Marshall White Wins Borgata Poker Open Kickoff $2 Million GTD Event For $330K

(Photo: WSOP.com)

The Borgata Poker Open Kickoff $2 Million Guaranteed Event got started last week with a series of day one flights at $600 an entry. 3,570 players put up the cash generating a prize pool of $2,025,000, just beating the guarantee. 

Of the $330,841 was earmarked for first place. A prize which went to Marshall White, who found himself at the final table after five days of play in which poker notables Scott Baumstein, Kevin Calenzo, and Roland Israelashvili all were given involuntary time off for bad luck or bad play.

Final Table 

Despite the large field and time constraints, the tournament played deep with the final table sporting a couple of big stacks. The biggest of these belonged to chip-leader Ryan Currier, who found himself with just over 77 big blinds (18.6 million chips) at the 120,000/240,000/30,000 level, closely followed by Marshall White with 12.3 million chips.

Despite the big stacks, play was hot and heavy on the final table coming right out of the gates with Ryan Currier passing on a load of those chips when he raced his Q-Q against L J Sande’s A-K and lost.

Marshall White then took over the lead, eliminating Anthony Saludes (9th - $24,277) and James Brady (7th - $54,410), while sandwiched between these White-washes Sebastian Marquez  took 8th for $36,901.

Short handed play got brutal with more post-flop shots and some unfortunate gaffes. Ryan Currier (6th - $74,773) merged his range on the river of a key hand by bluff-shoving 8-7 on a A-A-3-3-7 board and was picked off by White with the A-7 sending Currier to the rail.

Nick Pupillo then went from tail-end Charlie to second biggest stack in a three-way all-in that put Chris Breimer out in 5th for $97,108. The table was playing fast and loose allowing White to knock out both Greg Himmelbrand (4th - $119,540) and Sande (3rd - $142,749) one after another, leaving Pupillo with 19 million in chips against White’s 70 million going into heads up.

Check- Mate to White

With blinds at 250,000/500,000/50,000 heads up play did not last long. 

The board read K-7-5-3 with two clubs, and when the 2c came on the river Pupillo shoved, expecting his wheel straight to be good. Unfortunately White called, rolling over the Ac-8c for a club flush good enough to win him the tournament and the $330,841 first prize.

For his second place finish, Pupillo took home $217,535. Better luck to him in the televised main event later this month.

Final Table Results