Play at the East Chicago final table was extremely fast, not so much because the players were betting crazy, but the hands were crazy. Sets constantly, two pair against a set becoming a boat and more brought play down to heads-up in fewer than three hours.
For a Labor Day Weekend tournament at Ameristar East Chicago that drew 517 entries, the final nine brought a lot of excitement and energy to Monday's play.
Darrell Haywood held the chiplead almost the entire final table, gaining a massive lead when his full house topped the two pair of Ryan Olisar for exactly equal stacks. This pushed Haywood to 6 million with 7 players left.
Haywood - playing just his second tournament ever (he's a 2/5 and 5/10 cash game player in the region) was catching hands and the rest of the table's stacks were sliding downward.
Gary Herstein ran on the right side of a huge hand against Scott Sisler, all the chips in the middle with Herstein having two pair and Sisler a set. Herstein caught a river two-outer for a boat to eliminate Sisler in 7th and move to second overall in chips.
James Calvo caught a heater with 6 left and ran his stack from starting at 480,000 (and 9/9 to start the day) up to more than 4 million. His heater went cold 3-handed and he was eliminated by Herstein.
Herstein - 6th here last May for $28k, his 5th HPT East Chicago cash - also had two other final tables at $1100 main events in the region since April and he's been on quite a roll in local big buy-in events. He could not catch a hand early in his heads-up match against Haywood, slipping to as much as a 2-1 deficit despite the fact both started with more than 100BB.
Two big pots at the end of the 50k/100k level - both to Herstein - gave him his first chiplead of the final table.
Herstein put the tournament away rapidly, winning most of the hands once he took the lead. A tournament veteran with more than 90 tourney cashes, he pushed his advantage and made a huge call on the final hand, calling off more than half his stack with Ace-high to a shove by Haywood.
He was ahead AK > J9 on a 7-7-T flop. The hand held and Herstein earned the biggest cash of his career, $170,404 and a $3,600 Season Championship Package for the December HPT at St. Charles.
Check here for the full Main Event results
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