Event 16
The first week of the Winter Poker Open saw six players walk away with WPO trophies and since then, ten more players have walked away with “tiny glass Borgatas”. Those trophies have been awarded through a wide variety of events and the first saw Marc Matz take home the Event 7 ‘Omaha/Stud H/L’ title and an over $6,000 score. That was Matz’s first career tournament win and that kicked off a busy week, with ‘The General’ claiming the next WPO trophy.
That came in the Event 8 ‘Super Stack Elevator’ and prior to the ‘Borgata Million’ starting on Tuesday, James Chen won the Event 9 ‘Pot Limit Omaha High’. The trophies were then kept out of sight for a few days, as that ‘Borgata Million’ played through six starting flights but ‘All-Star Weekend’ did not disappoint, creating plenty of headlines and storylines over the last few days.
The biggest of those storylines was Joe ‘Black’ Reddick claiming his first career title in the $1,000,000 GTD Event 10. Reddick took home just over $215,000 for his ‘Borgata Million’ win and while that wasn’t the first title awarded during ‘All-Star Weekend’, Reddick was the weekend’s highest earner.
Mike Rees was the second biggest earner, after he claimed the Event 11 ‘$1,000 Six Max’ title early Sunday morning. After a nearly seven hour final table, Rees outlasted a stacked field to take home $80,000 and his first BPO title, with Rex Clinkscales doing the same on Saturday night. He won the Event 12 ’40 Big Blind Bounty’ for just over $30,000.
Those two wins bookended Allan Vrooman‘s $100,000 GTD ‘Saturday Series’ win, as he claimed the Event 13 title for his first career Borgata victory. The final trophy awarded on a busy Saturday, saw partypoker’s Jamie Kerstetter take down the Event 16 ‘Charity Series of Poker’ title. That was a win-win for both Kerstetter and the Community FoodBank of New Jersey, as over $13,000 were raised through another extremely successful CSOP event.
While Saturday saw plenty of hardware get handed out, Sunday was a slightly less hectic schedule, with only two players claiming WPO trophies. The first was Alex Benyayev, who outlasted a 75 player field to win the Event 15 ‘Pot Limit Omaha High’, the second event of it’s kind during this WPO series.
The big winner from Sunday though was Matt Emmel, who claimed potentially the most prestigious non-main event title, when he outlasted a 64 player bracket to win Event 14. Emmel, who is a heads up sit & go specialist used that experience to claim the ‘Heads Up Championship’ title and a nearly $50,000 score. Emmel was the last WPO title winner but over the next few days, five more trophies are up for grabs, including the WPT Champions Cup.
The WPO blog will be here to bring you all of that action but if you want to go back and catch up on what’s happened over the last week, the links at the top of this post will bring you to each event’s individual coverage. It should also be noted, that a complete list of results from each event are linked as well.
Jamie Kerstetter – Winter Poker Open Charity Series of Poker Champion
To call any individual a winner in the Charity Series of Poker event would be slightly incorrect because in the end, the real winners were the Habitat for Humanity of Atlantic County and the Community FoodBank of New Jersey. But, this was a poker tournament after all and that meant that someone had to win and that someone was Jamie Kerstetter.
After tweeting about winning a “tiny glass Borgata” for the last week, and coming close with back to back deep runs in the $2,000,000 GTD opening event and this week’s ‘Borgata Million’, Kerstetter finally got her hands on some WPO hardware.
A complete recap of the Charity Series of Poker event will be posted tomorrow and the WPO blog will now continue it’s coverage of the other three trophy events playing out in the Event Center.
Event 16 — CSOP Charity Tournament
Level 13: Blinds 2,000/4,000/400 ante
Total Entries: 105
Players Remaining: 20
Thanks to Twitter, we’re getting some highlights from the Charity Series of Poker event!
Currently playing @TheCSOP @BorgataPoker with the person who inspired me to start the charity, my brother David. pic.twitter.com/CEDJv2SUuT
— Matt Stout (@MattStoutPoker) January 30, 2016
Busted @MattStoutPoker in the @TheCSOP Event here @BorgataPoker
Weeeeee
🍷🍷🍷🍷 pic.twitter.com/qrfJuhzqvl— OG Sheddy (@Sheddy88) January 30, 2016
Congrats to @GrimeRat420, who won the bounty for knocking me out. Why you little #%!&! 👍🏻👍🏻 pic.twitter.com/PeiYfCJz7U
— Richard Roeper (@richardroeper) January 31, 2016
Itm of @TheCSOP !! 55 up top plus a @BorgataPoker trophy!! Lfg! #BWPO2016
— Chris Francia (@shak3_n_bake) January 31, 2016
If you thought last weekend was busy, welcome to the Winter Poker Open ‘All-Star Weekend’. With the WPT WPO Championship starting tomorrow, the big names are all in town and that showed yesterday, as a star studded ‘$1,000 NLH Six Max’ field came together. Nearly 340 players built up a massive prize pool and that field will return for Day 2 to first play into the money and then, eventually, play down to a winner.
That is only one of seven WPO titles that is up for grabs this weekend though and the first will be awarded on the live stream, as the ‘Borgata Million’ comes back with 10 players remaining. That will be the main focus of the WPO blog come 4 PM when cards get in the air for that final table and ’40 Big Blinds Bounty’ will also come back for Day 2 this afternoon.
Throw in the always massive ‘$100,000 GTD Saturday Series’, along with the start of the ‘$2,500 Heads Up Championship’, the Charity Series of Poker Turbo event, another ‘Pot Limit Omaha High’ tournament and today’s schedule pretty full, pretty quick. The WPO blog will be here to juggle it all and bring you updates from every event throughout the day, with the first of those updates coming shortly as we preview the ‘Borgata Million’ final table.