Event 19: 1st Place – Andrew Klein ($20,546)

Event 19 – Deepest Stack NLH
Level 32 (100,000/200,000/30,000)
Total Entries: 291
Players Remaining: 1
Chip Average: 11,640,000

Andrew Klein – Spring Poker Open Event 19 Champion

If you split the last half of Event 19 into two different parts, the first played out with Andrew Klein, and everyone around him, thinking he was going to end up in the winner’s circle. Klein held the chip lead from the money bubble to the final table and kept that lead until short-handed play but then one big hand against Svetlana Gormenkova dropped Klein near the bottom of the leaderboard and below the chip average for the first time in memory.

That was the part where it looked like Klein was going to fall before the podium places even came into play but a quick turnaround and recovery restored order and brought Klein back up to the top of the leaderboard. From that point on, the uber competitive Klein left no doubts, tactically navigating his way to another Borgata Poker winner’s circle and finally getting his hands on a tiny glass Borgata trophy.

Speaking of that competitive attitude, Klein has been shopping his ‘Pro Athlete Challenge’ with new parameters for the better part of the last year. There are still no takers but now, with a third Borgata Poker title to his name and another $20,000 score, we imagine that those stakes could be upped again. Whether that challenge gets met or not, there is no doubting one thing, that Klein’s run towards the Event 19 title was one of the more dominating performances we saw throughout this Spring Poker Open series.

That performance rounds out the SPO series and a full recap of the series will be posted tomorrow.