David Chen, a newbie to the PokerGO Tour, successfully defeated the top players in his very first live tournament. Chen is a 21-year-old MIT graduate, who achieved the distinction of becoming Poker Master’s youngest champion ever.
He finished off his final four opponents in just 2.5 hours by gathering every chip on the championship table. The $217,500 win gave Chan his first six-figure haul and his largest payday to date in his poker career.
After taking Sunday off from the series grind, the PokerGO Tour 2024 Poker Masters resumed play today with Day 2 action in Event #5: $10K No-Limit Hold’em. Following a commanding performance by Jonathan Little in Event #4, which secured his third PGT title of the year, players gathered in the PokerGO Studio for the $10,000 buy-in finale of the season.
A $750,000 prize pool was created with 75 participants, where 11 spots were compensated, and $217,500 was up for grabs for the winner.
Players can also wager or raise in no-limit hold ’em in any amount over the minimum raise up to their entire stack of chips at the table, often referred to as an all-in bet.
The size of the prior wager or raise is the minimum raise. A person must increase by at least the amount of the last raise in order to re-raise.
The MIT prodigy then defeated Jim Collopy heads-up to take home the trophy and $217,500 first-place payout. This is the 21-year-old’s largest lifetime victory and first six-figure sum and Chen has made $234,299 in total profits to date, according to The Hendon Mob.
Poker Master’s Event
Collopy had an excellent third consecutive final table, surpassing his sixth-place result in the third event and his third-place result in the fourth. It was also his best finish of the three. Collopy is now first on the Purple Jacket Leaderboard, slightly ahead of Jeremy Becker, after finishing in second place today.
Among the 75 competitors, the top 11 players were awarded a whopping total of $750,000 and were given away as a prize pool. When Laskowitz’s nines broke her aces, Kristen Foxen narrowly avoided bursting into the money bubble. Before the last table, Jeremy Becker (8th), David Coleman (9th), Nicholas Seward (10th), and Jeremy Ausmus (11th) busted.
Samuel Ju went down in the eighth, and Isaac Haxton went down in the sixth. Despite being short-stacked and winning his final several big blinds with king-ten, Haxton was unable to outperform Chen’s ace queen.
In fifth place, Sam Laskowitz was the first player to leave the live final table. Beginning with a moderate stack, Laskowitz would eventually run out of chips after tussling with Collopy in a three-bet pot involving an ace-high board that ended without a showdown. Later on, Laskowitz would find himself up against Chino Rheem several times.
The first time, he would outdraw Rheem with tens against his jacks, and the second time, he would lose with queens against Rheem’s ace-king offsuit. After holding the large blind versus Chen’s late position open, his day would finish.
After the middle pair with ace-five offsuit flopped, Laskowitz check-raised all over Chen’s continuation bet on a seven-five-four rainbow board. With Chen’s jacks, Laskowitz was unable to get any better and was to receive $52,500 for his efforts.
Filipp Khavin was out in fourth. As the chip leader at the beginning of the day, Khavin eventually lost ground to one of the short stacks after failing to establish any momentum. With ace-five offsuit from the big blind in his penultimate hand, Khavin moved his twelve large blind stacks in against Chen’s button raise with ace-eight offsuit. Khavin finished in fourth place with more than $71,000 as both players flopped a pair, but he was unable to improve further.
Chino Rheem was out next. Rheem had a fun but turbulent day due to his early altercations with Laskowitz and his later altercations with Chen. He was the small stack at the beginning of the final table, but he managed to move up to the third chip position by flipping a queen against Laskowitz’s ace-king.
But after a hand with Chen in which he limp/called a raise from the small blind and then check-raised a ten-ten-six board, he was never able to advance higher than that and fell short once more. After Rheem proceeded on the deuce turn for 225,000 and was raised to 900,000 by Chen, he was forced to fold.
Shortly after, Rheem would be eliminated after he checked-called an ace-jack-ten flop with queen-eight offsuit against Chen’s king-four offsuit, after defending his big blind against Chen’s button open. Rheem failed to progress and finished in third position, earning more than $101,000 for placing on the podium.
After Chen called a river raise in a pot where he saw Chen table two pairs with ten-six on jack-six-five-king-ten, Collopy was unable to recover from his brief lead against Chen’s top pair of aces. Chen had a roughly 1.5 to 1 chip lead at the beginning of heads-up play.
Chen would next call with jack-nine of spades, and Collopy would go all in from the button with ace-five offsuit. Collopy’s journey in second place came to an end when Chen flopped a flush, earning himself the trophy and a $217,500 first-place payout.
Payouts for 2024 Poker Master’s Event #5 Final Table
| Rank | Name | Payouts | Country | PGT Points |
| 1st | David Chen | $217,500 | United States | 218 |
| 2nd | Jim Collopy | $142,500 | United States | 143 |
| 3rd | Chino Rheem | $101,250 | United States | 101 |
| 4th | Filipp Khavin | $71,250 | United States | 71 |
| 5th | Sam Laskowitz | $52,500 | United States | 53 |
Poker Masters Purple Jacket Standings
While Jeremy Becker earns his second cash of the series to stay in second place, Jim Collopy grabs the top spot from Becker. With this latest victory, Chen has climbed into the top five, joining Jeremy Ausmus and Nicholas Seward in collecting more money.
| Rank | Player | Wins | Points | Winnings | Cashes |
| 1st | Jim Collopy | 0 | 295 | $294,800 | 3 |
| 2nd | Jeremy Becker | 1 | 285 | $285,000 | 2 |
| 3rd | Justin Zaki | 1 | 244 | $244,400 | 1 |
| 4th | Jonathan Little | 1 | 227 | $226,800 | 1 |
| 5th | David Chen | 1 | 218 | $217,500 | 1 |
| 6th | Spencer Champlin | 1 | 190 | $190,475 | 2 |
| 7th | Jeremy Ausmus | 0 | 178 | $177,600 | 2 |
| 8th | Michael Moncek | 0 | 165 | $165,000 | 1 |
| 9th | Harvey Castro | 0 | 146 | $145,800 | 1 |
| 10th | Nicholas Seward | 0 | 122 | $143,750 | 4 |
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