Minnesota online poker grinder Mike Kachan put his experience in long hours of internet poker action to good use in event 56 of the World Series of Poker, playing into the early hours of Wednesday morning to capture his first gold WSOP bracelet and $403,483 in the $1,000 buy-in NLHE event.
The event’s relatively low buy-in attracted a large field of 2,525 players, creating a prize pool of $2,272,500 and lasting the full three days as scheduled.
It culminated early Wednesday morning in a heads-up between Kachan and runner-up Jeff Blenkarn after an endurance test of a final table that went on for almost 190 hands.
Kachan, who plays under the handles thebattler33, thakameleon and babyshark33 online, said he was used to long hours at the virtual tables, but admitted the event had been tough and taxing.
Kachan, Blenkarn and Eric Shanks reached the three-handed stage of the game, which unlike preceding eliminations took just 30 minutes to reach heads up when Shanks was busted out by Blenkarn in third for $177,527.
With almost 4 million chips against Blenkarn’s 3.6 million it looked as if the heads up was going to be a long drawn out affair, but it took just 45 minutes for Kachan to send Blencarn home on hand 187 with the runner up prize of $250,815.
The rest of the final table received pay-outs as indicated:
4.Andrew Egan $128,032
5.Viktor Skoldstedt $93,490
6.Neo Hoang $69,084
7.Steve Gross $51,676
8.Richard Milne $39,109
9.Ray Henson $29,951