The Choctaw Main Event came to a close after 6 hours of play on Monday as a field of 851 was conquered by Jonathan Glendinning of Boulder, CO to win the grand prize of $231,832.
Glendinning was playing in what was only his second WSOP ring event, the first being the Monster Stack earlier in this series. He has the bulk of his poker results over the past two years, most of them locally in Colorado or in the WSOP in Vegas. But he has burst onto the scene in a big way recently as finished 4th in the WPT Prime Championship in early December at the Wynn for $505,000 and now has added the first big win of his career to make for over $730,000 in earnings in the span of just over a month.
"It's unreal" he said afterwards. "In this tournament I
learned to win flips, which is an important skill to have" he added with a smile.
He had support from his Colorado poker friends on the rail, including Ben Keeline and 3rd place finisher in this event Chad Lousberg, who jumped into one of his winner's pics.
He also said that he has already planned to play a full summer at the WSOP this year. Now he will have an extra tournament to play with the tournament of champions.
In order to win this ring, he had to overcome one of the strongest Oklahoma players out there in Will Berry who was looking to capture the Choctaw Main Event title and banner that had eluded him so closely in 2019 when he finished 2nd to Craig Varnell.
But the three-time ring winner Berry was not able to add another as Glendinning rallied from a heads up deficit to take a slight lead heading into the last hand when the players had close stacks. Berry jammed on the river to pressure Glendinning who ended up calling for the win.
He explained his thought process. "I know Will is a really good player and that he can bluff there. But ultimately it's really hard to fold top pair heads up."
Action of the Day
The day began with some trepidatious play at first with the first three eliminations going in order of chip position at the start. But that trend changed as start of day chip leader Davis Soskin went out in 5th place after he could not get much going on the day. Regardless, Soskin said he greatly enjoyed the run for the first bigtime score of his career calling it some of the most fun he has ever had playing poker.
Brad Ruben was going for what would be an unprecedented back to back Main Event rings at any single WSOP circuit stop. He moved up the counts quickly before being knocked out in 4th place to end that dream.
Chad Lousberg was eliminated in 3rd place to set up the aforementioned heads up battle.
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That does it for PokerOrg's coverage of the Choctaw Circuit stop. Make sure to keep eyes open for coming Instant coverage of WSOP Circuit stop in Thunder Valley as the circuit season rolls on.
