After fighting his way through a final table that took more than 16 hours to complete, the United State’s Kevin Schulz was able to come out on top to take down the 2015 European Poker Tour PokerStars Caribbean Adventure on Wednesday night.
Instead of the usual EPT eight-handed final table, the PCA combatants had played some extra hands on Tuesday and knocked out two players – Dylan Linde (8th) and Pratyush Buddiga (7th) – that would have been sitting at the felt on Wednesday. Still, the six men who came back to contest for the title were all deserving of being in attendance. Chip leader Chance Kornuth had a roughly 1.7 million chip lead over Schulz (7.86 million to 6.155 million) while Diego Ventura, Niklas Hambitzer, Juan Martin Pastor and Rami Boukai all were looking to get back in the event.
First out at the final table was the short-stacked Boukai, who only held one-tenth the chips that Kornuth had. Five hands into Wednesday’s play and with the blinds and antes eating him up, Boukai found pocket threes in his hole cards and pushed his stack to the center. Hambitzer made the call with an A-Q and, when an Ace appeared in the window of the flop, he took the lead. When a trey failed to appear on the turn or river, Boukai headed away from the PCA final table in sixth place and went to pack his bags.
The remaining five players jousted for quite some time following Boukai’s departure, with the chip lead moving from Kornuth to Schulz to Hambitzer. Schulz would assume the lead when, sitting with pocket Aces, Pastor got frisky with an A-K and moved all in. Schulz naturally made the call and, even though Pastor was able to get a King to improve to a pair, it was all Pastor would find on the board as he was eliminated in fifth place.
Kornuth, the start of day chip leader, was up and down the ladder as the action played out. At one point, Kornuth was the short stack (especially after doubling up Ventura), but he would fight back to retake his chip lead. As Kornuth entertained the PCA crowd with his roller-coaster ride, Schulz slowly whittled chips out of his opponents’ stack to establish a decent lead before the carnage struck.
After losing a huge hand to Kornuth (in which Kornuth miraculously found trip sevens on the river to defeat his pair of Kings), Hambitzer would be the next to drop from the field. Pushing with an A-Q, Hambitzer held a significant advantage over Schulz’ Q-9, but a nine on the flop pushed the American over the German. A second nine on the turn had Hambitzer drawing dead and, after the meaningless river card, Hambitzer headed for the exits in fourth place.
Eventually Kornuth’s aggressive strategy would either earn him the title or send him to the rail. In the case of the PCA final table, it was the latter for Kornuth as he attacked the big stack of Schulz with an A-8 over Schulz’ A-4 pre-flop. An A-J-5 must have looked great to Kornuth at the time, but the five on the turn opened the door to some more outs for Schulz. Like a thunderbolt, one of those outs – the 2♠ – hit on the river to give Schulz the unlikely runner-runner straight and send Kornuth to the showers in third place.
Despite being down by almost 4:1 (19.405 million to 5.025 million), Ventura didn’t just roll over and give Schulz the title. Ventura would earn a double up twelve hands into heads-up play to bring Schulz’ lead down to just 2:1, but Schulz went back to business and slowly chipped back up to his previous advantage. On the final hand, Schulz limped into the pot and Ventura checked to see a Q-6-4 flop. Ventura check-called a bet from Schulz and, on a K♣ turn, did the same. When another six came on the river, Ventura once again checked to Schulz, who obliged in firing a third bullet.
Ventura awoke on the river, moving his more than three million chips to the center and putting Schulz to the test. After debating his options and getting an accurate count of Ventura’s all-in, Schulz quietly made the call. Ventura turned up his 10-4 for bottom pair off the flop, but Schulz unveiled K-3 for a turned pair of Kings to capture the first major championship of the 2015 tournament poker season.
1. Kevin Schulz, $1,491,580
2. Diego Ventura, $907,080
3. Chance Kornuth, $641,140
4. Niklas Hambitzer, $482,820
5. Juan Martin Pastor, $380,720
6. Rami Boukai, $285,740
7. Pratyush Buddiga, $203,420*
8. Dylan Linde, $140,900*
9. Uwe Ritter, $111,440*
10. Shyam Srinivasan, $91,240*
(* – eliminated on Tuesday)
With the close of the action in the Bahamas, the denizens of the poker world now will head off into the four winds. Some will end up in Australia for the Aussie Millions, others will find their ways to Atlantic City for the Borgata Winter Poker Open or to California for the L. A. Poker Classic and some will head to their respective abodes to begin the trials for a return to Paradise Island in 2016. Probably taking a couple days to relax (and a well-deserved respite it is) is Kevin Schulz, the latest champion of the EPT PokerStars Caribbean Adventure Main Event!
