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Isaac Kempton burst through the $3million career milestone with a debut PokerGO Tour victory in the US Poker Open, taking down event #6 for $279,000.
Event 6 on the 10-event schedule was a $15k buy-in PLO tournament which attracted 62 entries that included Daniel Negreanu, Erik Seidel, and Ike Haxton.
Only nine players would make the paid spots, and for Negreanu it was a close-but-no-cigar attempt, KidPoker bemoaning his bad luck the following day...
Negreanu fell in 11th but the bubble spot actually went to Masashi Oya...
Oya: A♣ K♣ 3♥ 3♣
Kempton: A♠ J♣ 9♥ 9♦
Board: 5♥ 10♥ J♦ 5♦ 7♥
Gregory Shuda, VP of a screen-printing company in Wisconsin, was the big surprise of the tournament, and he proceeded to KO two players in one hand...
Shuda: A♦ 8♥ 3♦ 2♠
Collopy: A♣ A♥ 8♠ 2♦
Seidel: 10♣ 7♦ 7♣ 3♣
Flop: 3♣ 10♦ Q♦
Turn: 6♦
River: 5♣
Shuda then took out Koliakoudakis to end the first day with just four left, then started where he left off by KOing Ben Lamb to start day two.
That left Shuda, Kempton, and Martin Zamani to battle for the title, the latter infamous for his role as whistleblower in the Bryn Kenney cheating allegations.
No off-table drama this time, but plenty on it as Zamani had to settle for 3rd spot when he got all his chips in on a flopped set but lost out to Shuda’s turned quads...
Shuda: K♥ 6♠ 5♣ 5♦
Zamani: Q♠ Q♦ 8♠ 7♦
Flop: Q♣ 5♥ 2♦
Turn: 5♠
River: 3♥
Heads-up was one-way traffic as Kempton overturned a chip deficit and gradually ground Shuda down, finishing things off in the following hand...
Final results
| 1 | Isaac Kempton | $279,000 |
| 2 | Gregory Shuda | $186,000 |
| 3 | Martin Zamani | $130,200 |
| 4 | Ben Lamb | $93,000 |
| 5 | Roussos Koliakoudakis | $74,000 |
| 6 | Erik Seidel | $55,800 |
| 7 | Jim Collopy | $46,500 |
| 8 | Chris Brewer | $37,200 |
| 9 | Michael Wang | $27,900 |
Afterwards Kempton revealed why he moved to Vegas: “Well here's the thing, I like money. And I'm pretty good at poker. And you can make a lot of money playing poker.
“So I came out to Vegas because they're always playing cards here. There's barely any card games in Delaware. Not stakes like this, that's for sure. So I thought, Hey, I'll come out to Vegas. I'll take all their money and I'll be rich.”
So far, that has worked out very well for Kempton, who broke through the $3million career tournament earnings barrier with his big win and explained why PLO appeals to him.
“You know in Omaha, you get to gamble more, is the thing. In Hold'em there's only two cards, someone gets aces and they make a big raise and what are you gonna do?
“In PLO, you know they got the aces? It doesn't matter, you call anyways. 'Cus you can hit. You can hit something big with the four cards. Four cards makes all the difference. It's good for gambling. It's good for fun. Everybody loves four cards man.”
