We are down to the last six players in the 2015 European Poker Tour (EPT) PokerStars Caribbean Adventure (PCA) Main Event as the first major live poker tournament of the year draws to a close today. Chance Kornuth has a solid lead, holding 7,860,000 chips, compared to Kevin Schulz’s 6,155,000. Though the next closest player doesn’t even have 4,000,000 chips, all but the shortest stack have enough to make a serious dent on the chip leaders in just a single hand. The winner at the end of today’s final table will grab nearly $1.5 million.
Kornuth has had a nice live tournament career, earning almost $1.8 million in his lifetime. His biggest cash came just this past July when he won the $10,000 No-Limit Hold’em event at the Bellagio Cup X for $526,224. Coming in close behind that one may be the most important score of his career, the first and only World Series of Poker bracelet victory of his career. He won it back in 2010 in $5,000 Pot-Limit Omaha, cashing for just over half a million dollars.
Kornuth began Tuesday with about 2,000,000 chips, but quickly saw that chopped in half. He climbed back (obviously), but didn’t really start making his move until there were 15 players left. He took a large pot from Shyam Srinivasan without a showdown to get his stack to over 3,000,000 and then knocked out Scott Baumstein in 15th place with A-Q against K-J to lift his stack to 4,600,000.
His other huge pot occurred with just 10 players remaining in the tournament. Kornuth raised pre-flop to 110,000 chips and Juan Martin Pastor re-raised to 300,000. Kornuth four-bet to 580,000 and Pastor called. Both players checked the 9♦-8♦-7♦ flop, but when the 4♠ was dealt on the turn, Pastor led out with an 800,000 chip bet. Kornuth called and the river revealed the 5♠. Both players checked and Kornuth flipped over A-K, beating Pastor’s A-Q.
The six-handed final table will start a little bit later than previous days did, kicking off a 1:00pm local time at the Atlantis resort in the Bahamas. The action will be streamed on the internet with hole cards with just a short delay to protect the integrity of the game.
2015 EPT PokerStars Caribbean Adventure Main Event – Final Table Chip Counts
1. Chance Kornuth – 7,860,000
2. Kevin Schulz – 6,155,000
3. Diego Ventura – 3,980,000
4. Niklas Hambitzer – 3,100,000
5. Juan Martin Pastor – 2,655,000
6. Rami Boukai – 780,000
