPT officials left registration open until the end of the first level on Day 3, leading to a mad rush of last-second registrants including Ivey (pictured), UB.compro Phil Hellmuth, DoylesRoom‘s Todd Brunson, Kathy Liebert, Tom durrrr Dwan, Chris Ferguson, Daniel Negreanu, Greg Mueller, Erik Seidel, and Andy Bloch.

Here were the final results from the WPT Bellagio Cup VI:

1. Moritz Kranich – $875,150
2. Justin Boosted J Smith – $594,755
3. Phil Ivey – $363,650
4. John Caridad – $237,902
5. Robert Akery – $169,930
6. Eric Afriat – $118,950

PocketFives.com has conducted an interview with Smith following his runner-up effort in the Las Vegas WPT event and we’ll be posting that shortly. Next up for the hallmark tournament series is a trip down I-15 to the Bicycle Casino in Bell Gardens, California, home of the Legends of Poker. The reduced $5,000 buy-in tournament will begin on August 20th and conclude five days later.