Jason Koon Wins PCA $25K Single Day For $421,080

Nice guys aren’t supposed to win in life according to the old adage, but Jason Koon has made a habit of refuting that saying and yesterday he added another title and $421,080 to his already impressive list of results – taking down the $25K Single Day High Roller at the PokerStars Caribbean Adventure.

Koon’s biggest-ever cash – a whopping $1,650,300 – came in the $100K version just a year ago at the same Paradise Island resort and once again he was facing a field of the world’s biggest and best, Daniel Negreanu, Bryn Kenney, and Ike Haxton among the 41 runners – 17 re-entries boosting the prizepool to just over $1.4million.

As the PokerStars blog mentions, it looked like a battle of the K’s at some points, something better known from chess battles of old, but here we had Kanit, Khoroshenin, Kamhazi, Kornuth, Kurganov, defending champ Kenney and the $100k winner from last week Cary Katz all battling it out for the money.

Katz and Kurganov, however, fell in 10th and 9th spots respectively – the latter the bubble boy and ensuring only Koon and Canadian Christopher Kruk would be cashing the big K’s.

For fans of Negreanu it wasn’t to be, two bullets fired but nothing to show for it this time, although he did reappear in a different role…

Back at the final table it was fast and furious, relative newcomer to the high stakes league Mikalai Vaskaboinikau from Belarus still buoyant from some big scores in Prague last month and entering with the chip lead – the ups and downs of play seeing him regain that once they whittled the table down to just three – Koon and Adams still in the fight.

A rivered ace put paid to the Canadian’s title hopes and a remarkably friendly heads-up match was on, Vaskaboinikau telling his more-experienced opponent: "I'm not good at heads up," to which Koon replied:

"It's only been two hands! Don't be so hard on yourself!"

A ding-dong battle ensued, but when Koon finally caught his Belarus rival out, it was pocket aces which sealed the deal, with runner-up Vaskaboinikau offering his congratulations with a friendly:

"What can I say? You're a nice guy. There are not enough nice guys in this game."

Final Table Results: