Limit Hold’em can be a bit of a tough sell especially given the overwhelming number of players that specialize in No Limit Hold’em rather than Limit Hold’em. The buy-in for Event 14 even increased to $3,000 from last year’s $2,000, but that didn’t stop 337 players from coming out and creating a $920,010 prize pool. This meant $220,817 for 1st place.
Well known players such as Victor Ramdin and Sorel Mizzi returned for Day 3 and battled it out amongst the final 18 on a quest for the prestigious bracelet. Neither would make it to the final table, however. Mizzi started the day on a short stack and ended up busting 16th after losing a coinflip with 33 against J6. Ramdin also met an unfortunate end as he got coolered repeatedly and finally finished in 13th place.
As these eliminations were taking place, Tyler Bonkowski was amassing a stack. He began the day in the middle of the pack but came to the final table with second place chips. The chip lead was then passed around quite a bit for the next few hours, something quite common in Limit Hold’em since players are constantly seeing flops.
By the time the players reached the first dinner break of the final table, Brandon Demes was in the lead with 845,000 chips while Bonkowski was a distant second with 480,000. At this point eight players remained.
The hours waned on, though, and Bonkowski began to steadily wear everyone down by staying active and hitting hands. Once it got four-handed, he had an almost 2 to 1 chip lead on second place, leaving him in a very enviable spot.
Demes was able to bust two players before heads-up play, however, which meant that the remaining players had equal stacks by the time it was two-handed.
The heads-up match that followed showed just how swingy Limit Hold’em can be. The players started with 1.5 million chips each, but it didn’t take long for Bonkowski to find himself with only 250,000 chips. Demes could not hang on to this dominating chip lead, however. Things took a turn for the worst and before he knew it, he was down to 500,000 chips. Talk about crazy action!
Everything finally finished up with Demes getting all his chips in on a 655T board with KQ. Unfortunately Bonkowski held KT, however, and Demes busted in 2nd place for $136,419.
The day belonged to Tyler Bonkowski, another first-time bracelet winner. He weathered the Limit storm and earned himself a handsome $220,817. Congratulations to him and everyone else who cashed in the event. Please see below for the final table payouts.
1 – Tyler Bonkowski – $220,817
2 – Brandon Demes – $136,419
3 – Andrew Brongo – $100,198
4 – Shawn Keller – $74,171
5 – Matt Sterling – $55,338
6 – Mitch Schock – $41,621
7 – Casey McCarrel – $31,547
8 – Ron Burke – $24,095
9 – Jeff Shulman – $18,547