The 2018 Borgata Poker Open came to a close in the early morning hours of Saturday morning when the 21st BPO trophy found a new home.
Erkut ‘Eric’ Yilmaz
About eight hours earlier, Erkut Yilmaz took 1st place in the Championship event, along with $575,112 and both BPO and WPT Champions Cup trophies. Yilmaz took a huge lead into the final day of the Championship and held that lead until heads-up with poker pro Timothy ‘TK’ Miles. They proceeded to battle for more than two hours, with the lead changing several times, before Yilmaz finally collected all the chips and the title. Miles added another $383,399 to his career earnings, pushing the total past $3.2 million.
This series saw a lot of firsts. For the first time, the BPO was not held in the Event Center, but in a temporary Tournament Area between the Poker Room and Signature Room. This was a one-time occurence and this area will now he turned into the new Borgata Sports Book. The Winter Poker Open in January will be back in the Event Center as usual.
Another first was buy-in guarantees on the non-No Limit Hold’em events. The Omaha/Stud High/Low, HORSE, and PLO tournaments all had guarantees for the first time ever. There was also an “Old School” Freeze-out NLH tournament with no re-entries, and a Double Black Chip Bounty tournament added to this year’s schedule.
Justin Leeds (seated) took 1st in Event 1 in a 4-way adjusted payout.
Justin Leeds claimed the top spot in the $1 Million GTD Kick-Off event, which saw 3,106 entrants. The final four players all took home more than $170,000 for their efforts in the three-day event.
Altogether, the series had $7.6 million in guarantees and paid out more than $8.3 million in prize money in Main Events alone, not including secondary and satellite events. A complete list of Main Event winners and their winnings is below.
*Indicates Adjusted Payout
The next major tournament series is the Fall Poker Open, which runs November 6th through the 21st, so start making plans now. The tournament schedule has not yet been released. Follow @BorgataPoker on Twitter to catch the announcement when it is. Until then, Borgata’s regular schedule of Daily Tournaments will resume. For those of you in New Jersey, there’s alway another tournament coming up on BorgataPoker.com. October 14th – 21st, the Garden State Super Series (GSSS) will be running with more than $450,000 in guarantees.
For now, it’s farewell from the Borgata Blogging team of Tim Kelliher, Chris Murray, Al Rash, Brittany Paige, and myself. Hope to see you in November during the Fall Poker Open!
@Kaelaine
Great job blogging.
Great job blogging.