Bicknell notches biggest win yet

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Kristen Bicknell locked up the biggest score of her professional career Sunday in Las Vegas by taking down Event 6 of the Poker Masters for a whopping $408K, defeating Chance Kornuth heads-up.

“It feels incredible to win this event. I final-tabled the World Poker Tour event last week and I did not feel happy with my final-table play, so that run was kind of bittersweet. I wasn’t planning on playing this tournament but I felt the itch and in Las Vegas and I’m very happy with how it played out,” Bicknell said.

The first player to get knocked out was Ben Heath, who ran kings into the aces of Andras Nemeth. Nemeth’s aces held up without a hiccup and he chipped up into a comfortable stack. Just a few hands later, Kornuth applied pressure on all the big stacks with a J-7 shove. Bicknell made the call for her tournament life with A-10 and her hand held up to turn Ralph Wong and Ali Imsirovic into the short stacks.

Wong busted in fifth place when he shoved with A-9 of spades into the A-J of leader Kornuth, who saw his hand hold up. After this hand, Kornuth chipped up to 3.8M while his remaining three opponents had just 2.4M combined.

Nemeth busted in fourth when Kornuth put him all-in again. Kornuth had been pushing the other players around a fair bit and, as the short stack, Nemeth took a stand with A-3 but  Kornuth’s pocket fives held up.

The three-way battle got intense as Imsirovic doubled up first after which Bicknell did so as well and a fairly even battle ensued. Bicknell had Kornuth all-in twice before she managed to knock him out when her pocket eights rivered a straight against Kornuth’s nines.

“I came into this tournament with a good attitude,” she said. “I was focused and tried to play my best. Playing in this event, especially at the final table against guys like Andras and Ali, I felt like I’m below the top level because I don’t study GTO like they do. I was definitely the underdog but thankfully I didn’t get put into too many difficult spots and things went my way.”

Chris Cosenza

Chris Cosenza