Last night saw the climax of the inaugural Mandalay Bay Poker Championship in which Las Vegas player Joe Tehan was the last man standing in the $10,000 Main Event, earning himself a cool $1,033,440 and a Bellagio seat worth $25,000. Blimey! Not bad, huh?The Mandalay Bay Resort and Casino played host to 349 poker fanatics, many of whom were big name players. Poker superstars such as Dan Harrington, Daniel Negreanu, Layne Flack, Phil Ivey, Alan Goehring, Michael Mizrachi, Erick Lindgren, Ted Forrest, and Jennifer Harman were all present, each fully intent on becoming Mandalay’s first WPT winner.
But that accolade went to Joe Tehan, who managed to see off a final table that included Burt Boutin, Brad Booth, Alex Outhred, Al Stonum, and Steve Vincent, who finished 2nd to 6th respectively.
It wasn’t until Day 3 that Tehan showed that he was a potential victor when he took the chip lead away from Booth. Before that, it was players like Amir Vahedi, Hasan Habib, and Michael Gracz who were sitting behind big stacks, all riding high come the end of Day 1.
Whilst they got down to the nitty gritty of Day 4, Carlos Mortensen, Tim Pham, Partik Antonius, and 'Miami' John Cernuto (left) were all within touching distance of the mega big bucks but, although they cashed, they were eventually to fall foul to the dominance of the relative unknowns. To pigeon-hole Tehan as an unknown, however, would be quite inaccurate. In December he won 101k for his second place finish in a World Poker Classic event, whilst, just a month later, he added another 179k to his bank account with a victory at the L.A. Poker Classics.
The final hand was an eye-opener. With Tehan’s preflop raise with 8-9 finding an all-in reraise, the eventual winner made a speculative call for an extra 1.2 million (!) Amazingly, his prayers were answered when he outdrew Burt Boutin’s A-T holding with two nines gracing the flop.
So, Joe Tehan is now over a million bucks richer and will be looking forward to the Bellagio 25k Event where he’ll be competing for even larger sums of money.
The World Poker Tour, however, will be crossing the seas for their next stop as they set their sights on gay Paris.
Fantastique!