Yary Hing Wins the Ante Up Poker Tour Jamul Casino Main Event for $17,856
A wild and action-packed tournament has come to a close, and Yary Hing has been declared the winner of the Ante Up Poker Tour Jamul Casino $550 Main Event. Hing rode the wave of an up-and-down day, taking the chip lead at the final table and striking a deal with second-place finisher Christopher Smith to win the championship.
"I feel good, this is my first big win," Ying said. "I've been working hard at this, and it's paying off right now."
Ying, Smith, Scott Lewis and Young Hilliard made a four-way ICM chop deal at the final table, in which Ying was the chip leader at the time. Per the terms of the deal, Ying was awarded $17,000, Smith and Leiws won $14,000, and Hilliard earned $13,000. The four then agreed to play on for the $1,650 seat to the 2020 AUPT Main Event and remaining $856 in the prize pool.
After about 30 minutes of heads-up play, Ying and Smith reached a deal, with Smith winning the $1,650 seat, and Ying taking the $856 and the right be called the official tournament champion. With the championship comes the honor of gracing the cover of the November issue of Ante Up Magazine for Ying, a San Diego local.
"I wanted to prove something to myself," Ying said. "I've been playing a lot of tournaments and I've been getting close. I've been somehow not making first place."
| Place | Winner | Country | Prize (USD) |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Yari Hing | United States | $17,836 |
| 2 | Christopher Smith | United States | $15,650 |
| 3 | Scott Lewis | United States | $14,000 |
| 4 | Young Hilliard | United States | $14,000 |
| 5 | Najib Kero | United States | $4,736 |
| 6 | Ralph Mittman | United States | $3,924 |
| 7 | David Lebhar | United States | $3,393 |
| 8 | Deven Ware | United States | $2,969 |
| 9 | Afzal Atta | United States | $2,553 |
Final Table Action
The Main Event was played at a blistering, high-energy pace throughout each of the opening day flights, and that pace didn't slow down on the final day.
A total of 34 players started Day 2, but that field was trimmed down to the nine-handed final table just three and a half hours into the day.
Smith came into the final table with a commanding chip lead, with his 1.4 million chip total more than twice that of Hing's, whose 655,000 was the second biggest stack going into nine-handed play.
Afzal Atta was the first ousted at the final table, suffering the wrong end of a cooler against Najid Kero. Atta got all of his chips in on the turn with eights full of nines, but an ace on the river gave Kero a better full house and sent Atta out in ninth place for $2,553.
Two more players went out within the next 20 minutes, as Deven Ware (8th, $2,969) and David Lebhar (7th, $3,393) were the next to go.
The pace of eliminations started to slow down a bit when the tournament went six handed. Ralph Mittman, who has built a formidable 1.5 million stack at one point, saw most of his chips fall in a set-over-set hand against Lewis. He went out a few hands later, running his ace-jack into Ying's pocket aces. Mittman took home $3,924 for the sixth-place finish.
Kero went out in fifth place ($4,736) on the very next hand, with once again Ying scoring the knockout.
The final four players grinded along for a level, before coming to the terms of the four-way deal.
Sweetwater Series a First for AUPT
The $550 Main Event was the centerpiece of the Sweetwater Series, an eight-tournament event that marked the first-ever visit to Southern California for the Ante Up Poker Tour.
The series was also the first poker tournament festival to be hosted at Jamul Casino's newly opened poker room, which began operating earlier in 2019. The San Diego, California area poker room drew a field that was heavy on local players, as the San Diego poker scene got a taste of a new tradition of tournament poker in the area.
The next stop for the AUPT comes in November, as the tour stops at the Wild Horse Pass Casino in the Phoenix, Arizona area.