2016 Rock ‘n’ Roll Poker Open
Seminole Hard Rock Hotel and Casino
Hollywood, FL
Event 5: $360 Black Chip Bounty NL Hold’em (Re-Entry)
Entries: 209
Prize Pool: $41,800
November 20, 2016
Rob Cowen has planted the Union Jack in South Florida, winning Event 5 at the Rock ‘n’ Roll Poker Open. Cowen defeated a field of 209 players in the $360 Black Chip Bounty event, collecting his own bounty, the trophy, and the top prize of $11,706.
Cowen is a professional poker player and former Psychology student from Swansea, Wales. The 31-year-old has been playing the game seriously for nearly a decade, but this year has been his most successful one yet. He has more than six figures in tournament earnings in 2016, including a deep-ish run in the WSOP Main Event this past summer.
No victory goes unappreciated, but the champ actually had other plans for Sunday when it began. He’d bagged up a fairly small stack of 52,500 chips in Event 1 — still good for 17.5 big blinds at the Day 2 starting level. The issue wasn’t “making it to Day 2”, but making it to Day 2. Physically. Cowen overslept by nearly three hours, only showing up after his stack had been completely blinded out.
“When I woke up this morning, I thought I wouldn’t bother turning up for Day 2, and I’d ship the Bounty instead,” he laughed it off.
Cowen did late-register Event 5 with 30 big blinds, and he went on to build his way into the chip lead by the time the final table was set. A couple hours later, he was heads-up with Stephen Song, though he was facing a huge chip deficit of about 10:1 at that point. “I was always going to win, though,” Cowen chuckled in his postgame interview.
Cowen found a quick cooler of a double-up with pocket tens against pocket eights, then another double, and another. A few orbits into the duel, he completed the comeback, defeating Song to snag the trophy and the winner’s share of the prizepool.
Final Table Results
1st: Rob Cowen – $11,706
2nd: Stephen Song – $6,897
3rd: Nicolas Ochoa – $3,971
4th: David Kaye – $3,219
5th: Aaron Thomas – $2,508
6th: Scott Zakheim – $2,090
7th: Mark Dube – $1,672
8th: Dimitry Agrachov – $1,254
9th: Brian Phillis – $836