Blake Bohn Wins Chicago Poker Classic Main Event
The Chicago Poker Classic has always been a favorite among tournament circuit grinders, including many top professional and amateur players. This year, the 2013 CPC Main Event attracted 392 players for the buy-in of $3,200 and generated a prize pool of over $1.2 million. The event began on Friday, March 1, and completed on Monday, March 4. Emerging victorious and earning the $288,171 top prize was Blake Bohn.
2013 CPC Main Event Final Table Payouts
| Place | Player | Prize |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Blake Bohn | $288,171 |
| 2 | Shiva Dudani | $178,091 |
| 3 | Daniel Perper | $117,370 |
| 4 | Ki Lee | $82,165 |
| 5 | Niel Mittelman | $60,889 |
| 6 | Tony Hartmann | $47,621 |
| 7 | Stephen Jones | $39,192 |
| 8 | Ralph Massey | $33,860 |
| 9 | James Snyder | $30,642 |
Each player entering the CPC Main Event began with 30,000 in chips. Levels were scheduled for 60 minutes, and the 2013 field topped the previous year's 360-player field by 32 players.
On Friday, the first 10 levels of play were completed, and the field was reduced to 190. Leading the way was Ravi Raghavan, winner of the 2012 World Poker Tour Five Diamond World Poker Classic back in December for more than $1.25 million. He bagged up a hefty 253,100, with notables Joe Elpayaa and Steven Burkholder coming in behind him with just under 200,000 apiece. Nick Grippo was also among the top 10 with 182,500 in chips.
The advancing players returned for action on Saturday, with Day 2 kicking off at 2 p.m. local time. After approximately 11 hours of play, only 36 remained, all successfully in the money and guaranteed $7,985. Ty Reiman, who most notably placed second in the 2010 PokerStars Caribbean Adventure Main Event for $1.75 million, held the top stack with 1.033 million in chips. No other player finished the day across the 900,000-chip threshold, with James Snyder (888,000) and Chris Bell (829,000) the two closest players to Reiman on the leaderboard.
Also in the top 10 after Day 2 were Shiva Dudani (757,000), Dan Perper (733,000), Ralph Massey (587,000), Tony Hartmann (578,000) and David Peters (414,000). Massey's younger brother, Aaron Massey, who won the 2013 CPC $5,000 heads-up event for $73,721, also still remains with 252,000 in chips.
Raghavan, the Day 1 chip leader, advanced to Day 3 with 306,000. James Anderson, Ping Liu and Hiren "Sunny" Patel also advanced.
Day 3 was held on Sunday, and the cards were in the air at 2 p.m. once again. The goal was to play down to the final table, which was successfully completed with Dudani leading the way with 2.257 million in chips. Heading into the Day 4 final table, Dudani was joined by Niel Mittelman (2.144 million), Ki Lee (2.132 million), Perper (1.591 million), Snyder (1.358 million), Stephen Jones (844,000), Hartmann (515,000), Blake Bohn (486,000) and one of the Massey brothers, Ralph (422,000), to round out the final nine.
With a handful of the aforementioned notables making Day 3, several were eliminated but did earn a cash. Of note, Aaron Massey took 32nd place for $7,985, Liu took 24th place for $10,158, Reiman finished in 16th place for $13,184, Patel and Peters busted in 15th place and 13th place, respectively, for $17,206 each. Bell was 11th for $22,754, and Raghavan busted as the final table bubble boy for the same $22,754.
The eventual champion was Bohn, who began the final table in eighth place out of the nine remaining players. Despite the chip deficit, Bohn went on to earn by far the largest score of his career after he defeated Dudani heads up for the title. On the final hand of the tournament, Bohn bet out on a Jx5x2x board, only to see Dudani raise all in. Bohn called with 5x2x for bottom two pair, but had to hold against Dudani's Jx7x for a top pair that had outs. Both the turn and river couldn't provide Dudani what he needed to best Bohn, and he was eliminated in second place for $178,091.
Following his victory, Bohn told Lukas Willems of Horseshoe Hammond: "It feels great. I work really hard at it. It’s really exciting to run deep. That’s why we put in so many hours, to have a victory like this."
Lead photo courtesy of Horseshoe Hammond.
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