Third Epic Poker League Main Event in the books

The Epic Poker League hosted their third tournament during their inaugural season this past weekend, and while attendance in the Pro/Am increased dramatically, the EPL Main Event saw only a minimal increase in attendance over Event #2, both falling well below the high-water mark set during the inaugural EPL Main Event.

A total of 100 players turned out for the Main Event, which featured an intriguing Mix-Max format, bringing in just 3 more players than Event #2 back in September. The inaugural EPL Main Event saw a field of 130 players register for the $20,000 buy-in tournament back in August, and was won (with a little controversy thrown in) by Chino Rheem.

This time around the top honor would go to tournament grinder Chris Klodnicki, who picked up his first major tournament win. Klodnicki’s win was worth nearly $800k, and well-deserved considering he had to best a final table that included Mike “The Grinder” Mizrachi, Joe Tehan, Scott Clements, and Klodnicki’s heads-up adversary Andrew “LuckyChewy” Lichtenberger.

As I mentioned above, the format for the event was innovative, but in the end will likely need a little tweaking considering it took 15 hours (and could have gone much longer) to crown a champion on the final day, despite having a five-handed final table! The changes to the structure were nominal during the first four days of the tournament:

• Day 1 was played at 8-handed tables
• Day 2 was played at 7-handed tables
• Day 3 was played at 6-handed tables
• Day 4 was played at 4-handed tables

Even the final day f the tournament started in a usual fashion, but the real change (something the EPL will definitely have to tinker with) came when the tournament reached heads-up play. Instead of the usual freezeout style tournament the EPL decided to make the heads-up portion of the tournament a best two-out-of-three match, with the added stipulation that should it reach the tie-breaking third round the players would begin with equal chip-stacks regardless of the chip-stacks they possessed when heads-up play began.

Fortunately the tournament never reached this stage, as Klodnicki bested Lichtenberger in two very long heads-up battles -who knows how long a third match would have dragged on with equal chip-stacks!

Here is a look at the complete payouts from the Third Epic Poker League Main Event:

• 1^st Chris Klodnicki — $801,680
• 2^nd Andrew Lichtenberger — $514,480
• 3^rd Joe Tehan — $306,800
• 4^th Michael Mizrachi — $174,640
• 5^th Scott Clements — $89,680
• 6^th Noah Schwartz — $89,680
• 7^th Jason Mercier — $89,680
• 8^th David Williams — $89,680
• 9^th Sorel Mizzi — $50,920
• 10^th Amit Makhija — $50,920
• 11^th Hafiz Khan — $50,920
• 12^th Amnon Filippi — $50,920