By Arnold Warner
Bay 101 Casino in San Jose held the annual Fall Poker Classic tournament series from Oct. 15 to 22. The six events had a total of 1,028 entries and amassed prize pools that summed up to more than half a million dollars.
Minh Nguyen won the no-limit Hold’em Main Event, earning a top prize of $48,150. There were 336 entries in this three-day tournament (two Day 1s, followed by Day 2). The buy-in was $1,100, which created a prize pool of $336,000. The other top 10 finishers were Kipley Fiebig $41,390, Adam Duong $32,340, Wilson Chan $35,030, anonymous $28,670, Steven To $13,290, Raghuram Jonnalagedda $11,160, Viet Tran $9,160, Scott Sanders $7,180, and Pat Lyons $6,050.
First on the agenda was Event #1, the $350 “20/20” no-limit Hold’em tournament. Players started with 20,000 chips and played 20-minute levels. It attracted 139 entries for a $41,700 prize pool. First place went to a player choosing to remain anonymous who received $8,650. After that came Benedicto Cruz $5,940, Srikanth Kurmana $5,790, Joseph Mussat $5,600, and Billy Huynh $2,040.
Next was the Omaha Hi-Lo event with 65 players, $355 buy-in, and $19,500 in prize money. Omar Mehmood $5,300 was the big winner, followed by Jason Kawamoto $4,170, Moon Kim $3,210, Karl Duffy $1,710, and Tal Hart $1,320.
Then it was back to no-limit Hold’em for Event #3, the $560 “Monster Stack” that featured 30,000 starting chips. There were 233 players and a prize pool of $116,500. The top spot went to Victor Paredes $27,230 and also featured Arthur Dyogi $19,120, Chen Balteriski $11,940, San Nim $7,260, Robert Spence $5,610, Kelly Douglas $4,650, Srinivas Dudi $3,960, Moshe Gavrieli $3,380, and Robert Sears $2,720.
Event #4 was the re-entry tournament with a $240 buy-in. The prize pool of $30,800 was created by 154 entries. The top five spots went to Ratu Caucau $6,750, Dung Diep $6,600, Gilman Palacios $3,160, Lokesh Manohar $1,920, and Bryan Cassalia $1,480.
The penultimate event was the $550 Double Stack Turbo, with a numerologically significant 101 entries and a $5,500 prize pool. The big finishers were Arun Sharma $12,935, Rellie Sigua $11,935, John Horvath $5,810, David Allison $3,790, and Aaron Morris $2,960.
