Aaron Overton Wins First RGPS Title
Aaron Overton was down to one card left when the three of clubs on the river changed the trajectory of his tournament and began Overton’s comeback to a RunGood Poker Series Passport Graton $1,100 Main Event title at the Graton Resort Casino.
“I wanted to play for the win,” Overton said. “The (pocket) threes is probably a fold normally, but I felt like gambling a bit more for a win in that scenario.”
Overton’s decision turned his fortune around for the better as he rode that momentum to a $94,050 score, outlasting a total of 578 entries to get the biggest slice of the $563,550 prize pool against a tough final table that included three-time RGPS winner Brett Murray and two-time RGPS ring winner Xiong Thao.
The heads-up was a special moment as Overton got to compete for a title against his friend, Anthony Hugenberg. The deciding factor ended up being a cooler when Overton hit a full house on the river to one-up the full house of Hugenberg.
“It was a tough final table. I was playing against two really good players (Hugenberg and Murray),” Overton said. “I play once a week with Anthony. He’s a friend of mine. I had to cooler the hell out of him to win the tournament.”
With this victory, Overton will add to his more than $1.5 million in career earnings, according to The Hendon Mob.
Final Table Payouts
| Place | Player | Country | Prize (USD) |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Aaron Overton | United States | $94,050 |
| 2 | Anthony Hugenberg | United States | $62,000 |
| 3 | Brett Murray | United States | $46,500 |
| 4 | Vera Dong | United States | $34,500 |
| 5 | Andrew Nguyen | United States | $26,000 |
| 6 | Wo Lin | United States | $20,000 |
| 7 | Grant Maruya | United States | $15,400 |
| 8 | Xiong Thao | United States | $11,900 |
| 9 | Andrew Yurchak | United States | $9,400 |
Day 2 Action
A total of 73 players returned for Day 2, but that number did not last as the bustouts came quickly in the opening hours of the final day. It took only four levels of play for the tournament to reach the final three tables, as notables Marco Johnson, Toan Nguyen, Steven Gnatovich, Sasha Sabbaghian, Joe Nguyen, and Kris Burchfield were unable to escape the rising tide.
Andrew Yurchak hit the final three tables as the chip leader, but it was Andrew Nguyen who would see his stock rise after he scored a double knockout of Zach Smyth and Andre Ali.
Nguyen’s ascent would meet a wall when he called the all-in of Brett Murray and was shown a full house that dented Nguyen with 13 left in the tournament.
With 12 players left in the tournament, the formation of what would be the final three players began to form as Murray, Hugenberg, and Overton were the top three in chips.
Murray would go on to score a knockout of Zhengun Guan, which positioned him to enter the final table as the chip leader.
Hugenberg would dent Overton to climb neck and neck with Murray, but Murray began to pull away when he scored a knockout over Yurchak to eliminate him in ninth place.
Overton began to climb up the charts when he knocked out Grant Maruya in seventh place, but a series of pots did not go his way, highlighted by a loss to Hugenberg that dropped him to 1,900,000 in chips. This would be the lowest Overton would sink for the rest of the way as his comeback began when he spiked a set against Murray to stay alive.
This concludes PokerNews coverage of the RGPS Passport Graton $1,100 Main Event. Check back here for all your up-to-date news and coverage of poker around the world.