Decorative Concrete Maker Scores
Stone Cold Win in His First Event
Kris Kaitanjian has made his mark in Las Vegas, but not playing poker or any other games. He is vice president of a company making decorative concrete, and his landscaping materials have been used by a number of Sin City casinos. Tonight he made his mark in poker when he took first place in the opening event of the Hustler Casino’s Grand Slam of Poker Tournament III, $25 no-limit hold’em.
Not only is it his first tournament win, it’s the first tournament he’s ever played anywhere. Kaitanjian, who’s only been playing poker for a year, has played mainly no-limit cash games, generally $200 buy-in contests.
“I felt confident tonight,” he said. “I thought I could win.” In this $50,000 guarantee rebuy event, he only rebought once, after level 4, when he had $1,800 more than he started with, to give him extra incentive.
The final table of this opening event did not last very long. It only went 20 hands and ended in a chip count deal with seven players still left. Kaitanjian arrived at the final table with the most chips, $158,500, and had the most chips when the final tally was made.
This event attracted 373 players who made 460 rebuys, and Kaitanjian collected an official $31,650 for first place.
Full-time player Emiliano Calitis came in second, but the player finishing third, business analyst Glenn Robertson, didn’t have much more experience than Kaitanjian, having only played in a few small buy-in tourneys previously. This was his first cash-in. Until the last hand he was lowest-chipped of the seven finalists, but doubled through against Kaitanjian to leap past four players.
When the players arrived at the final table, they were playing with $1,000 antes and blinds of $4,000-$8,000, with 19:28 left on the clock. There were 833,000 chips in play.
In the first four hands there were four all-ins, and it resulted in the departure of two players. On hand one, Guy Magner pushed in his $39,000 and took the blinds and antes. On the second hand, Calitis moved in for $93,000, and Magner called. Calitis had pocket kings to Magner’s Ah-Jh. The board came J-7-6-4-3, and Magner was out in 10th place, collecting $1,000.
Two hands later, David “The Lyons” Niknafs, who started by far the lowest in chips with only $16,000, found himself all in and in very bad shape with J-10 against the A-J held by Greg Kouyoumdjian. Niknafs was totally dead on the flop of A-A-J which gave Kouyoumdjian a full house. Ninth place paid $1,250.
The big hand of the final table came down on hand number seven. Kaitanjian, one off the button, opened for $32,000. Alysia Chang, who arrived as second chip leader with $143,800, made it $68,000 to go with pocket 5s. “Shame on you,” said Kaitanjian. He really wasn’t that bothered by Chang’s raise, because he had pocket aces and moved in for another $47,500. Chang called, and was suddenly down to about $14,000 when a board of 7-3-2-8-J didn’t help her. Kaitanjian, on the other hand, now had a huge chip lead of about $240,000.
As play continued, now with $2,000 antes and blinds of $6,000 and $12,000. Both Calitis and young Eric “The Enemy” Arreca moved in without callers.
Then, with the blinds rapidly approaching, Chang decided to take her chances with her last few chips holding Q-3. Luong, in the big blind, held only 7-2, but when the board came 8-5-4-6-10, he had a straight and Chang had $1,875, her payoff for eighth place.
Arreca, meanwhile, never had a lot of chips at the final table, but finally doubled through to about $100,000 when he went all in with A-K and beat Hoang’s K-10 when the board came A-J-10-J-4.
A few more hands went by, and then Robertson lost about $20,000 when his A-K failed to catch up with an all-in Greg Kouyoumdjian’s pocket 5s.
Lam Hoang was close to the cloth, then managed to double through twice, the first time against Robertson, who was in the big blind with 8-4. Hoang had A-4 and made two pair. The second time he held A-7 against Calitis and flopped a 7.
There was now only one more hand to go. Down to $45,000, Robertson moved in for about $45,000 with pocket jacks, and Kaitanjian called with K-Q. Robertson flopped a set of jacks and was back in contention.
Blinds were about to go to $10,000-$20,000 with $3,000 antes, turning the tournament into much more of a crapshoot. But the clock was stopped when Calitis proposed a chip-count deal. This had to be explained to several of the players who had no prior experience with this concept.
Tournament co-director Warren Karp then took chip counts and made some rapid calculations. Kaitanjian had the chip lead with $190,000, followed by Calitis with $175,000; Robertson with $121,000; Kouyoumdjian with $115,000; Hoang with $90,000; Luong with $81,000 and Arreca with $60,000.
That’s the order they finished in, after the players accepted the money break-out. An official payout of $15,825 went to Caliltis; $7,915 to Robertson; $5,000 to Kouyoumdjian;$3,300 to Hoang, $2,915 to Luong and $2,290 to Arreca. And the trophy and top prize went to Kaitanjian, who is now one for one in his tournament career. Max Shapiro
|
