Bulgaria’s Dimitar Danchev outlasted 986 entrants to win the 2013 PokerStars Caribbean Adventure Main Event on Monday. Danchev defeated American player Joel Micka heads-up to earn a sweet $1.859m for becoming the PCA’s 10th anniversary main event champeen and the first Bulgarian to hoist the PCA title. It’s Danchev’s first major tournament scalp, although he finished second at the EPT San Remo in 2011, and the victory is all the more impressive considering he started final table play seventh out of eight on the chip chart. Jerry Wong, who started as chip leader, surged even further ahead of the other final tablers early on, but could manage no higher than a third place finish. The final payouts were as follows: Micka ($1.19m); Wong ($725k); Jonathan Roy ($560k); Owen Crowe ($435k); Andrey Shatilov ($325k); Yann Dion ($230k) and Joao Nogueira ($165.9k).
Vanessa Selbst has become poker’s all-time female tournament money leader by winning the PCA $25k High Roller event. Selbst outlasted 203 other entrants, including heads-up opponent Vladimir Troyanovskiy, to add $1.424m to her lifetime earnings. That pushed her total to $6.996m, good enough to leapfrog Kathy Liebert on the all-time money list. Selbst said the statistic was a “great achievement and definitely something I can be proud of,” but underscored her all-business approach by noting that “stats are fun to look at, but it’s definitely not what I’m playing for.” The year has gotten off to a stellar start for Selbst, who announced her engagement to partner Miranda Forster last week. Selbst’s high-roller final table companions cashed as follows: Troyanovskiy ($792k); Mike Watson ($462k); Ole Schemion ($355k); Shaun Deeb ($290k); Bryn Kenney $223k); Tobias Reinkemeier ($175k) and Micah Raskin ($130k).
Greg Jensen, co-CEO of hedge funders Bridgewater Associates, finished sixth at the PCA Super High Roller event, good enough for a $286k payday. Jensen is a self-described poker amateur, but one of the perks of having hedge fund friends is that one of them reportedly paid Jensen’s $100k Super High Roller buy-in as a birthday present. (Guess Sears was all out of ties that day.) In a classy move, Jensen has announced he will donate his PCA winnings to the families of the victims of the Newtown school shooting. Jensen’s Wall Street buddies should gift him with more tourney buy-ins in the hopes Main Streeters might continue (even for an extra minute) to entertain the possibility that the world of high finance isn’t entirely populated by heartless robber baron scumbags.
