Taylor Wins PLO Deepstack Hyper; Defending Champ Lee Bags Big 1a Stack

Friday on the Pure Poker Tour featured the opening flight to the first multi-day game of the series, Event #3, as well as an unusual format in the PLO Deepstack Hyper with 50k stacks and 15-minute blinds. Day 1a of Event #3 saw a solid turnout that capped the numbers for this flight from July, but the Deepstack Hyper game was a bit smaller than expected.

Defending Champ Jimmy Lee Leads 1a Stacks

• Event #3: $670 NLH Day 1A
• Entries: 85
• Prizes: $48,450
• Qualifiers: 11
• Leader: Jimmy Lee (474k)

It took 16 levels to play down to 12.5% of the field in the opening flight of Event #3. The game started slowly, but entries picked up through the day, and the final total was 11 entries higher than the number for the opening flight to E3 in July.

That meant the opening day this time put more than $48k into the prize pool for Sunday’s Day 2, and sent 11 players through to Sunday. At the top of the list was the player who topped the Day 2 standings last time out, Jimmy Lee.

Lee powered through the July game to take down a stacked final table that included Dallas Larson, Josh Myers, Daniel O’Leary, Weston Pring, Hassan Issa, and Eric Wasylenko. He earned $28,870 for the win, and that was enough to push his Hendon earnings over $1 million.

This time around, he played a cagey game that saw him surge at the end of the night. He was never in the big stacks when I looked during the mid-levels of play, but once they got down to the business end and neared the bags, Lee turned it up, finally finishing the day on top with 474k, just a bit in front of second-place Garry Sandhu with 469k.

The top two were miles ahead of the rest, with Aman Dhaliwal’s 3rd-place stack at just barely over 200k, and Clayton Littke and Eric Wasylenko rounding out the top five with less than 200k each. Matthew Ouellette, who is the defending champ from the Main Event last time out, also bagged a decent Day 1a stack with 146k.

Day 1 Chip Counts from Event #3

Eric Taylor & Nate Habte Chop PLO Deepstack Hyper

• Event #4: $300 PLO Deepstack Hyper
• Entries: 57
• Prizes: $14,621
• Winner: Eric Taylor ($4,533 in chop)

The side game on Friday ended up a little smaller than expected, with 57 entries for prizes of $14,621. That was significantly less than July’s 80 entries, but as always it was a raucous affair that saw a lot of action.

It only took about two hours to go from two tables remaining to the trophy presentation, as the hyper-fast blinds kept the stacks short. Initially, Varan Sidhu was dominating the final table with a huge chip lead, but after a massive cooler against Nate Habte, where Habte flopped two pair and Sidhu bricked his straight draws, Habte had a massive lead, and most of the rest of the table was on fumes.

Once Habte got heads up against Eric Taylor, it looked like it would be a quick run to the trophy, as Habte had about 2.5 million chips to about 300k for Taylor. But Taylor wasn’t going away easily, and he chipped away at Habte’s stack before a huge double got him even with Habte.

The money went in on the turn of a board reading A♦Q♣9♣7♦ with Habte drawing to the best clubs, but Taylor in the lead with top pair. The river 6♥ was a brick, and Taylor doubled to even.

The final two decided to chop up the money evenly at that point, with the blinds rocketing upwards every 10 minutes during heads-up play. They both won $4,533 and then played it out for the trophy, which ultimately went to Taylor when he found a king-high straight to end the night after about 7 hours of play.

Final Results from PLO Deepstack Hyper

Place	Player	Prize
1	Eric Taylor	$4,533*
2	Nate Habte	$4,533*
3	Ricardo Silva	$2,410
4	Varan Sidhu	$1,535
5	Matheus Araujo	$1,025
6	Bewar Hussein	$585