When we were kids, my brother and I were huge Milwaukee Brewers fans (and still are). Baseball’s all-time stolen base leader, Rickey Henderson, was never a member of the Brewers, but my brother loved him nonetheless because they shared the same first name (though my sibling’s name doesn’t have the “e”). As such, I predict the child version of my bro would have just become a gigantic fan of last night’s winner of the 2018 PokerStars Caribbean Adventure $100,000 Super High Roller Event, Cary Katz.
Unfortunately for us, we are not related to the man, so there are no generous birthday gifts in our future. For his real relatives, though, they could be in for quite the boon after Katz’s nearly $1.5 million win.
One thing that is nuts about Katz’s victory is that he did not even play on Day 1 of the tournament. As players were allowed to register before the beginning of Day 2, he did just that, sacrificing the ability to build up chips on the first day. Of course, he could have busted out on Day 1, so there is a trade-off there. With just 48 entrants, though, opting to skip the first day is a sizable risk.
As such, Katz was one of the short stacks going into the seven-handed final table with 855,000 chips, one of just two players below the million chip mark. For comparison, the three players at the top of the standings – Ivan Luca, Justin Bonomo, and Daniel Negreanu – had 2.760 million, 2.695 million, and 2.415 million, respectively.
For quite a while, Katz made little to no headway, languishing at the bottom of the chip counts. Even after he doubled twice and two players busted out by Hand 45 of the final table, Katz was still the short stack with 1.210 million chips. Luca and Bryn Kenney, meanwhile, were up over 4 million.
Shockingly, Luca and Kenney locked horns two hands later, with both ending up all-in. Kenney’s A-K bested Luca’s A-J and suddenly the chip lead from nearly the entire day was out in fifth place and Kenney had 8.260 million chips.
Katz was up and down for a while after that, mostly remaining the short stack, but he got aggressive leading up to Hand 121, frequently shoving and forcing folds. After Kenney lost a solid pot to Bonomo, there was virtually a three-way tie at about 4 million chips.
A few hands later, Katz forced Kenney out of a big hand and when Bonomo knocked out Kenney shortly thereafter, it was somehow Katz in the lead going into heads-up, 6.695 million to 5.305 million. And it didn’t take long for Katz to clinch it. He extended his lead four hands into heads-up when his quads beat Bonomo’s full house (it was impressive that Bonomo wasn’t eliminated right there).
Three hands later, Bonomo shoved for 3.3 million with A-K and Katz called with 8-8. Bonomo wasn’t able to pair either of his cards, capping Cary Katz’s amazing run to the Super High Roller title.
2018 PokerStars Caribbean Adventure $100K Super High Roller – Final Table Results
1. Cary Katz – $1,492,340
2. Justin Bonomo – $1,077,800
3. Bryn Kenney – $686,960
4. Daniel Negreanu – $521,140
5. Ivan Luca – $402,700
6. Ike Haxton – $307,940
7. Sam Greenwood – $248,720
