The Super Stack series at Deerfoot Inn & Casino in Calgary is fast becoming a regular stop on the western Canadian poker calendar. This year's Spring Super Stack offered up five events that ended up generating more than $150,000 in total prizes. Mo Alamelhum was the player who took the biggest share of that by winning the Main Event.
Poker Room At the Deerfoot Inn & Casino, we want you to experience poker the way it was meant to be played – in our 10-table poker room. We provide the tables, chips, drinks, and dealers. All you have to bring is some friends and a spirit of adventure and competition! The Fall Super Stack is the fourth edition in 2019 for the popular Super Stack series at Deerfoot. With events in the winter, spring, summer and fall, the Super Stack series have become must-attend events for western Canadian poker players. This year's Fall edition gets underway Saturday, November 9th with the first event, the $300 + $40. Information and Reviews about Deerfoot Casino Poker Room in Calgary, including Poker Tournaments, Games, Special Events and Promotions. Twitter; 5 4 3 2 1.
The day before the series kicked off, two satellites ran that awarded 14 main event tickets, as well as some cash, but the series proper got underway on Thursday April 25th with Day 1a of the Main Event, as well as the Event #2: $220 Pot-Limit Omaha tournament. The PLO was a busy night that saw 85 total entries and a prize pool of over $16,000. Richard Tran was the eventual winner for a score of $4,700 after a long heads-up battle.
Day 1a of the Main Event also ran on Thursday, and drew 35 entries, which was up from the same day in 2018. They played a full 15 levels of 40 minutes each, and in the end just six players were left with chips. Sheldon Viney booked a seat into Day 2 on Thursday, but he had the shortest stack of the day. It ended up working better for him on Day 2, however, than Arun Mattu's 239,500 big stack from Day 1a.
Friday's action saw a new set of players return to the felt for Day 1b of the Main Event, as well as the action packed Event #3: $330 NLHE Bounty, which put $100 of the buy-in aside for bounty. Event #3 drew 97 total entries for nearly $18,000 in the prize pool. The win went to Aamir Khan for a cool $5,000.
Day 1b capped out at 51 entries, another increase over 2018 numbers. Added to the Day 1a total, that brought the Main Event so far to 86 entries total. In keeping with the pace of Day 1a, by the time 15 levels were complete, 10 players, or just under 20% of the total starting field, still had chips in front of them, which brought the total entries for Day 2 to 16. Chad Winnick booked the biggest Day 1b stack for Sunday, counting up 249,000 chips at the end of the day.
Saturday marked the final start day of action for the Main Event. Day 1c is traditionally the largest field of all the starting flights, and this year was no different. When the gates came down on registration after the dinner break, 111 entries had been recorded, bringing the grand total to 197. That meant there was $126,326 in the prize pool for the Main, with $31,595 up top for first place. Action was a bit quicker on Day 1c, in no small part due to Haven Werner amassing a truly impressive stack of 543,500, significantly more than the second place stack of Jesse Handford at 405,000. Just 14 players advanced to Day 2 from the third starting flight, down from the ratio of the first few days, but it meant that just 30 people would be returning Sunday to compete for one of 20 paid spots.
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As Saturday wore on, the weather outside the Deerfoot got worse and worse. While the oncoming storm had little effect on the numbers for Day 1c of the Main Event, the storm hit in full shortly after registration closed on that event, and about two hours before the start of Event #4: $250 NLHE Team Event. By the time the team event was set to start, Calgary was in the middle of a serious spring blizzard, and it had an impact on the number of teams who made it down for the event. In the end, 20 entries were recorded, with a few rebuys, meaning 3 places got paid out. After a spirited heads-up battle, the very capable team of Mel and Sue took down the top prize of $2,140.
Most of the attention on Sunday was focused on Day 2 of the Main Event, but there was a final side event as well, Event #5: $270 NLHE Bounty. While the brunt of the storm passed Saturday night, Sunday still showed a lot of signs of the night before. All 30 of the Day 2 players for the Main Event arrived without issue, but once again the weather had an effect on the numbers for the final event. In the end, there were 20 entries for the final bounty tournament, which awarded $50 for every knockout, and the guy with all the chips at the end was a very familiar face on the western Canadian poker scene. Thomas Taylor added another win, albeit a small one by his standards, to his already impressive career winnings with $2,350 plus eight bounties. In his Twitter bio, Taylor says 'I date a babe. I play poker. People say I run good. They’re right.' With a winner's photo like this, who can argue?
While Taylor was off winning the side event, the 'babe' from his Twitter bio, Haven Werner, was busy using her start-of-day chip lead to make a serious run at the Main Event championship. Taylor was on her rail after his side-event win, but in the end, she fell in fifth place for a score of $7,800. Overall, though, it was still a pretty decent day for Alberta's premiere poker couple.
Other notables on the final day included Day 1b chip leader Chad Winnick who fell in 13th place overall, for a score of $2,200. Day 1a chip leader Arun Mattu managed to make it a bit farther, finishing ninth for $3,150, but Sheldon Viney, who started Day 2 with the smallest stack of 51,500, turned it into a sixth place finish worth $6,300.
When play got down to four-handed, action slowed a little bit between the final players, Erich Leidums, Rey Lee, P.S, and Mo Alamelhum. After the chips moved around for bit, and play was moved from the now-empty, cavernous Chrome Showroom back into the more intimate poker room at Deerfoot, they finally agreed to a deal based on the ICM at the time. Leidums took fourth for $16,525, Lee third for $17,004, and P.S. second for $18,978.
Alamelhum had a pretty significant chip lead when the deal happened, so he ended up taking the lion's share of the prize money with $25,788 for the win. In solid Calgary tradition, Alamelhum's trophy for the event was a custom western belt buckle, specially designed for this event.
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The full payouts for the Main Event are below:
| Place | Prize | Player | Original Prize |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1st | $25,788 | Mo Alamelhum | $31,595 |
| 2nd | $18,978 | P.S. | $21,600 |
| 3rd | $17,004 | Rey Lee | $14,500 |
| 4th | $16,525 | Erich Leidums | $10,600 |
| 5th | $7,800 | Haven Werner | $7,800 |
| 6th | $6,300 | Sheldon Viney | $6,300 |
| 7th | $5,000 | Jesse Handford | $5,000 |
| 8th | $3,950 | William Yoneda | $3,950 |
| 9th | $3,150 | Arun Mattu | $3,150 |
| 10th | $2,590 | Pete Fylyma | $2,590 |
| 11th | $2,590 | John Foley | $2,590 |
| 12th | $2,200 | Peter Amic | $2,200 |
| 13th | $2,200 | Chad Winnick | $2,200 |
| 14th | $2,200 | Fred Werezak | $2,200 |
| 15th | $1,850 | Grant Pazarka | $1,850 |
| 16th | $1,850 | Sam T | $1,850 |
| 17th | $1,850 | Dale Gould | $1,850 |
| 18th | $1,500 | Frank Longinotti | $1,500 |
| 19th | $1,500 | Cindy Kerslake | $1,500 |
| 20th | $1,500 | Mathyeu Provost | $1,500 |
Next up at the Deerfoot is the Summer version of their Super Stack series, which runs once a season. The Summer and Winter versions are always the biggest, with more events and more money up for grabs. The 2019 edition of the Summer Super Stack runs from August 7th through the 19th with the full schedule to be announced soon. Will you be the next person wearing a Super Stack Championship Buckle?