Sunday night was Cake's monthly $250,000 guaranteed flagship tournament. And we put on extra icing in the form of $25,000 added to the prize pool as part of our player appreciation week. Well, when the dust cleared, 1029 players had anted up (blowing through the guarantee), we tossed the extra $25K on the table, and they were off and running.
The stage was set for the final table shortly after duralast, who had been among the chip leaders the entire event, took A♣K♣ up against 7♣6♣ for all the money preflop. Needless to say, he was a big favorite, [1] until the flop came down 8-9-T, giving his opponent, stackinhigh9, a flopped straight. A queen came on the turn, giving duralast a taste of four outs, but the river changed nothing and he was gone in 12th place. Shortly thereafter, we ended up at ten players. Tenth place would receive a bit over $4,000, but first prize was a $53,527 - a monster win in every respect.
The battle continued, until we were down to just two players - jimproc and norcal83. They went back and forth, but eventually norcal83 chipped away until he had a commanding lead. The final hand was AK for jimproc against norcal83's (wait for this, folks) "83". Hmmm. Anyway, I doubt he'll change his screen-name any time soon, because the board blanked off until a three dropped on the river. That left jimproc to count his $37,897 in winnings, while norcal83 took home the big prize.
norcal83(aka "Brett Murphy") lives in Santa Rosa, California, best known as the gateway to the wine country, and home of Charles Schultz airport, named after the creator of the Peanuts comic strip (and life-long Santa Rosa resident). Brett says that his status as a poker "pro" is unclear, "but I do well at online poker." He says he has no particular plans for the money, though I might suggest a fine Sonoma merlot would be a good place to start. And I'm sure we'll be seeing norcal83 in next week's $100K guaranteed event - I hope we'll see you there too.
P.S. Yes, it's true - responding to a reference to the movie Shaft, I quoted the entire rapped bridge to the Theme from Shaft in chat, from memory. The railbirds were blown away.
(Warner Bros)
There were calls for a sound option in the Cake client to play the Theme from Shaft when you sit down at a table. Believe me, we've heard worse ideas.
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[1] But probably not as big a favorite as you thought. If you guessed 63:37, you were correct.
