It took just a few hours for David Adam-Castrillo to eliminate all but one person at the table to win Event #1: Kick Off Almighty Million at the Borgata Spring Poker Open.
The tournament drew a bumper crop of 3,407 entries for a prize pool of $1,447,975, from which $214,615 went to Adam-Castrillo for the win. He was followed in second by Kareem Cowart and Aaron Hendi in third. David Stevens and Denis Kurlyand rounded out the top five.
“It’s amazing. I can’t believe this,” Adam-Castrillo said in his post-win interview with PokerOrg. His opponents might share that sentiment after Adam-Castrillo came into Day 3 with a massive chip lead before eliminating six of the other seven players.
“I was trying to be aggressive and I was trying to confuse them at the same time so that they made more mistakes.”
The plan worked and the final table could not withstand the constant pressure. This is Adam-Castrillo's first cash over $1,000 and only his fourth recorded tournament finish.
“I don’t know what I’m going to do. I don’t know what to say. I did not expect anything like this for sure.”
Adams-Castrillo makes quick work of final table
It was a quick start to the action when Chris Lovett picked up aces in the first hand. Kurlyand raised and Rajesh Desai called before Lovett took the pot when he jammed his stack of 17 big blinds.
Desai, the short stack heading into the day, was out a short time later when he lost a battle of ace-high hands with Kurlyand. Desai’s elimination was the only one of the day that Adam-Castrillo did not do himself.
From there, Adam-Castrillo went to work. Brian Tolley was first on his list in seventh place when Adam-Castrillo flopped a set of deuces. Next was Lovett, who got it in with king-queen and never improved against Adam-Castrillo’s sixes. Kurlyand took his shot after that and finished in fifth place after he jammed his pocket eights after the flop to find out that Adam-Castrillo had hit the top pair of tens.
Kurlyand’s elimination brought the field to four players and David Stevens saw his chance to change the narrative with pocket kings. That was wishful thinking, however, when Adam-Castrillo called with a suited ace-nine and rivered the ace that sent Stevens to the rail in fourth place.
The last stand
Hendi and Cowart made up two-thirds of the final three, but their combined stacks were barely one-third of the chips in play. It was Hendi who fell first when he got his short stack in with a suited king-five. The board ran out with a flush, but it didn’t matter because Adam-Castrillo flopped a full house.
Heads-up play threatened to get interesting when Cowart doubled up twice, but he ran out of room when Adam-Castrillo flopped three tens and turned a fourth one to win the tournament with quads.
The final two shook hands and, with just a few hours of work, Adam-Castrillo had won $214,615.
BSPO Event #1: Almighty Million Day 3 results
| Place | Player | Payout |
|---|---|---|
| 1st | David Adam-Castrillo |
$214,615 |
| 2nd | Kareem Cowart |
$145,642 |
| 3rd | Aaron Hendi |
$99,269 |
| 4th | David Stevens |
$65,729 |
| 5th | Denis Kurlyard |
$44,637 |
| 6th | Chris Lovett |
$33,979 |
| 7th | Brian Tolley |
$26,253 |
| 8th | Rajesh Desai |
$20,763 |
