Action picked up in the Garden State with most of the major online poker tournaments meeting their posted guarantees and exceeding last week's prize pools.
The biggest winner of the weekend came in the WSOP.com NJ/888poker.com NJ The BIG Deal where "uniquexcoles" outlasted a field of 106 players to pony up the big $500 buy-in to win $14,108. New Jersey's Rick "Kudos88" Alvarado snagged second place for $8,168, while on the tail end of the final table were notable players Josh "CtrlAltDel" Seeley, taking eighth place for $1,683, and Justin "SetMining" Wong, securing $1,337 for ninth place.
Two players scored big after the partypoker NJ/BorgataPoker.com $50,000 Guarantee ended in a heads-up deal, with "l8rtodd" officially finishing in first place for $9,372 and "dadadada" banking $8,805 for second place.
Meanwhile over on PokerStars NJ, Mike "MartinChatwn" Lavenburg shipped the Sunday Special, $50,000 Gtd for an impressive $12,057 after beating "Le Poisson13" in heads-up play who took home $9,035 for his runner-up performance. Just behind these two players was Jesse "ROU$EY" Elliot, taking third place for $6,854.
Also on PokerStars NJ, it was Craig "YourPetCat" Rubinstein shipping the Sunday Warm-Up, $10,000 Gtd for $2,233. Other well-known New Jersey online players to appear on the final table in this tournament included Daniel "st0neydanza" Dagostino (2nd - $1,638), Kevin "bobconstruc" Vanderhoff (6th - $491), and Timothy "tcIrish13" Clark (9th - $207).
The tournament with the biggest prize pool over the weekend was actually a huge freeroll on PokerStars NJ called the Spin & Go Challenge Freeroll, $100,000 Added. Players were automatically qualified by either making their first deposit or completing simple Spin & Go Challenges and featured a structure where players were able to re-enter up to three times during the late registration period.
While the tournament had the largest prize pool, since it was a freeroll it had a fairly flat payout structure with 1,170 players finishing in the money. When the final cards were dealt, it was "romejones" winning $5,000 after beating "ickytoy" (2nd - $4,000) in heads-up play.
The next Spin & Go Challenge Freeroll takes place in a few weeks on May 15 at 18:00 ET.
If you play regulated online poker tournaments in New Jersey and would like your real name appearing in future articles, please contact this editor at [email protected].
*Special thanks to PocketFives.com for some of the data in this article.
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