Third last year, the winner this year – Chris Moore obviously likes playing poker at the Wynn
Thursday 20th March 2008
The $10,000 Wynn Classic saw a plethora of star players come to the Vegas casino aiming to win the lot, but the final table saw only one recognised pro player in with a shout. In the end it was a young player who had final tabled last year that went two better and took it down.
At the start of play, the chip counts looked like this:
Seat 1: Ardavan Yazdi — 405,000
Seat 2: Eugene Todd — 236,000
Seat 3: Alemu Tesema — 230,000
Seat 4: Larry Wright — 572,500
Seat 5: Ricky Chow — 507,000
Seat 6: Blake Cahail — 299,500
Seat 7: Jace Markgraf — 167,500
Seat 8: Ryan Young — 714,000
Seat 9: Chris Moore — 536,000
Eugene Todd was the one player whose name might be recognised by some, but he was the first to leave the Wynn after his pocket tens ran into the pocket queens of Markgraf. The ninth place finish netted Todd $31,952.
Two players who couldn’t get going were Larry Wright and Alemu Tesema with Wright even quipping that he’d folded away 375,000 chips away. Tesema was also struggling, and when finally down to ten big blinds he pushed with J-9 against Cahail’s suited T-3. The ten on the flop was bad for Tesema, the one which came on the turn however was fatal. Eighth place earned him $35,502 in prize money.
From there came quick fire action, and with it eliminations. Chow was the next to drop in seventh, his jacks getting cracked by the tens of Ryan Young, and the short-stacked wizardry of Wright came to an end when he couldn’t win a race with K-Q against Cahail’s pocket eights. Markgraf went out in fifth after he ended up in bad shape pre-flop, with his Q-8 being dominated by Young’s K-Q. Yazdi’s tournament came to an end when his pocket threes were a long way behind Cahail’s queens and stayed behind. That left the Wynn with three.
Going into the dinner break, the chip counts of the final three were:
Ryan Young: 1,563,000
Chris Moore: 1,115,000
Blair Cahail: 993,000
Thoughts of a prolonged fight were snubbed when, as the players settled back into their seats from the break, Cahail decided to move all in before the flop, and was called by Young. Cahail had contrived to get the worst of it with Q-To, which had one overcard to Young’s knaves. The board offered no reprieve for the move, and Cahail cashed a little over $177,000 for his third-place finish.
Heads-up action was brief, owing mainly to a cooler with a suck out for extra drama. Young raised on the button to 50,000 and Moore called. The flop came Js-8d-5s, and Moore check raised Young’s 100,000 bet to 400,000 total. Youjng moved all in, and Moore instantly called with top and bottom pair, leaving Young’s top pair top kicker drawing to three outs. No ace came, and Moore took in a massive pot worth 3.2 million.
With just 400,000 left, Young decided that seeing one card (an ace) was enough to move in, and Moore looked at just one king before making the call. Young’s Ah-5h might have felt like a good enough hand in that spot, but Moore’s other king meant he only had one overcard to the pair. The doorcard made Moore a set of kings, as the board rolled out Kc-Td-7c-6c-2h, giving Moore the $692,286 as well as the 2008 Wynn Classic title.
