Poker News

A total of 242 players turned out for the $5,000 Main Event of the Wynn Classic and when the smoke cleared, poker pro Brandon Cantu stood tall above the field for $363,000. He defeated poker veteran Jared Jaffee heads-up.

The win resulted in 1,152 CardPlayer Player of the Year points for the young gun, who explained that despite the major victory, his prospects of winning the annual award were not helped tremendously: “I thought I was going to get more than 1,100 points. It didn’t do that much to help me. For some reason, it doesn’t have the feel as it would if you won a WPT event or a bracelet, but it feels great financially.” Cantu sits in 40th in CardPlayer’s Player of the Year race.

Jaffee is fresh off a fourth place finish in the World Poker Tour’s (WPT) Southern Poker Classic in January for $135,000 and collected $246,000 by virtue of taking second in the Wynn Classic Main Event this week. On the heads-up play, Cantu told Poker News Daily, “It was pretty short. When we got down to heads-up, he was down 5:1 in chips and I had a hand the first 10 hands. He didn’t have much of a chance. For some reason, I knew I was going to win. It had nothing to do with the player, but I had been catching lots of cards and cold decking people the whole tournament. It all worked out really well.”

The Wynn Classic Main Event lacked the television coverage that a WPT or World Series of Poker (WSOP) major final table might receive. However, the crop of high-stakes pros that turned out impressed Cantu: “It got a really good turnout and people were taking it really seriously. I don’t think the Wynn did a very good job of publicizing it. They didn’t let poker media outlets know about it or I think they’d have gotten a lot more players. It used to be a $10,000 tournament, but they lowered it to $5,000.” In celebration of his win, Cantu plans to take some well-deserved time off.

Cantu is a card-carrying member of Team UB.com and, as such, has been touched by the online poker site’s decision to axe the 2010 Aruba Poker Classic, a longtime staple of its annual schedule. Cantu relayed his disappointment with the tournament’s cancellation: “I am a little bummed. It’s actually my favorite tournament of the year from the standpoint of the nice beaches. You can’t beat where it is. UB took good care of their pros and the people who came.”

The 2010 WSOP Tournament of Champions has dominated poker news headlines this week as bracelet winners jockey for votes to be among the 20 participants selected by the general public. Cantu is a two-time bracelet winner and told Poker News Daily how he feels about the poker all-star game concept: “I hate lobbying for stuff like that, but I guess it’s a good idea. It’s kind of like an NBA All-Star Game ballot. It would make for really good television too.”

Cantu had traveled to Montreal for a bachelor party when he sat down with Poker News Daily, but still had visions of the Wynn Classic Main Event dancing in his head. In particular, tournament officials told Cantu and company that the event would likely span four days due to extra levels added in. However, Cantu had plans to travel to Canada on March 18th, one day after the third scheduled day of play, and so took it upon himself to ensure the event ended quickly; Cantu was a one-man wrecking crew down the stretch. Here’s how the final table shook out in the 2010 Wynn Classic Main Event:

1st Place: Brandon Cantu – $363,844
2nd Place: Jared Jaffee – $246,477
3rd Place: Melik Bagdasaryan – $129,107
4th Place: Tom Marchese – $73,356
5th Place: Keith Ferrera – $58,685
6th Place: Adam Taskinsoy – $46,948
7th Place: Ken Lennaard – $35,211
8th Place: Osmin Dardon – $23,474
9th Place: Christopher Cirlly – $20,540

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