In what can only be described as the perfect poker fairytale, Amanda Decesare has become the winner of the Joe Hachem Deepstack Series 3 Main Event, just 1 week after being crowned the winner of the Poker Star reality Tv show.
Hosted by the 2005 WSOP Champion Joe Hachem himself, The Poker Star saw Amanda emerge victorious after outlasting 10 other opponents in a contest that had real life challenges where players had to use what they had learnt to better their poker game. It seemed fitting then that only a little over 1 week later Joe was on hand to present the trophy to Amanda in front of family and friends down in the poker room.
With a massive 643 entrants over the 3 flights a prize pool of $321,500 was created with the winner taking home $77,500. Day 2 saw over 300 players come back and play continued down the final table of 10. In another twist of fate Chris Eva who had finished in the final 3 on The Poker Star was drawn in seat 8 right next to Amanda.
As the final table began the chip counts were as follows,
Seat Name Chips
1 An Nguyen 2,390,000
2 Oscar Jeney 2,155,000
3 Mark Ashworth 575,000
4 Shaun Karita 830,000
5 Johan Verkuijl 965,000
6 Hai Bo Chu 2,080,000
7 Amanda De Cesare 755,000
8 Christopher Eva 655,000
9 Andrew Demetriou 725,000
10 Jacob Chen 1,735,000
In what was to be one of the truly great final tables with the likes of 2007 Melbourne Champs winner Hai Bo Chu, 2007/2008 Player of the Year Andrew Demetriou and a host of other strong contenders, we certainly weren’t disappointed with the high level of play that was witnessed.
Mark Ashworth and Johan Verkujil were first to depart within an hour of play resuming. From then on it was a long time before we lost An Nguyen, Chris Eva and Andrew Demetriou all in fairly quick succession. Jacob Chen and Oscar Jeney finished 5th and 4th respectively, and when Hai Bo Chu was unable to catch his flush on the river he was eliminated in 3rd position.
This left a heads up battle between Shaun Karita and Amanda. Play started slowly as each tried to find any weaknesses the other may have had. Shaun slowly started to up the aggression taking down quite a few hands in a row, until Amanda started her own aggressive run, raising and re raising Shaun forcing him to give up several big pots.
The last hand was the biggest of the heads up battle with Shaun holding A9 when he moved all in. Amanda deliberated for a while before calling with A10.
Realising she had Shaun dominated Amanda’s supporters were praying for no 9 to come. The flop of 4 K J was no problem for Amanda and when the Q fell on the turn she was overcome with emotion. Needing a 10 to split Shaun knew he was drawing thin and as another Q dropped on the river the fairytale had become a reality.
Congratulations to Amanda Decesare, winner of the Joe Hachem Deepstack Series 3 Main Event. Amanda walked away with the trophy and $77,500.