Atlantic City has been among the hottest locations for gambling in the past years, but this week is aiming to increase heat levels at Borgata Hotel Casino and Spa as the location is hosting the eagerly anticipated Deepstack Challenge poker festival spanning over this week. The last event of the Deep phase of the congregation granted Leonard Villane the first-place prize of 7,005 following a six-way deal.
Many players well-acquainted with the field would agree that deep stack events are among the preferred ones, as they guarantee their players more freedom for action and the chance to explore the player pool in a more time-efficient manner. Monday brought the first event of the progressively more exciting festival. Starting with three Deep events, going through one Deeper tournament, and ultimately reaching the two Deepest ones, players at the Borgata are in for a treat.
This their single-day event of the generous schedule of the poker festival was also the last one of the three starting Deep Stack tournaments, each of them featuring a larger buy-in and cash prizes. This third event transform Wednesday into yet another riveting day of action for as many as 223 entries. Each of them opted for the mandatory buy-in for participation which amounted to some $180 and this reserved them a spot at one of the poker tables at Borgata.
The originally announced guaranteed prize pool for this No-Limit Hold’em tournament amounted to some $20,000, but in reality, the impressive interest towards participation resulted in an overall prize pool of $32,000. Thanks to this unexpected turn of events the top 27 positions on the official rank list of this event were granted generous payouts for their deep run in the structure of Event 3.
Just like in the previous two events of the Deepstacks Challenge, players were well on their way to the cash payouts and the money bubble, when it was time for their dinner break, providing them with the chance to recuperate and return to action with a fresh outlook on the action.
Poker Action Progresses onto Day 3 of the Festival
The first player to make it to the cash payouts was Maria Durante who claimed the minimum prize of $292 coming with the 27th position on the official leader board. For the larger part of the last levels ahead of the Final Table Thomas Blesi was holding the chip lead, but this situation was quickly overturned by the eventual winner Villane. He managed to bag big just in time for the Final action taking place and this provided him with an advance over the surviving players.
There were some 9 participants left, Victor Stover nursing the smallest chip stack of 235,000. The first one to exit this close to the throne was Alekkos Papadopoulos bagging some $649 for his excellent run. Once players were reduced to only six remaining in their seats, a deal was arranged among them, providing a fair slice of the pie for everyone.
The lucky player who reached the first place was originally supposed to claim $9,087, but following the deal, Villane bagged $7,005 for his performance as he had a total of 2,450,000 in chips. The runner-up position and consolation prize of $4,449 were reserved for Blesi and his chip stack of 1,089,000. Linda Brandaleone was the player who reached the 3rd place and some $3,663 for her deep run.
Now that this phase of the festival is over, Thursday brings the single one Deeper Stack No-Limit Hold’em event which features a buy-in of $230. The guaranteed prize pool for this event reaches $25,000, but estimations show that it would be surpassed. Poker action is set to continue well into Saturday when the last event of this festival would take place with a buy-in of $400 and a guaranteed prize pool of $50,000.
