Event 1 (Day 2)
Event 1 – $2,000,000 GTD
Level 29 (40,000/80,000/10,000)
Total Entries: 5,101
Players Remaining: 53
Average Stack: 2,406,132
Bill Johnson (Jackson, OH)
Bill Johnson and another player saw a flop of {10h}{Kc}{2d}. The opponent threw out 250,000 and Bill called. The turn was {2c} and the opponent checked instead. Bill immediately pushed a stack totalling 500,000 in, and after a moment, his opponent laid it down. Bill added to his already considerable $4.5 million stack.
Meanwhile on another table, Asher Conniff just busted a short stack with {Ax}{10x} versus {Ax}{2x}.
Event 1 – $2,000,000 GTD
Level 28 (30,000/60,000/5,000)
Total Entries: 5,101
Players Remaining: 64
Average Stack: 1,992,578
Greg Weber (Howell, NJ)
David Augustine and Dimas Martinez just vanished to the rail in a single hand, all thanks to our new chip leader, a player in a striped shirt by the name of Greg Weber. Here’s how it went down, according to Greg.
He said Dimas open shoved for a million, and Greg called him. David in the short stack also called.
Dimas {Ax}{10x}
Greg: {Jx}{Jx}
David: {7x}{7x}
The board was {6x}{8x}{9x}{6x}{2x} and just like that, two players busted,sending Greg up to 4,500,000 in chips.
Event 1 – $2,000,000 GTD
Level 26 (20,000/40,000/4,000)
Total Entries: 5,101
Players Remaining: 110
Average Stack: 1,169,954
Here are some of the more familar names still hanging around the last dozen or so tables in Event 1:
Matt Stout
Michael Marder
Satish Surapareni
Jonathan Borenstein
Victor Firezza
Bart Dowling
James Gilbert
Ibraim Ibraimobic
Bill Johnson
John Gale
Jamie Kerstetter
Jenny So
Dimas Martinez
Jason Loehrs
Angel Mpodica
Roma Vallerstein
Kathy Long
Jia Liu
Jeffrey Gross
Randy Itwaru
Vinny Pahuja
Dante Scattolini
Vincent Basilicata
Brian Moody
Je Wook Oh
Justin Liberto
Emily Larsen
Carlos Alvarado
Asher Conniff
Christian Soto (North Bergen, NJ)
Event 1 – $2,000,000 GTD
Level 25 (15,000/30,000/4,000)
Total Entries: 5,101
Players Remaining: 150
Average Stack: 850,167
For @Gags30poker pic.twitter.com/5Uza1PRm7L
— Christian Soto (@ChristianSoto08) January 22, 2016
Christian Soto, who plays as ChinIAM online and is the founder of Red Chip Poker, is hovering around a million in chips, above the average. He likes his table. “These guys are good,” he says.
Level 34 (Blinds 150,000/300,000/40,000)
Total Entries: 4,179
Players Remaining: 10
Chip Average: 8,850,000
JamIe Kerstetter, Alex Rocha and Mark Herm will be leading the Event 1 Live Stream coverage starting at 3 PM.
We’ve introduced the players who will be making up our Event 1 $2,000,000 GTD Final Table, but what we haven’t done is tell you who will be calling the action.
The players at the Final Table might not be recognizable to many poker followers, but the people bringing you hours of endless background noise, some off beat jokes, a rundown of their favorite baby animal pictures and, oh yeah, actual poker analysis certainly are.
We’ll start out with Jamie Kerstetter (Brigantine, NJ), who also worked the live stream during the WPT BPO held in September. The lawyer turned poker professional is one of the most recognizable faces in the Borgata poker community and rightfully so, as she has over $400,000 in live tournament earnings to her name, through an impressive 72 total rated cashes.
Kerstetter, who is a Team partypoker pro, will be joined by another Borgata regular and Borgata Poker Champion, Alex Rocha.
