Keven Stammen defeats Joe Serock in heads-up action to win the Season 3 Hollywood Poker Open Main Event at the M Resort in downtown Las Vegas.
Keven Stammen is a giant both in terms of his physicality, and his ability to dominate a poker table. He is a Triple Crown winner in waiting, and yesterday added another major title to his resume after winning the Hollywood Poker Open
His victory was worth $347,052. That means he’s now earned over $4.4m in live tournament earnings. The HPO trophy can now join the World Poker Tour (WPT) Champions Club replica, and World Series of Poker (WSOP) bracelet that is gathering dust somewhere in his apartment.
The $2,500 buy-in event attracted a field of 684 entrants, only 8 down on the 692 that Simon Deadman waded through to capture the same title back in 2014. Deadman has since gone on to have a wonderful summer, it seems Stammen is dancing to the same beat.
His only WSOP cash was when he bubbled the final table of the $3,000 Limit Hold’em Six-Handed, but did chop a Venetian Deepstack event for $191,518. If you would have offered him just that score before the series began, he would have chewed your arm off. Adding a second six figure score to his Hendon Mob stats is the crust on an egg and bacon pie.
Stammen overcame a final table that included a few heroes. Alex Keating finished third. He recently final tabled the $3,000 No-Limit Hold’em event that saw the Brazilians break the stage. Then there was Joe Serock: the WPT Season 10 Player of the Year. Serock would lose out to Stammen in heads-up action, but recording his second six figure score of the calendar year (he was second in the Heartland Poker Tour Main Event in Black Hawk for $148,895) can be construed as a job well done.
Final Table Results
1st. Keven Stammen – $347,052
2nd. Joe Serock – $214,396
3rd. Alex Keating – $140,514
4th. Diogo Cardoso – $97,635
5th. Esther Taylor-Brady – $70,951
6th. Jiachen Gong – $55,064
7th. Rudy Lucas – $46,273
8th. Michael Laake – $38,561
9th. Andrew Fisher – $30,848
Nick Pupillo Wins the HPO Player of the Year Award
Stammen’s victory means the ticker tape drowns the third season of the HPO, and Nick Pupillo has been crowned the Player of the Year. Pupillo beat Dennis Tsai by a solitary point and is also the front-runner in the Global Poker Index (GPI) Challenger Cup with a 254-point cushion over Joe Kuether in second place.
Hollywood Poker Open Player of the Year Standings
1st. Nick Pupillo – 37 points
2nd. Dennis Tsai – 36 points
3rd. Douglas Holland – 34 points
4th. Jerry Zehr – 34 points
5th. Vadim Kleydman – 32 points
