The Epic Poker League’s Mix-Max Main Event drew in some big names in poker, and also paid out a very nice first place prize to the eventual winner. It took a bit longer than many people expected to get to that winner though, as the fifth and final day of play took an incredible 15 hours for a winner to be crowned. Even more surprising is the fact that the first two eliminations came in a pretty timely manner, leaving three players to duke it out for longer than you could imagine.
The first player sent home was the shortest stack of them all to start the day, Scott Clements, who found himself with only about 130k to start the day, and his Kc-9c ran into the K-10 off suit of Andrew Lichtenberger. A 9 did come down on the flop, but the ship was righted when a 10 came on the turn and sent Clements home in 5th place. The second elimination was quite a bit more shocking though, as it was Michael ‘The Grinder” Mizrachi, who started the day in 2nd place, eventually finding himself going home in 4th place. Mizrachi lost two big pots, and then was forced to go all in, but was outdone by Joe Tehan in the end.
Play then completely took a 180, and the next three players went at it for longer than you could imagine. It took 100 more hands before another player went home, and that was Tehan, who shoved his pocket nines in, but they could not hold on against the A-7 off suite of Klodnicki. He went home in 3rd place, and now we were set on our heads up match for the Championship.
It was Klodnicki against Lichtenberger, and it was a best of three series to decide the winner. The layout of the best of three featured the first two matches with the players starting with their chip stacks that they had at the end of three handed play. This left Klodnicki with 3.47 million and Lichtenberger with 1.526 million. If there was a third match, then the two players would go to even chip stacks for the last match.
It never got to a third match though, as Klodnicki held off a push by Lichtenberger in match one to get the win, and match two featured Klodnicki being ahead throughout and getting the job done. This gave Klodnicki the Championship ring, and also the first place prize of $801,680 for his incredible run.
The Epic Poker League has gained a good bit of attention in the past few months, both for good and bad reasons. The prize pools have been huge, and the tournaments involve the biggest names in poker as well. The bad reasons for all of the attention is the drama that has surrounded their first two events. While many people find the idea of the EPL interesting and exciting, the tournament just isn’t for everyone. Some people feel that the International Stadiums Poker Tour was created to put a fight against the Epic Poker League. While both tournaments seem like very good ideas, they aim to hit different types of players completely. The EPL is currently running, while the ISPT will kick off early in 2012. We’re going to take a look at a few ways that these two tournaments are so different.