The young guns of poker have been making quite a splash lately. The recent
U.S. Poker Championship served as an excellent reminder of this fact. The final table of the event, held last Saturday, eventually pitted up-and-coming 22-year-olds
Alex Jacob and
Jordan Morgan against each other heads up. A first-place win in the event paid out $878,500, while second place was $405,072, meaning both players were guaranteed to score their biggest live-play paydays regardless of how they finished.
The outcome of the match was fairly predictable considering Jacob had $4,495,000 in chips compared to Morgan's $730,000. It was less than 7 minutes before the final hand of the tournament. Morgan raised to $75,000 preflop and Jacob pushed all in over the top. Morgan called and showed K
Q
, while Jacob flipped over A
5
for the lead. An ace hit the flop to further Jacob's lead and, with a final board reading A
9
7
2
J
, Morgan was eliminated.
Jacob took home the top prize for his biggest live-play cash ever and his only first-place finish in a major event, putting his lifetime winnings at almost $1.7 million. He previously took second place ($655,507) at the 2006
Foxwoods Poker Classic in April. Jacob also made two final tables at the 2006
World Series of Poker, taking fifth in a
pot-limit hold'em event and ninth in a
no-limit event.
Morgan, an Internet poker star and winning online tournament player under the alias "
iMsoLucky0," marks this as his largest live-play cash, as well. Morgan previously made a WSOP final table in a no-limit event, eventually busting in seventh.
More information on the U.S. Poker Championship, including live updates and chip-count graphs, can be found on CardPlayer.com by clicking here. Player profiles for Alex Jacob and Jordan Morgan can be found
here and
here, respectively.
