When you interview enough high stakes poker players, you notice similar traits, one of which is competitiveness.
Take the heads-up stage of Event #7 HKD 1m (USD 127,000) Triton Refresh, a No-Limit Hold’em tournament, that pulled in 25-entrants, and saw Stephen Chidwick and Jason Koon agree upon a chip-chop before playing on for the trophy.
Under normal circumstances, this is the time to move all-in blind. I mean, who gives a monkey’s about a trophy?
Stephen Chidwick and Jason Koon did.
With nothing on the line, the pair, armed with a ‘you’re going home in the back of an ambulance’ attitude, fought, scratched and screamed until the milkman began doing his rounds, at which time the tournament organisers begged them to finish things off so everyone could go to bed.
At 4.30 am, Koon got it in with pocket fours against the queen-high of Chidwick, and found enough spunk to take a super-sexy winner’s photo despite likely feeling like he had just smoked 15 pounds of weed.
Only four players received a return of investment after Michael Soyza lost in unfortunate circumstances against Paul Phua with AJ outdrawing AQ.
Koon would begin four-handed play with the lowest stack in the competition, but this is a man who has made the final table of four of the six events and won two of them. The guy is mustard.
Paul Phua rivered a flush to send Michael Addamo packing in fourth place, and it looked like we would have the repeat heads-up duel from the night before when Koon beat Phua in the HKD 1m (USD 127,000) Short-Deck, but Chidwick ran into the middle of the pair and gave Phua an uppercut he never recovered from when AJ beat 77.
You know the rest.
“It’s ridiculous to sign up for six tournaments and turn up and final table four of them, and win two of them,” Koon told the press after his win. “It doesn’t happen very often. I’ve run extremely, extremely well, but that’s what has to happen. Some weeks you run good; this week I ran fire hot.”
Here are the final table results.
Final Table Results
1. Jason Koon – $973,000*
2. Stephen Chidwick – $1,130,000*
3. Paul Phua – $535,039
4. Michael Addamo – $356,693
*Indicates a heads-up deal.