The opening day of play at Deerfoot Inn & Casino’s Spring Super Stack is now in the books and it was a day for deal making. Both games on opening day ended in heads-up chops, though players in Event #2 were looking for deals earlier than that.
It was a solid day to start the series, with both games hitting solid numbers. Between the two games on Wednesday, nearly 300 entries were recorded, with the Seniors game crossing over 170 entries.
There are still 11 days of poker action on the schedule for the remainder of this Spring Super Stack, with the final day of play scheduled for Apr 13 when one lucky player will be crowned the SuperStack Main Event champion.
King & Hellard Chop Seniors Game
| Event 1: | $340 50+ Seniors ($300 + $40) |
| Date: | Apr 2, 11 AM |
| Blinds: | 30 Minutes |
| Entries: | 173 |
| Prizes: | $49,305 |
| Winner: | Russ King, Gary Hellard Chop for $10,602 each |
It was a solid turnout for the opening game of the Spring Super Stack on Wednesday. The series kicked off with the 50+ game, and after about 4.5 hours of entry, the field topped out at 173.
That meant the prizes ended up just shy of $50k with 17 players sharing the money at the end of the night. It was Level 18 before they finally hit the money with Jim Berry as the unfortunate bubble player.
It was a fairly quick race down to the winner, with the rest of the night finishing in about 3 hours from the time the money bubble burst.
In the end, “Handsome” Russ King was running pure for most of the night. He had a couple of spots where he had pair-over-pair, or a big pair against an ace-x. His jacks held against an ace-jack for the first final table casualty as he sent Chris Ruddell out in 10th place, then he scored a double-knockout of Russ Sluchinski and Jeff Eldred when he hit a set of sevens to crack Sluchinski’s aces and the sixes for Eldred.
Runner-up Gary Hellard had some rungood of his own. Hellard got some dead money off King when Stephen Scott shoved the shorty and King called before Hellard reshoved the big stack. King mucked, sending his call to the pot which ultimately went to Hellard when he flushed out the two pair of Scott.
Blaine Thompson quickly followed Scott to the cage for 3rd place, setting up the deal between King and Hellard at the end of the night. They chopped the remaining prizes equally for $10,602 each, with King taking the official win with the biggest stack at the time of the deal.
Justin Joson & Frank Gallie Chop Event #2
| Event 2: | $230 NLH ($205 + $25) |
| Date: | Apr 2, 6 PM |
| Blinds: | 20 Minutes |
| Entries: | 114 |
| Prizes: | $22,202 |
| Winner: | Justin Joson, Frank Gallie Chop for $5,163 |
The side game on opening day was a $230 Turbo. The action kicked off at 6 pm with entries open until about 9:30. In the end, the field topped out at 114 for $22,202 in prizes, divided 11 ways at the end of the night.
The entire game was just over 10 hours long, with the final two players agreeing to a chop just after 4 am. They hit the money at about 1 am and the money phase lasted just over 3 hours.
The game went quickly from 11 to 7, and they played 7-handed for about 30 minutes until Tyler Hurman hit the rail for 7th. It was about another hour before Kelly Mason ended his day in 6th and FT chip leader Patrick Corbet ran into some runbad to end in 5th place. In one big hand, he got into a huge pot with 4th place finisher Lillian Munch when he flopped top pair and a flush draw against the nut straight for Munch. She held to leave Corbet on fumes, and he was out shortly after.
The game then moved to the poker room at 3 am with four players left. Lillian Munch hit the rail quickly after the move with Shoaib Syed taking third. That set up a heads-up battle between Gallie and Joson with Gallie in a big lead to start.
Things went south for Gallie quickly, however. In the first three hands of heads up, he doubled up Joson a few times to even out the stacks a bit more. Then, Joson found a massive double when he woke up with aces after Gallie shoved over Joson’s 2x open.
Joson snapped it off and was in great shape with the aces into ace-three. Gallie almost found a chop with quads on the board, but ultimately the aces held. That gave Joson 2.4 million of the 2.8 in play, and he offered an even chop of the money to take the official win.
It took Gallie a few seconds to decide, but ultimately he decided it was too good of a deal to pass up with around 40 big blinds in total on the table. They both made $5,163 with Joson taking the official win.