Rocha (Brigantine, NJ) boasts a similarly impressive tournament resume to Jaime, with scores from across the country, but the Borgata is where he’s done the most damage.
Three of his four biggest scores are from the East Coast room, with his biggest coming when he won his Borgata title, taking down a $560 Winter Poker Open event in 2011, where he made just over $150,000.
The last of our “live stream” commentators might be better known by the poker community by his online handle “dipthrong” as he’s been using that name to crush the online tournament scene for the better part of the last decade.
“dipthrong” is Mark Herm (Philadelphia, PA), who until recently was without a major poker title to add to his lengthly poker resume.
That all changed as Herm won a $1,000 PLO High Dealer’s Choice event at the PokerStars Caribbean Adventure, for his first ever “live” championship, moving himself over the $550,000 mark in career earnings.
While all three of these players have similarities, including serious poker resumes totaling over $1,500,000 in earnings and an almost unlimited knowledge of the game; it’s the differences that they have that will make this one of the most exciting and entertaining color commentary teams assembled as they each have their own personalities that will certainly make this live stream must watch action.
Level 34 (Blinds 150,000/300,000/40,000)
Total Entries: 4,179
Players Remaining: 10
Chip Average: 8,850,000
David Hom, Elvir Muriqui, Byung Yoo, Matt Shafman and Brian Wilson make up the first half of our $2,000,000 GTD Event 1 Final Table.
We are still a few hours away from the start of the “live streamed” $2,000,000 GTD Event 1 Final Table, but when thousands of players tune in to watch the action live at 3 PM, they are going to want to know a little bit about the players that have reached this life changing Final Table.
We mentioned earlier that many of these players don’t have “lengthy” tournament resumes, but that will all be changing today as they will be all be playing for a sizable portion of the $2,000,000 prize pool, with over $330,000 being held up top for the winner.
We’ll be introducing the final ten players in two waves, in order of their seating assignments. Here is the first batch of players:
David Hom (Brooklyn, NY) – 10,390,000 (35 BB)
- The 51 year old Hom is a power plant operator by trade, but has been playing poker for close to a decade. He enters this Final Table with an above average stack and is coming off the biggest tournament score of his career, ending 2014 with a 2nd place finish at the WSOP Circuit stop at Harrah’s for just over $11,000.
Elvir Muriqui (Bronx, NY) – 4,140,000 (14 BB)
- Elvir is an Albanian American professional boxer with an overall career record of 40-7 with 24 wins by KO. He’s familiar with Atlantic City, as he won his professional debut here in 1998. This is just Elvir’s second rated cash to date, after he made a $2,500 score in the 2014 Spring Poker Open $1,000,000 event.
Byung Yoo (Norwood, NJ) – 11,485,000 (38BB)
- Byung considers himself a professional poker player by “default” but that “default” tag might change here today, as this score will certainly vault him over the $100,000 mark in terms of career live earnings. Yoo has cashed in three straight opening events at Borgata Poker Opens, Final Tabling Event 1 during the Summer Poker Open and notching a top 100 finish at the Fall Poker Open.
Matt Shafman (Livingston, NJ) – 8,200,000 (27BB)
- His twitter bio @MattShafman describes him as an “entrepreneur/investor/poker player/writer”. He’s done it all and he is now looking to cement his place in poker by making the biggest tournament score of his live career.
- Back during the days of legal online poker throughout the United States, Shafman Final Tabled a PokerStars Sunday Million event, regularly one of the biggest online tournaments on the schedule.
- Outside of poker, and his above mentioned endeavors, he enjoys politics, chess and basketball.
Brian Wilson (Hightstown, NJ) – 11,225,000 (37BB)
- Wilson is one of the “rawest” players to make this Final Table, with just one tournament score to his name, a $2,200 cash from the 2013 WSOP. But, we’ve seen relative “unknowns” win this event before and the network architect will look to win a life changing event here today.
- Wilson was also the only player to mention his significant other during our “questioning” process once we got down to the Final Table, listing his interests outside of poker as his “wife and dog”. Smart man.
