ShareImage courtesy of PokerGO.com
Dan Smith donned his Stetson to celebrate taking down event #9 of the US Poker Open highroller series in Vegas, the man nicknamed “Cowboy Dan” picking up $399,500 for his win which he ascribed to a lucky seat draw and a magical rock!
The penultimate event of the 10-tournament series saw a field of 47 entries play a $25k buy-in NLH, with seven players set to share in the $1.175million prizepool.
Neither of the Foxens could make it to the paid spots, with event 8 winner Ike Haxton, leading tournament moneywinner Justin Bonomo, and PokerBrat Phil Hellmuth also falling by the wayside.
Someone has to take the bubble spot and this time it fell to Johan Schulz-Pedersen, losing a classic race to PokerGO founder Cary Katz, playing on home turf as it were in the PokerGO Studios at the Aria.
Schulz-Pedersen: A♠ Q♥
Katz: 8♠ 8♦
Board: J♥ 5♣ 4♠ J♦ 2♦
That left the remaining seven players with $47,000 locked up, but for Negreanu, on his second bullet, it would still require another ladder to turn a profit. It wasn’t to be, though, with KidPoker tweeting out his thoughts...
Negreanu’s elimination set the final table and when the players reconvened on day two, it was Schulman who would depart first, his cut-off squeeze called by Smith with big slick, and the river ending his run in 6th spot for $70,500.
Smith also disposed of Punsri in 5th place, and then another timely river accounted for Katz in 4th...
Smith: K♣ J♣
Katz: K♠ Q♠
Flop: 8♥ 8♦ 4♣
Turn: 2♣
River: A♣
Brian Kim’s USPO title dreams ended when he found himself on the wrong end of straight draw against Tony ‘Ren’ Lin, and that left the Chinese-born New Yorker facing Smith heads-up.
As the final hand showed, when it’s your day, it’s your day, this time the flop favouring Smith and handing him the trophy...
Final results
| 1 | Dan Smith | $399,500 |
| 2 | Ren Lin | $258,500 |
| 3 | Brian Kim | $176,250 |
| 4 | Cary Katz | $129,250 |
| 5 | Punnat Punsri | $94,000 |
| 6 | Nick Schulman | $70,500 |
| 7 | Daniel Negreanu | $47,000 |
Smith explained about his good luck afterwards: “Before the tournament, I don't know if you know, but Sean Winter is famous for his deck reads. I was taking my seat and I had Winter draw me in. So first time he draws me in is first time I win here.
He added: “Also, Darren Elias gave me what someone told him is a magical rock. And he gave it to me. I don't know which of the two it is, but I'm going to find out.”
Now up to 5th spot in the overall leaderboard race, Smith said of the Golden Eagle victor’s trophy: “I think it would be a cool thing to win. That trophy is unbelievable. It's 54 pounds. I would love to win it. But we'll see how it goes. I've gotten third, first. A second seems like a nice casual round out, but I don't wanna be greedy.”
We’ll have a full round up of the $50k buy-in final event for you tomorrow, as well as the destination of the USPO Golden Eagle trophy, so be sure to check in!
