Event 8 Recap

$400 + $50 Deep Stack NL

This event began at 11:00am on January 23, 2011 with 619 players taking their best shot at a total prize pool of $240,172 with 15,475,000 chips in play.

Some notable names in the field included, James Boyle, Steve Dannenmann, Mike Dentale, Cathy Dever, Rob Nguyen, Mike Sica, and Eric Siegel.

Also in the tournament was NBC 30 Rock TV star, Kevin Brown, who plays a character called Dot Com.

At the end of day one our chip leader was Matthew Butch (Clarksburg, NJ) with $749,000 and our short stack was James Opdyke (Jackson, NJ) with $40,000.

On Day 2, which started at 12pm, Butch held on to his stack and did make the final table of ten that took close to seven hours to complete.

Four PPI players made the final table including: Mike Castaldo, Ian Palomo, Matt "Muffins" Mazzeo, and Kathryn Dougherty.

A ton of people watched all the action surrounding the popular final table.

Matt Mazzeo had several dedicated fans cheering for him. Mazzeo knocked out three players at the final table which otherwise seemed pretty tight and was willing to show hole-cards when they didn't have to.

Top finishers were Matt Kalinowski (5th), Anna Dikker (4th), Carless "Joe" Boatwright (3rd), Howard Brown (2nd), and Michael Castaldo who finished in first place for the Borgata Deep Stack trophy and a $57,665 to fill his deep pockets.

Castaldo is co-creator and stars in Fatty's, a poker reality show that tapes in NY and wanted to thank all the Fatty's members that railed and followed him throughout the tournament.

One fan in particular watched the entire two days.

Michael adds to his PPI point totals as this is his second cash in three BWO tournaments.

So how did he win this thing? How about being dealt AA three times in seven hands which each hand scoring big.

Our Deep Stack Champion is gearing up for the Championship Event next week.