GPTAnka All Smiles After December's Champion Chip - By Seth Shafer

Dec 9, 2008 Sunday December 7th was a big day for bwin poker players, with an Aussie Millions online finals running, the exciting conclusion of the GSOP series in the form of the $5,000 buy-in Grand Slam Finals, as well as the December edition of the ChampionChip.

The ChampionChip was another huge affair, with an amazing 1,463 runners turning out to generate a prize pool of more than half a million dollars. The 1st place finisher would take home $115,211, but to reach that pinnacle they'd be in for a long, grueling day of poker action, with the ChampionChip typically taking 9-10 hours to complete.

Early leaders included 666SCAL666_x, gimmesome60, tarum1403, fdcgsf1, nikboz, and Ronzie99 (who recently won the Big Deal for a score of $41,250). Another name near the top of the leaderboard was -Rex Cramer-, who won October's Grand tournament for $166,566 and who will be representing the bwin Team at the 2009 Aussie Millions as well.

-Rex Cramer- would make the final table of Sunday's ChampionChip but would fall short in adding a ChampionChip victory to his impressive poker resume. Below are the 10th-6th finishers:

10th: arcticfirefl ($5,633)
9th: tarum1403 ($7,168)
8th: Ronzie99 ($8,704)
7th: bottrany ($10,241)
6th: -Rex Cramer- ($15,361)

With the field slimmed down to just five players, here's how they stacked up:

Seat 1: thenorfmannn ($146,792 in chips)
Seat 4: gimmesome60 ($1,232,303 in chips)
Seat 5: GPTAnka ($1,346,187 in chips)
Seat 8: einafets1 ($385,258 in chips)
Seat 9: Maua1 ($1,278,460 in chips)

thenorfmannn would finish 5th ($20,482) when he shoved pre-flop with As 8h but ran into GPTAnka's dominating Ah Kh. einafets1 would be the next to fall in 4th ($30,723) when he committed all of his chips with Tc Th on a 5s 4d 7c flop, only to run into GPTAnka's flopped two pair with 5d 4c, which held to eliminate einafets1 and set up the following stacks three-handed:

Seat 4: gimmesome60 ($147,303 in chips)
Seat 5: GPTAnka ($2,413,237 in chips)
Seat 9: Maua1 ($1,828,460 in chips)

Just two hands later they'd be heads-up, with gimmesome60 forced to lump his short stack in with Kc Jd and running into Maua1's Ad 10s, eliminating gimmesome60 in 3rd ($40,864) and giving us this very tight heads-up battle:

Seat 5: GPTAnka ($2,205,934 in chips)
Seat 9: Maua1 ($2,183,066 in chips)

Each player would build a big lead then give it back before the final hand occured about 40 hands into heads-up play, which began with GPTAnka holding a 600,000 chip lead. With blinds of 40,000/80,000 Maua1 opened for 140,000 pre-flop, and GOTAnka min-raised to 200,000, which Maua1 called.

The flop came Jd 3d 8c and GPTAnka bet 280,000, which Maua1 called. The turn was the 2h and GPTAnka shoved all-in with a pretty large overbet, forcing Maua1 to call for all of his chips, which he finally did.

Maua1 tabled Js 10h for top pair and GPTAnka flipped over Ac Qh, caught with his hand in the cookie jar as he was betting with just overcards.

Sometimes your hand escapes from the jar with a cookie, though, as evidenced when the Qc spiked on the river, giving GPTAnka the hand and the ChampionChip title, as well as $115,211 for his 1st place finish. While it was a tough finish for Maua1, he did have a very nice consolation prize of $63,494 for his runner-up finish to console himself with.

As always, congratulation to all the winners and thanks to all of the players who turned out for another amazingly edition of the ChampionChip.

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