"ClarkWesterfeld" has become the newest champion in the Borgata Spring Poker Open Online Series, topping a field of 162 entries in the $215 buy-in Event #7: $20,000 GTD NLH. The tournament generated a prize pool of $32,400, well surpassing the guarantee and paying out a first-place prize of $8,424 after just shy of six hours of play.

The action started slow due to the deep-stacked nature of the event, but the registration period remained open for three hours and the entries, eliminations, and re-entries all piled up as that time went by. Forty players remained during the penultimate level of late registration, but that number dropped to 30 by the time registration closed despite the field gaining just six entries over that timeframe.

Eighteen players would make it into the money, and it took a half-hour before the bubble was reached. Hand-for-hand play began with 20 remaining, and Ari “spinach_kale” Engel found himself bowing out in 20th before "IIIIIIIIIIII" was eliminated on the direct bubble by "smoothustler."

In the Money

Eliminations came steadily at first once play reached the money, with an elimination every five to seven minutes over a 20-minute span before the field went from 14 to 10 in the blink of an eye. as "JinYang" (14th place) and "thehebrewhammer" (13th place) were knocked out almost simultaneously with "odo23" (12th place) and "SugarJ" (11th place) following suit immediately thereafter in the same fashion.

The final table bubble then lasted more than a full level, with "ClarkWesterfeld" atop the counts at that time. "golden13" wound up being the odd person out after running pocket eights into the pocket jacks eventual eighth-place finisher "sri50k", and the final table was set.

Final Table Action

"IReadYrSoul" was the first to go at the final table after getting all in with king-queen and being unable to hold to the king-seven suited of eventual second-place finisher "rumpthumper." Not long after, "sri50k" found themselves short after doubling "Djp120388" (3rd place), and ran queen-jack into the pocket aces of "PompYouUp" (6th place) to finish in eighth place.

Seven players quickly became four as "smoothustler" (7th place), "PompYouUp" (6th place), and "MattEMenz" (5th place) all hit the rail within an orbit's time, all being eliminated via a different type of cooler.

"ClarkWesterfeld" quickly pulled away when four-handed play began, amassing over half the chips in play within a level's time. The deck stayed in their favor as they scored all three remaining eliminations in the tournament: they knocked out "Djp120388" with king-nine to ace-king and then had pocket jacks hold versus the king-ten of "Turkeyleg" to take the tournament heads up.

The heads-up match lasted for about two-thirds of a level before stacks found their way in on the turn after "ClarkWesterfeld" turned the nut straight, topping "rumpthumper's" turned two pair to put an exclamation mark on the victory in dramatic fashion.

Event #7 Final Table Results