Darren Elias Wins Borgata Championship for $293k
November 28, 2017 1:17 pmThis week, the Borgata Championship Main Event took place at the Borgata Hotel Casino & Spa in Atlantic City, with 473 players entering the $2,700 tournament to create a prize pool worth $1,147,025. Five days later, and Darren Elias managed to overcome the tough field, including Mark Kaganovsky heads-up, to claim the title, and its first place prize of $293,062.
In 2014, Elias took down his first Borgata Championship event for $843,744, and following his latest victory now increases his live career earnings to $5,200,356. The New Jersey based pro has also been very active online, and boasts a further $3,804,230 in winnings under the screen name Darrenelias, with his biggest score coming after taking down the 2012 WCOOP $10,300 NL Hold’em [High Roller] for $574,695.
The Borgata Championship featured 45 paid places, and amongst the recognizable pros seeing a profit on their buy-ins was Christian Harder in 45th ($5,735), Aditya Prasetyo in 36th ($6,309), Joseph McKeehen in 25th ($7,112), Nicholas Schwarmann in 23rd ($7,112), Zachary Gruneberg in 16th ($9,061), and Michael Wang in 14th ($11,470).
Whenjust ten players remained, Elias then eliminated Edgar Lemus-Argueta in 10th, and Patrick Maritato in 9th, before being dealt A-J and doing likewise to Shankar Pillai (A-9) in 7th. Elias subsequently entered the final table of six with around 40% of all the chips still in play, with the players lining up as follows:
Darren Elias: 6,487,000
Paul Lambrakis: 2,338,000
Mark Kaganovsky: 1,641,000
Keven Stammen: 1,570,000
Dan Wach: 1,292,000
Mickey Woll: 867,000
Next, Mark Kaganovsky took care of Dan Wach in 6th, and Paul Lambrakis in 4th, and after Elias sent Keven Stammen to the rail in 3rd, he took a 10m to 4m chip lead over Kaganovsky into heads-up play. A tough final battle ensued, with Elias ultimately claiming the title after his Kh-Jh flush beat his opponent’s 10-4 trips hand on a Qh-10h-10s-9s-5h board. Meanwhile, Kaganovsky collected $169,186 for his runner-up finish, accounting for all but $26,363 of his live career earnings.
Final Table Results:
1: Darren Elias $293,062
2: Mark Kaganovsky $169,186
3: Keven Stammen $103,232
4: Paul Lambrakis $83,159
5: Mickey Woll $65,380
6: Dan Wach $54,484
7: Shankar Pillai $43,587
8: Brett Apter $33,264
9: Patrick Maritato $22,941