PokerStars Caribbean Adventure Main Event
For sheer drama, this year’s PokerStars Caribbean Adventure (PCA) Main Event will be hard to match. It had Chris Moneymaker just fall short of making the final table, the last woman standing was the deepest run ever made by a women in the history of the PCA, offered rousing play with Galen Hall eventually oveing Chris Oliver’s monster chip lead, and ESPN broadcasting the whole shootin’ match unedited with the hole card cam for the very first time.
With a record field of 1,560 players, the $10,000 Main Event created four new instant millionaires in the 4 top spots, and out of the eight final table players, five of them –Chris Oliver, Anton Ionel, Sam Stein, Bolivar Palacios, and Phillipe Plouffe—were all PokerStars qualifiers.
The early news had 2003 WSOP champ Chris Moneymaker poised to lock up a seat at the final table, when as the field dwindled down to twenty players Moneymaker was still holding strong and in second-place in chips. His momentum fizzled when he lost a big pot to eventual winner Galen Hall and he was bumped out in 11th place, earning $130,000 for the effort and boosting his career total to almost $3.2 million.
After that, all eyes were on Ana Marquez, a virtual unknown from Spain whose only cash known previously was 15th place in the 2010 Venetian Deepstack, where she picked up winnings of $5,932 in June of 2010. When she moved all in with pocket 8’s against chip leader Chris Oliver, she was blasted out in 10th place by Oliver’s pocket aces. Still, Marquez has every reason to hold her head high as her historic run placed her deeper than any women ever before and her finish earned her a very nice payday of $155,000.
2011 PCA Main Event Final Table Players
When it got down to the final eight, play was suspended until Saturday when it would be broadcast by ESPN, with an hour delay, although thementary would be live. By all reports the broadcast was a rousing success.
Galen Hall came into the game 2nd in chips behind Chris Oliver who held three times as many chips. First to go out was Philippe Plouffe in eighth, followed by Max Weinberg, the victim of a horrible beat to Mike Sowers, who dropped out in seventh. Hall knocked Bolivar Palacios out in sixth, then Oliver asserted himself when it got down to five-handed play. He knocked out Sowers in fifth, then Stein in fourth. Having played under ten hands in the final table, Ionel went out in third.
In the heads-up Hall was still down in chips, outgunned three to one. Oliver kept the pressure on, yet Hall managed to chip away at his lead. Three hours in, the tide turned. Hall took two crucial hands and the result seemed to demoralize Oliver. The knockout came when Hall picked up two pair on the flop versus ace-eight, and remarkably, the part time student from San Francisco was crowned the new PCA Champion.
PCA Main Event Results:
1 Galen Hall $2,300,000
2 Chris Oliver $1,800,000
3 Anton Ionel $1,350,000
4 Sam Stein $1,000,000
5 Mike Sowers $700,000
6 Bolivar Palacios $450,000
7 Max Weinberg $300,000
8 Philippe Plouffe $202,000
