Event 23 Recap

$250 + $30 No Limit Hold'em

Event 23 is the second to last tournament of the 2011 Borgata Poker Open and was running simultaneously as the Championship whittled down to their Super-Six.

For $250 + $30 players loved the low risk and high reward. 255 players took their shot at a piece of the $63,750 Total Buy-In. 27 made the money but only one individual captured the grand first place prize of $17,312. That honor went to Atlantic City's native son, Cuong Phung who just kick started his poker bankroll to support his wife Thuy and 3-month old baby at home.

I named a couple players "All-In-Somniacs" as they played 17 hours yesterday, grabbed a couple hours of sleep, then started today's tourney at 12:00 noon and played all day again. The Vo & Sanjeev Datta both scored large last night in Event 22 and both played today in Event 23. Sanjeev ended in 12th today for an $804 cash.

Two players went out during hand-for-hand bubble action. The player with less chips, and crowned "the bubble" was Vince Nicoletti. He received some parting gifts from the players.

Tough final table of ten included: Cuong Phung, Anthony Colombo, Craig Lampa, Andrew Interdonato, Michael Nye, Martino Scaturro, John Mirdita, Fred Meder, Scott Raifer, & Frank Rasile. Once Cuong got the chip lead he held on tight to the finish line.

3rd place of $5,875 went to Craig Lampa while 2nd place in the amount of $10,202 went to Anthony Colombo. Colombo was out-chipped heads up 3 to 1 and his A high was rundown by Cuong's Q high.

Once again your big winner of all 3,825,000 chips and the $17,312 in cold cash was Atlantic City fall/winter poker pro Cuong Phung. Congrats on jump starting that Borgata bank-roll and taking down Event 23.