Event 4 (PLO) Recap

$350 + $50 Big Stack Pot Limit Omaha

The big stack tournament brought out a lot of big name veterans, but in the end it's a 21-year-old rookie that wins the PLO title of the Borgata Fall Poker Open.

Chris Brand (Little Egg Harbor, NJ) outlasted the 144 player field to win the trophy and the $14,665 first place prize. "I played pretty well," says the College of New Jersey student, "every time I was all in, I was pretty much ahead."

Brand finished just ahead of four other players who all traded chips in crazy 5-handed play.

Stephen Boyer (Seboyeta, NM) 2nd/$8,067, Oliver Entine (Philadelphia, PA) 3rd/$4,644, Brian McCaffrey (Roosevelt, NJ), 4th/$3,911, and Michael Drabot (Riverside, NJ) 5th/$2,933 all saw there title chances slip away into the hands of Brand.

"You just have to run good at the final table," said McCaffrey, who was near the top of the chip counts throughout the 2-day tournament. "I had aces hold up three times, but the fourth time they didn't."

McCaffrey had nearly 1/3 of the chips in play when he won a 1.1 million chip pot and knocked Adam Koll (Westfield, NJ) out in 7th place ($1,956). But a few orbits later, Brand played a 400k chip pot with McCaffrey who turned the nut straight. McCaffrey folded to the all-in bet and Brand had the lead for good.

When Day 2 began, 12 players returned for their shot at the remaining part of the $50,400 total buy-in as Boyer was the chip leader. But the cowboy hat wearing player from New Mexico was in the middle of the pack when the final table began before he rallied for second place.

The field featured a gross number of players, 144 to be exact, as pointed out by WSOP bracelet winner Chris Reslock. He was joined by fellow bracelet holders Freddy Rouhani and "Miami" John Cernuto, along with WPT title holder Kevin Saul, but none of the big names made the final 18 and the money.

Notables who did cash included Larry Gold (Medford, NY) 13th/$856 and poker4life co-founders Jeremy Schwartz (New York, NY) 15th/$856 and Ethan Ruby (New York, NY) 6th/$2,444.

Rounding out the top ten were Dan Horan (Huntington, NY) 8th/$1,467, Richard Bell (Forest Hills, NY) 9th/$1,100, and Michael Farahnick (New York, NY) 10th/$978.

But in the end it's Brand who takes the title and is a rare breed when it comes to the younger generation of poker players. He says he, "doesn't like to miss class to play poker," and was glad that his schedule permitted him to play.