It didn’t take long for Jason Koon to follow up his High Stakes Duel win with another big victory. The GGPoker ambassador lost a huge chip lead at the final table of the winner-take-all PokerGO Tour Championship, but then he battled back to take it down for $500,000.
Following Day 1 (Wednesday), the 2021 World Series of Poker bracelet winner returned to action with more than 50% of the chips in play and six players remaining. But in no-limit Texas hold’em, no chip lead is safe from a bad run of cards, especially against some of the best players in the world.
The six who came back for Day 2 were Koon, Benny Glaser, Nick Petrangelo, Sean Winter, Stephen Chidwick, and Chad Eveslage. PokerGO offered up a winner-take-all season-ending free-roll to the top 21 performers on the 2022 PGT leaderboard. Everyone in the field but one would go home empty-handed.
Lead Dissipates
What a month of poker it’s been for Koon, who won Round 5 of High Stakes Duel III against Phil Hellmuth for $1.6 million. While he awaits a new challenger for Round 6 ($3.2 million pot), he made his way to the PokerGO Studio in Las Vegas for a six-figure free-roll.
It appeared he was destined to win another tournament following his dominant Day 1 performance. But it wasn’t quite so easy on Thursday, and he was in for quite the battle for that huge prize.
After Glaser, Eveslage, and Chidwick had been eliminated, Koon lost a significant chunk of his stack betting ace-high into Winter’s two pair, and then shortly after his small pocket pair didn’t hold up in another sizable pot against the same opponent.
For the first time at the final table, there was a new chip leader, and then once Petrangelo busted in third place, Winter was up about 2-1 in chips.
The momentum had completely swung the other way, but Koon wouldn’t give in. He faced a talented foe in Winter, the 2022 Poker Masters champion, who made some aggressive plays that put his opponent in a tough position.
Momentum Back in Koon’s Favor
Perhaps the key hand of the match played out as follows: Winter completed the 30,000 big blind on the button with 
before the big blind, holding 
raised it to 150,000.
The button came along and the flop ran out 
but both players surprisingly checked. When the 
appeared on the turn to give Koon two pair, he fired out a pot-sized bet of 350,000 and received a call. On the 
river, no help to either player, Koon jammed all in for 705,000, and his opponent made the call with top pair only to find out the bad news.
That put Koon back into a 3-1 chip advantage. Once again, there was no quit in Winter and he would continue his aggressive play. On a board with three nine’s, he moved all in with complete air and forced king-high to fold the best hand.
The effort would turn out to be all for naught for Winter when Koon put his opponent all in on the button preflop with 
. Winter called off his final nine big blinds with 
.
Although Winter was ahead, the board of 
was unkind to him as it gave his opponent top pair. With that, Winter received exactly the same for second place as did the first to bust in the tournament — $0.
Koon, on the other hand, took home $500,000 and was crowned PokerGO Tour champion.
“It feels great, a bunch of great players in the tournament and almost all just good friends, so it was great banter and competition,” Koon said in his post-game interview.
*Images courtesy of PokerGO