Event 15 Recap

$350 + $50 Pot Limit Omaha H/L

The PLO H/L championship came down to a battle of the big stacks and when Tommy Blank (Stamford, CT) stacks the final chip he takes the title and the $12,222 first prize.  He outlasts the field of 120 players who ponied up a total of $42,000 of buy-in money and battled over two days.

Blank asserted himself as the chip leader with 40 players left and maintained a top stack the rest of the way. In the end he finished just ahead of Zelig Flaschstatz (Queens, NY), who took home $6,772 as runner-up.

The most bizarre part of the tournament happened as the bubble broke at the end of Day 1 when Douglas Hamshaw (Marlborough, NH) walked away from a winning hand and thought he busted from the tournament. He was tracked down on the casino floor and was told that he had tripled-up and actually made the money.

"I had just lost a big pot and had so few chips that I cashed it in mentally," said Hamshaw, who's account can be read here. "The lesson is stay until the hand is really over."

When play resumed Day 2, Hamshaw's new life was short lived as he was the first to cash with an 18th place finish ($611).  Day 1 chip leader Eddie Espino (Piscataway, NJ) couldn't get anything going and his elimination (11th/$815) set the final table.

Most of the notable players failed to make the money including Event 9 (HORSE/$14,319) Champion Jeffrey Duvall (London, England) and WSOP bracelet holder Chris Reslock (Atlantic City, NJ).  Other PLO specialists included Bill Seymour, James Boyd, and Dr. Will Noyes.

The biggest names to cash were Brian Woods (Baltimore, MD) the 2010 Borgata Winter Poker Open Event 1 winner for $100,000, who finished 8th/$1,222 in this event and Larry Gold (Medford, NY), who has multiple Borgata cashes including a second place finish in the Borgata Winter Poker Open HOSE event.

But in the end its Blank who wins it "for the beans."  He's been playing poker professionally for nine years and says he "moved into" Borgata three months ago where you can find him daily in the high limit room playing games as high as $300/$600.