Event 20 Recap

$500 + $60 Big Stack Semi-Turbo No Limit Hold'em (Re-Entry)  

Congratulations to our event 20 champion, Zachary Schwartz (New York, NY) who finally felted Anthony Bocchino (Brooklyn, NY) in a marathon heads-up session that lasted three hours and brought Zachary $45,564 in 1st Place Prize money.

Zachary's girlfriend Patricia stood by her man during the intense one-on-one contest.  In fact, Zachary said he's taking some of the prize money to treat his girl to an all-expense paid vacation.

The hand Zachary tagged as his biggest in the tournament quite simply was when he called his opponent down with A-K at the final table.  He made the right read and stood by it on a scary board of  10-7-6-5-10.  That gutsy call with Big Slick chipped up Schwartz and made him a force for the rest of the night.

A big hand heads up was when Anthony flopped quad deuces and Zachary was able to make a good fold on the river.

First hand was dealt at 11 am with 348 weekend warriors all battling it out for a piece of the $174,000 prize pool.  The top 36 cashed thanks to Bob Scofield (Stratford, CT), who busted the bubble after dinner break.  Bob won the Omaha event earlier this week, and finished in 19th place today for $1,266.

There were many Borgata regulars amongst the tables, including Ravi "Rags" Raghavan, James Governa, Ylon Schwartz, Travis Greenawalt, Thomas Hoglund, Greg Ostrander, Roman Valerstein, and Will "The Thrill" Failla.

Elan Branas (Forest Hills, NY) was the first player to 180,000 and held the chip lead off an on until the final table where he finished in 3rd Place for $15,697.

But the man who finally got it done was Zachary Schwartz who collected all 6,960,000 chips and took home the Borgata Winter Poker Open Big Stack Semi-Turbo No Limit Hold'em trophy along with his $45,564 payday.  Congratulations again to our big winner!

Place - Name - Location - Amount Won
1. Zachary Schwartz (New York, NY) - $45,564
2. Anthony Bocchino (Brooklyn, NY) - $25,317
3. Elan Branas (Forest Hills, NY) - $15,697
4. Thomas Castellano (Staten Island, NY) - $12,659
5. Vitor Coelho (Tampa, FL) - $9,789
6. Rommy Lipman (Brooklyn, NY) - $8,270
7. Jason Andrews (Allison Park, PA) - $6,667
8. Michael Bonita (New York, NY) - $4,979
9. Karl Held (Forest Hills, NY) - $3,376
10. Spiro Markatos (Dix Hills, NY) - $2,194

FINAL RESULTS