Third time’s the charm for Bryn Kenney.
After an extended heads-up with huge swings against current WSOP champion Joe McKeehen, Kenney won his first Super High Roller title last night at the PCA.
Kenney managed to break his own Super High Roller spell, having finished third in this event twice already back in 2015 and 2011.
It was the largest $100k event yet in the history of the PCA. Sixty-six entries meant there was a prize pool of $5,626,000 to be shared among the top eight players.
At the end McKeehen and Kenney battled for 47 hands over three and a half hours – including the dinner break – before McKeehen finally bowed out.
He was still handsomely rewarded for his runner-up finish, though, collecting $1,220,840. Kenney earned $1,687,800.
Haxton Out First
It took two and a half hours before someone lost all his chips, so strictly speaking there were no early bustouts.
Isaac Haxton, who recently left Team PokerStars online, was the first player to go.
Haxton had already lost a big hand against Mustapha Kanit early on when he played a Royal Flush draw against a set of aces.
On a board of A♣ Q♣ T♣ --- 7♣ --- Q♥, Haxton found the second nut flush on the turn only to get counterfeited by a full house on the river.
Haxton managed to lay it down and recovered, but was finally busted by Kanit with T♠ 9♠ against the Italian’s A♠ K♠.
David Peters, who’s had an amazing run in the last couple of months, winning about $4m in five months and splitting the $10k Hyper Turbo Survivor event here in the Bahamas, finished fifth.
Then it was Kanit who couldn’t find the right cards anymore. As happens so often it was a coin flip that ended his tournament.
Kanit flipped with pocket sevens and lost to the A-Q of Ankush Mandavia, who jumped into a big chiplead after this hand.
Abandoned By Poker Gods
In an amazing turn of events, however, it was Mandavia who finished third, although he had as many chips as both the other players combined when three-handed play began.
It took 18 hands for Mandavia to lose 7 million chips, although he actually won five hands – just not the big ones.
Still, Mandavia picked up almost $790,000, more than doubling his former best live result which he achieved only three weeks ago when he came fifth in the WPT Alpha8 event at Bellagio.
Huge Up-and-Down Swings
The heads-up of these two world-class players featured huge up-and-down swings for both of them.
When the final duel began Kenney led McKeehen by 8 million to 6.5 million chips. Kenney managed to build his lead up to 10.2 vs 4.3 million before McKeehen came back, overtook his opponent and accumulated up to 11.7 million chips.
At this point Kenney was left with just 2.8 million, equivalent to 14 big blinds. Ten hands later, all the chips were in front of Kenney.
In the last hand Kenney shoved K-7o and McKeehen took no time to call with pocket fives. The board ran 7♦ 4♣ 7♥ 3s J♠, and it was all over. Official result and payouts:
Event #1, $100,000 NL Hold'em Super High Roller 8-Handed
Entries: 58 (44 uniques; 14 re-entries)
Prize pool: $5,626,000
Places paid: 8
1 Bryn Kenney, United States, $1,687,800
2 Joe McKeehen, United States, $1,220,840
3 Ankush Mandavia, United States, $787,640
4 Mustapha Kanit, Italy, $596,360
5 David Peters, United States, $461,340
6 Isaac Haxton, United States, $360,060
7 Daniel Dvoress, Canada, $286,920
8 Kathy Lehne, United States, $225,040
With this title Kenney moves into the Top 10 of the EPT SHR all-time money list, where he now occupies fifth place with prize money of $3,204,680.
The leader of this board is still Max Altergott with $3,426,200 followed by Steve O’Dwyer and Scott Seiver.
While the EPT PCA main event has also begun the most important upcoming events on January 9 are the 2-day $50k High Roller and a charity event hosted by EPT commentator and comedian Joe Stapleton, who’ll play in a televised event for the first time.
Watch all the action on the live stream right here.
