Hoss Colao, Sonny Rattan Make Late Surges to Lead Final Flights of Summer Slam Event #5
The 2014 Seneca Niagara Summer Slam continued Wednesday with the final two flights of Event #5, a $125 buy-in no-limit hold’em event with a $50,000 guaranteed prize pool. The special event featured six separate starting flights across three days with the survivors advancing to Day 2 on Thursday to play down to a champion.
After the six full flights a total of 765 entries were tallied, creating a prize pool of more than $71,000. The remaining 149 players will attempt to reach the money going to the top 72 places, and the eventual winner will take home $15,821.
Leading the 26 survivors at the end of Flight E on Wednesday was Hoss Colao with 148,400. Colao provided plenty of entertainment early in the day with his friendly battles against two-time Summer Slam champ Joe Ciffa. Ciffa got the best of Colao first, eliminating him in a cooler spot when both turned a full house, but Colao re-entered and got those chips back and more against Ciffa later in the day.
Joining Colao in the century club at the end of Flight E were Jason Nablo (133,400), John Regan (121,500), Chris Drake (106,200) and Emmett Caldwell (104,300). Others advancing to Day 2 were Rob Bourkney, Peter Raimondi, Alicia Pachla, Ray Book and D.J. MacKinnon.
Flight F kicked off at 6 p.m. and when registration closed after eight levels a total of 191 entries were tallied, making it by far the largest of the six flights. Only 41 survived the day, with Sonny Rattan and his stack of 181,600 leading the way.
Rattan (pictured) doubled on the very last hand of the night to snag the chip lead from Mark Bowman (165,500). According to Rattan, a player limped from under the gun and the player on the button min-raised to 4,000. The small blind called, as did Rattan (big blind) and the original limper.
The flop came 8x6x4x and it checked over to the under-the-gun limper who made it 12,000 to go. The button folded and the small blind fired back by moving all in. Rattan then called all in and the other player got out of the way. Rattan had flopped with nuts with 7x5x but still needed to dodge some outs against the small blind's 8x4x. The rest of the board bricked, and Rattan celebrated his huge win to close out the evening.
Others who bagged big stacks in Flight E were Rayshawn Smalls (145,300), Stephen Rokitka (124,300) and Rob Stinson (121,000).
The 149 remaining players will return for Day 2 at noon on Thursday to play down to a champion. We'll following the action from start to finish, so be sure to follow PokerNews until the Event #5 champion collects the trophy and nearly $16,000 in prize money.
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