After about 13 hours of play, Aidan Klingbeil emerged the winner of the PLO Megastack. It was a pretty stacked final table that included Klingbeil, runner-up Dylan Payne, Andy Truong, Chris Clisby, and Garett Maybery.
Klingbeil had the lead for most of the way, though Payne also held it a few times throughout the final table. Klingbeil took a big lead early in heads up when he flopped the nut straight against top two for Payne, and the straight held with a bricky runout.
That left Payne on the ropes, but he bounced back into it with an aces-over-queens cooler. Klingbeil chipped back up through small pots to about 3:2 ahead when they went for the final break of the night. Once they came back, Klingbeil found a great spot with a set of fours to leave Payne on fumes, but Payne wasn’t going gently.
He survived for several hands with premiums, managing to double back up to about 300k after being forced all in from the big blind. The miracle comeback wasn’t in the cards, however, as Klingbeil finally found a spot with queens while Payne woke up with sevens. With less than 10 bigs in front of him, that was plenty, and the money was in again.
No help came for Payne on the board, so he hit the cage for second-place money after a hard-fought battle while Klingbeil bagged the win. This was Klingbeil’s second win on the live felt, and will slot in as his second biggest score after a fourth place in the 2022 Summer Super Stack $550 Megastack (NLH).
