PocketFiver Ben ‘BenFaz’ Farrell scored first place in the Zynga Poker WPT500 Las Vegas event on Thursday at ARIA Resort & Casino, topping a field of 1,932 entries to win $155,000.

Hailing from England, Farrell earned his career-best live tournament score with the victory. He topped India’s Nikita Luther in heads-up play.

“There were a lot of people to get through,” Farrell told WPT reporters after the win. “It feels really good.”

WPT500 Las Vegas Final Table Results

1st: Ben Farrell – $155,000
2nd: Nikita Luther – $109,300
3rd: Sung Joo Hyun – $75,000
4th: Min Ji – $55,000
5th: Trey Morris – $40,000
6th: Eduards Kudrjavcevs – $30,000
7th: Jakub Wojtas – $22,000
8th: Ritesh Shah – $17,000
9th: Jim Pennella – $14,000

Farrell joined the multi-flight field on the final starting day, the turbo flight. Although he slipped to as low as 12 big blinds, he said, he turned things around, finished the flight as chip leader, and charged on to the final table. At the final table, Farrell busted Ritesh Shah in eighth place, Eduards Kudrjavcevs in sixth place, and Trey Morris in fifth place en route to his heads-up battle with Luther.

Entering the heads-up match, Luther had the chip lead following her elimination of Sung Too Hyun in third place. Her lead wasn’t a big one, though, as Luther as up 21.1 million to 17.525 million to start.

Luther struck first, extending her chip lead to a gap of more than 9 million, and then she stretched it to more than 10 million shortly thereafter. Farrell closed the gap when both players flopped a pair of eights but Farrell’s kicker was better, and then the most important hand of the tournament played out.

On that important hand, Luther held ace-king to Farrell’s ace-queen. All the money went in preflop and Farrell saw the bad news as he was dominated. The nine-high flop missed both players, but a queen on the turn vaulted Farrell into the lead. He held from there and doubled up to take a commanding chip lead of 33.25 million to 5.375 million.

About 10 minutes later, it was all over when Farrell’s ace-five finished off Luther and her king-queen.

Luther, who had made a deep run in the 2017 WPT500 Las Vegas worth a fifth-place finish and $65,000, cashed this year for $109,300.

“It feels really good,” Farrell told WPT reporters. “I’ve been working on my game mainly by talking with friends. I’m mainly an online player, so I haven’t had many results live. But I’ve had a lot of close runs, so I always knew that I’d eventually win a tournament. I just had to put in the volume and keep studying.”

Others to run deep in the event include Zynga Poker VIP player Hugh Grant (11th – $11,500), former WPT Player of the Year Mukul Pahuja (12th – $11,500), Quentin Jones (35th – $3,500), T.K. Miles (49th – $2,700), and Mo Nuwwarah (66th – $2,100). Grant’s run came one year after he took eighth in the WPT500 Las Vegas for $26,310. Jones and Nuwwarah also put together back-to-back cashes in WPT500 Las Vegas. Jones, a WPTDeepStacks champion, finished 13th last year for $13,220. Nuwwarah took 22nd for $7,320 one year ago.