That’s the first half of our $2,000,000 GTD Final Table, with the next round of players coming shortly.
Level 34 (Blinds 150,000/300,000/40,000)
Total Entries: 4,179
Players Remaining: 10
Chip Average: 8,850,000
After an extremely long day of poker, the remaining ten players from Event 1 have exited the Event Center, ready to return in just under eight hours. Ryan Jones (Burlington, NC) will return tomorrow as the chip leader, entering Day 3 play with over 18,000,000 (60 big blinds). Jones has over $140,000 in career tournament earnings, including a win two summers ago during the Wynn Summer Classic ($400 + 40 No Limit Hold’em – $35,590).
Action will resume tomorrow at 3:00pm, with different options for players interested in following the event to choose. The action will be published here on the blog, with a live stream also available (link coming soon) for those that want to follow things hand by hand. Here are the seating assignments for tomorrow’s final table, including chip counts entering Day 3:
- David Hom – 10,390,000
- Elvir Muriqi – 4,140,000
- Byung Yoo – 11,485,000
- Matt Shafman – 8,200,000
- Brian Wilson – 11,225,000
- Edgar Flores – 3,230,000
- David Fried – 5,980,000
- Kenny Levine – 7,360,000
- Ryan Jones – 18,215,000
- Mikhail Volfson – 3,065,000
Level 34 (Blinds 150,000/300,000/40,000)
Total Entries: 4,179
Players Remaining: 11
Chip Average: 8,350,000
Kevin Campbell (Bayonne, NJ)
Kevin Campbell (Bayonne, NJ) seemed to have possibly started a comeback for the ages, but after (30) of trying to build back a manageable stack, he’d bubble the live streamed final table. After an open from Brian Wilson (725,000), Campbell would shove for close to 2,000,000 out of the small blind. Shafman folded behind, and Wilson made the call:
Campbell: {5h} {5c}
Wilson: {js} {jc}
Flop: {3c} {9d} {9h}
Turn: {9s}
River: {3d}
Kevin would need a lot of help to continue the miracle comeback, but would be drawing dead on the turn. He would however earn his largest tournament cash ($15,708), increasing his career earnings by over 50%.
The players are now bagging their chips for Day 3, which picks back up later today at 3:00pm. The end of Day 2 chip counts (and final table lineup) will be posted shortly after all bags have been verified.
Level 34 (Blinds 150,000/300,000/40,000)
Total Entries: 4,179
Players Remaining: 11
Chip Average: 8,000,000
For the third time in as many hands, we see an extremely short stacked player double up. Action folded around to Matt Shafman in the small blind, who looked over to Edgar Flores in the big, with 300,000 of his 1,100,000 stack already committed to the pot. Shafman announced that he was all-in, and after some deliberation, Flores made the call. Edgar’s {qs} {6d} was ahead of Shafman’s {10s} {4d}, and he’d flop two pair to grab a commanding lead, closing the door with a full house on the turn. Flores is now over 2,300,000, and although it’s still less than ten bigs, it likely feels like heaps to Flores.
Level 34 (Blinds 150,000/300,000/40,000)
Total Entries: 4,179
Players Remaining: 11
Chip Average: 8,000,000
When players left for break, most assumed that the final table would be reached pretty quickly, with Campbell returning to 2.5 big blinds. Kevin wasted no time doubling up though, as his {qs} {9c} was never trailing the {jd} {6h} of Edgar Flores, who made the call for another bet-and-a-half out of the big blind. Campbell chipped up to 1,500,000 with the pot, leaving Flores the short stack in the field (800,000).
Only a few moments later, Elvir Muriqi shoved his 1,500,000 stack in late position, with David Fried just flatting. The blinds would end up folding, but Fried’s {kh} {kc} would be trailing the {ah} {as} of Muriqi. The board ran out clean for Elvir, and he would double to over 3,000,000.