Event 16 Recap

$700 + $70 + $500 Six-Max Purple Chip Bounty NLH (RE)

The bounty hunters were out in force again at the start of the $700 + $70 +$500 Purple Chip Bounty event yesterday.   When all the entries and re-entries were counted, the total was 236.  Total buy-ins generated was $165,200.  There was also a total of $118,000 in bounties to be collected.

Lots of Borgata notables turned out for this event: Adam Lippert, Nachman Berlin, David Zeitlen, Feming Chan, Keith Crowder, Ryan Eriquezzo, George Medrano, Abe Korotki, Lee Childs, Austen Johnson, Bill Blanda, Steve Ryan, Jason Young, Sheree Bykofski, Jesse Yaginuma, David Inselberg, Matthew Maccaroni, Russell Crane, Jamie Kerstetter, Josh Brikis, Ben Klier, Kevin Saul, Jeremy McLaughlin, Alex Nepomnyaschiy, Christian Harder, Arkadiy Tsinis, Johannsy Joseph, Miami John Cernuto, Chris Bell, and Mike 'Little Man' Sica.

The money bubble burst shortly after midnight on day one and four players would cash out before the close of play.  That left 20 players to return on day two.

WPT titleist Kevin Saul (Chicago, IL) led the field with 530,000 chips.  He rode that stack all the way to the final table of seven, but that's where his run ended.  He finished 7th for $6,810.

Rachel Nagy (Mooresville, NC) was the only woman to make it to day two and therefore was the last woman standing.  She busted out in 8th place, earning $4,807.

The final table included two players who had been there before in the previous week.

Michael Michnik (Hollywood, FL) already had two second-place finishes during the Borgata Fall Poker Open.  He finished 2nd in event 1 ($49,868) and 2nd in event 10 ($17,576).  His third final-table appearance of the Open ended in 5th place ($12,018 plus bounties).  Michnik already resides at the top of the Borgata Leaderboard, but this finish will extend his lead.

'Action' Bob Hwang (Barnegat, NJ) returned for day two in 15th place in chips, but made it all the way to 4th place before busted out, picking up $15,223.

Steven Rodriguez (Staten Island, NY) finished in 3rd place, earning $19,229.  This is his second 3rd-place finish during the Borgata Fall Poker Open.  He finished 3rd in event 8, $350 Deep Stack NL ($17,477) just a few days ago.

Leonid Vizirov (Chalfont, PA) was 17th out of 20 returning players, but he parlayed his short-stack into a second-place finish, good for $25,238.  Vizirov has numerous cashes at Borgata and elsewhere, but this is his highest finish and largest cash on record.

Jeff Papola (New York, NY) finished in 1st place, earning $42,469 and the engraved Borgata trophy (along with the 11 bounties he collected along the way, for another $5,500).  "I was running really hot right away" he commented on this event. 

Although he doesn't consider himself a 'short-handed specialist', Papola won his WSOP bracelet in a Six Handed event and also had a 2nd place finish in another Six Handed event in 2010.   This summer, he took 3rd in another Six Handed event at the WSOP. 

When asked how his poker life has changed since online poker's 'Black Friday', he said "I play a lot of smaller buy-in events that I wouldn't have come down for before".