Event 21 Recap

$200 + $30 + $50 Double Green Chip Bounty NLH  

It was a 21-year-old heads up against a mother who said, "I have children older than that," in the final trophy event of the Borgata Summer Poker Open.  And in the end Tom Gleason (Blackwood, NJ) used his youth to outlast Alyson Parker (Plainsboro, NJ) to win the title.

"I don't know, maybe I made a mistake," said Parker when she called Gleason's all in preflop shove with QJ against his KJ, "maybe I'm just old and tired," she said.

The players were nearly dead even in chips before the hand which was a 4.2 million pot.

"You played great," Gleason told Parker after he won the trophy and the $12,550 top prize on the next hand with pocket fives.

Before Black Friday Gleason was a heads up specialist who is now grinding live games and helping out in his family's used car business.

"I felt his range was really wide against me," Parker added, "I'm a little sad, but what are you going to do?"

Gleason and Parker traded double ups five times while heads up, which included pocket queens twice for Parker.

Prior to that, Gleason got a break when Kevin Lupowitz shoved 600k into a 150k pot with AQ when Gleason flopped a straight for a 1.2 million chip pot.  "That hand really helped," said Gleason who admitted to being on tilt after bleeding chips.

Another player victimized by a flopped straight was Leonardo Palermo. He finished third when Parker flopped the same 10-high straight as Gleason did against Lupowitz.

"Sicko hand," said Palermo who flopped top pair, "it's too bad I went out that way."

Also at the final table was Tiffany Williamson who finished 15th in the 2005 WSOP Main Event for $400,000 the year Joe Hachem won. In this tournament she finished in 8th place.

The day began with 231 entries putting up $46,200 in total buy-ins.  The field featured Event 20 winner Doug Pinto ($12,636) and the top two in the battle for the Borgata Leaderboard points lead.

Cuong Phung was first overall with 120 points more than Steve Eyzerovich.  Phung failed to make the money, but the math said Eyzerovich needed a deep run to over take Phung as the series leader.

Eyzerovich squeaked into the money, but a 27th place finish for $403 won't be enough to for him to win the top prize, a $3,500 entry into the WPT Borgata Poker Open in September.

In the end, a compelling final table was a good way to close out the 21st trophy event of the Summer Open.  "The series was great," said Parker, "They [Borgata] do what they do better than anyone around."

Final Table Results

Position-Name-Amount

1 Tom Gleason (Blackwood, NJ) $12,550
2 Alyson Parker (Plainsboro, NJ) $7,394
3 Leonardo Palermo (Toms River, NJ) $4,257
4 Brendan Buckley (Long Beach, NY)  $3,451
5 Dave Deneegaard (E. Northport, NY) $2,689
6 Donnie Brown (Blackwood, NJ) $2,241
7 Kevin Lupowitz (New York, NY) $1,793
8 Tiffany Williamson (Gaithersburg, MD) $1,344
9 Montez Johnson (Sicklerville, NJ) $896
10 Chris DeQuatro (Norfolk, VA) $583