Evan Sandberg Wins Arizona State Poker Championship for $627,050
He turned a Day 4 chip lead into a heads-up victory at Talking Stick Resort after a record 4,018-entry, $1,100 event.
Evan Sandberg won the Arizona State Poker Championship at Talking Stick Resort for $627,050, beating Jared Rogers heads-up in the 20th-anniversary edition of the event. The $1,100 tournament drew a record 4,018 entries and ran through four starting flights plus three more days before a champion was crowned.
As reported yesterday, Sandberg entered the final day with the chip lead, and he turned that position into the title. According to PokerNews, the final table returned 10 players, all already guaranteed $25,801 from a record $4,018,000 prize pool. The top two spots were worth a huge jump from there, with the winner set for $627,050 and second place paying $369,937.
The final table thinned quickly. John Phan went out in 10th and Ronnie Bardah in ninth, then Hill Kerby finished eighth, Jonathan Roeder seventh, Moussa Haddad sixth, Sergio Segura fifth and John Riordan fourth. Brandon Conrad picked up steam after taking out Segura and Riordan, and three-handed play began with more than $400,000 separating first and third.
Sandberg had a rough stretch of his own before the finish. He was the shortest stack at one point during four-handed play and got under 10 big blinds, but a split pot with ace-deuce suited against pocket nines helped him recover when the board ran out fours full of tens. He then delivered the knockout blow to Conrad in third, rivering a broadway straight with ace-king against pocket fives.
That left Sandberg with a sizeable edge for heads-up play, and Rogers never found much momentum. He slipped under 10 big blinds before the last hand, then called off with nine-six suited against Sandberg’s jack-eight suited. Sandberg made a full house to finish it, and Rogers took $369,937.
The rest of the final table paid $224,804 for Conrad, $140,214 for Riordan, $91,498 for Segura, $63,495 for Haddad, $47,133 for Roeder, $37,143 for Kerby, $30,566 for Bardah and $25,801 for Phan. Sandberg called the win a huge relief, saying he had often fallen short in big-money spots before and that the score felt like a monkey off his back.
Spadepoker described the result as Sandberg’s first major career-defining title. The Bay Area-born, Vegas-based pro said the victory was the biggest score of his career, and PokerNews noted that his live tournament earnings were above $2.5 million before this win.
