Blake Napierala Wins 2017 Seneca Niagara Summer Slam Main Event

Niagara Falls, NY nurse and top-notch local rounder Blake Napierala won the 2017 Seneca Niagara Summer Slam Main Event for $23,316 inside the Niagara Falls Poker Room at the Seneca Niagara Resort & Casino Sunday.

The $600 buy-in reentry event drew 414 entries over two starting flights Friday and Saturday, creating a $100,000 guarantee-smashing $220,869 prize pool that paid the top 45.

A total of 88 survivors pushed through to Sunday’s final day and they moved into the money fairly quickly.

Overnight leader Scott Hosbach dominated play throughout and held on to bring the lead into the final table of ten. However, Kristan Mackiewicz went on a huge heater in the final nine, and by the time they got down to five-handed play, she had more than a third of the chips in play.

They struck a deal, giving Mackiewicz $30,000 and leaving $1,316, the trophy and title to play for.

Short stacked Blake Napierala took the least amount of money in the chop, then went on a heater of his own, knocking out 2015 Summer Slam Main Event champ William Liang, upstart Canadian Sahar Khajavi, and Hosbach in short order to take a 2:1 chip lead into heads-up play with Mackiewicz.

Mackiewicz doubled up with a dominating ace to flip the script, but Napierala endured, and ultimately got deuces to hold for the win.

That’s all from the 2017 Seneca Niagara Summer Slam series, where the players and staff at Seneca Niagara put on another great show, crushing all the event guarantees and having a great time doing it.

Next up is the 2017 Seneca Fall Poker Classic coming up sometime in November. Keep it locked on PokerNews for all the details.