When you’re on a roll, you’re on a roll. In the fastest final table ever held on the World Poker Tour, Vivek Rajkumar, who is known as “Psyduck” in the online poker world, blazed to victory at the Borgata Poker Open in a mere 48 hands. In real time, determining the $1.4 million winner took less than three hours. In fact, players were out the door in time to beat rush hour traffic home. Let’s check out the action from the WPT Borgata Poker Open.
Rajkumar led wire to wire at the final table, coming in as the chip leader and holding 40% more chips than his next closest competitor. He would use his chip lead to take risks and put pressure on his opponents. The defining hand of the WPT Borgata Poker Open came when the two chip leaders, Rajkumar and poker pro Mark Seif, tangled. Seif held pocket aces and Rajkumar held tens. As luck would have it, Psyduck flopped a set of tens, leaving Seif barely breathing. The turn came a queen and the river came a harmless nine, crippling Seif and sending Rajkumar into a commanding chip lead, holding over half the chips in play. Seif would eventually be eliminated in fifth place from the six-man final table.
Dan Heimiller was sent out of the tournament in third place. He held Q-3 of diamonds and pushed all in pre-flop, but was called by Rajkumar, who showed A-5. Rajkumar flopped a five, turned a five, and rivered a five for quads. Holding a 4.25:1 chip lead heads up, Rajkumar bounced Sang Kim from the tournament heads-up when Kim’s A-Q could not hold up against Rajkumar’s A-J on Hand #48 of final table play. Overall, it was a solid run of cards for Rajkumar, who pocketed $1.4 million.
WPT Live Updates Hostess Amanda Leatherman asked Rajkumar what he put Kim on in the final hand of the tournament. Rajkumar responded, “It’s not so much what I put him on, it’s more that the stacks were shallow and I can’t just fold every single time he re-raised me. He could have a baby ace or he could have a middle ace, so I decided to go with the hand and he had me out-kicked with his queen. In that moment, I’d do the same thing again.”
On running through the WPT Borgata Poker Open in record-setting fashion, Rajkumar was humble: “The final table was tough. I got so lucky. I had tens against aces and A-J against A-Q and sucked out. I picked up good spots to move all in or raise, so I think it was a tough table.” Here is how the rest of the top six shook out:
1st: Vivek Rajkumer – $1,424,500
2nd: Sang Kim – $750,000
3rd: Dan Heimiller – $387,500
4th: Jason Strochak – $337,500
5th: Mark Seif – $287,500
6th: Andrew Knee – $237,500
Other notable finishers included:
10. Michael Binger – $65,000
11. Steve Dannenmann – $65,000
12. Thayer Rasmussen – $65,000
23. Chris Bell – $26,000
24. Nam Le – $26,000
27. Ted Forrest – $27,000
32. Brandon Cantu – $21,000
Next up for the World Poker Tour is the North American Poker Championship, which kicks off on October 10th from the Fallsview Casino Resort in Niagara Falls, Ontario. The CDN $10,300 buy-in tournament will crown a winner on Thursday, October 16th.
