Main Events are always fun.
The players range everywhere from the locals who found their way in last-minute through a $300 Satellite, like Matthew Dillon (10th: $13,575) to winners of the Walter Payton NFL Man of the Year, traveling professional players, and local legends that have millions in earnings in live tournaments.
Several even have their own wikipedia pages, like our hometown once-Ambassador, Christian Harder.
In the dark ages of freezeouts, a lesser-known mere mortal may have won this tournament. Charder worked up a healthy stack early on 1A and had the absolute best possible starting hand one can be dealt in No Limit Texas Hold ‘Em.
Brian Altman was dealt pocket Queens. Let us not get into semantics over whether it’s the third best hand behind AA and KK… or farther down, after, say Ace-King suited or something crazy…
2025 Mid Atlantic Poker Open $2,200 Main Event Champion Frankie Zeta was dealt KK.
All three players get it all-in pre-flop on Day 1, Alty flops a queen, Charder and Frankie head to the re-entry line; Altman bags 1A chip lead and makes it down to the final four players out of 331 total for $49,415.
Not bad for a weekend’s work.
Charder quietly and calmly mucked his AA when he lost on Day 1, went to the re-entry line at least once more, bagged an average stack on Day 1B, and didn’t make a ton of noise until we got deep into Day 2.
Once we got down to two 8-handed tables, 16 players from 331 entrants overall – Charder finally became a blip on the radar.
He built, re-built, doubled-up, and then stacked one opponent after another.
Christian came to the 8-handed FT w/ cL and 42% of the chips in play, more than double the 55-big-blind stack average. For (very) brief moments he relinquished the lead, if ever.
Players were reminded that the PLAN was to have six of them come back Monday for Day 3 at 2:15pm. If and when we got to six and they unanimously made a decision to press on, that’s what we would do.
Nathan Bomey made a pretty huge 4-bet/fold after Joe McKeehan 3-bet him out of the big blind. Joe 5-bet all-in and even though half his stack was out there, Nathan later admitted that he knew best case scenario, he was flipping and more likely than not, a 4:1 dog vs a bigger pair. Joe showed him he was right about pair vs bigger pair.
The chips were destined to go to McKeehan an orbit later. Joe opened QQ and Bomey’s AJo 3-bet all-in didn’t catch up; he was out 8th for $17,100.
Charles Goelz came into Day 2 w/ 460K, good enough for 55+ big blinds. He picked his spots and in the end, ran into it to go out 5th for $21,900.
Altman finally worked his way up to two million in chips with five left just get a bucket of ice thrown on him when Charder made trip kings on K74 K 9. Brian called 730K on the river and still had 900K+ in his stack in the bb40K lvl (22.5 BBs). Not sure, but I think he flashed a king of his own when he mucked.
Lara Eisenberg finished off Brian with TT vs his Ah5h. Money went in pre, board gave a little bit of hope on flop but sad trombone on turn and river 543 4 8 to bring us down to three handed with less than 5 minutes left in the level before we were about to go on break.
The players knew for a fact they would not be playing tonight past the break.
They considered moving the 2:15pm start time Monday a little earlier or maybe a little later and then not sure who, but someone uttered the initials ICM and we ran the numbers.
Charder got the trophy and the lion’s share of the prizepool, everyone went home happy.
2nd officially to Lara and 3rd to Justin.
