Anne Bui was crowned the winner in the RunGood Main Event hosted by Graton Casino and Resort on October 29th. She takes home $87,425, her first RunGood ring and the tournament victory as a result of a heads-up chop with regioanl tourney-crusher Joe Nguyen.
The $800 buy-in NLH tournament attracted a field of 837 entries over four starting flights, to set the total prize pool at $585,900. The top 105 players cashed for at least $1,160.
Bui is a Northern California poker regular from San Jose, and she had a good lineup of railbirds, including Pat Lyons and a bunch of other South Bay players.
“Oh I’m so happy because I had a rail, so I’m really excited, and everyone is super nice, and it was just great. It was fun,” said Bui shortly after the biggest cash of her career.
She continued when asked about her strategy at the final table, “I just, I don’t know, a little bird told me to go all in, and then I just went in. My strategy was to just play ABC, otherwise nothing fancy, I’ve got a good coach.”
“It’s great, a great poker room. Everything is nice, the property is nice, and I will definitely come back for sure, and the drive [up] is not bad,” said Bui when she was asked about her experience here during the tournament series hosted at Graton.
Bui came into the final table in about the middle of the pack in chips, but she started climbing the standings by taking out Christopher Marcus in ninth place. She used that early momentum to springboard up to second in chips by the first break in play. Nguyen took out the next two players, and Bui eliminated Terrance Reid from Poker.org in third place to set up the final match.
Final Table Results:
- Anne Bui – $87,425
- Joe Nguyen – $87,420
- Terrence Reid – $46,600
- Scott Hess – $34,745
- Anthony Li – $26,425
- Alonso Lau – $21,020
- Rick Troendly – $17,395
- Khahn Tran – $13,835
- Christopher Marcus – $10,370
The Main Event was one of the last events on the 21-event tournament series schedule
Some of the other big winners during the series included John ‘Bookend’ Koo who opened the series with a win in Event 1 – $10k GTD $200 NLH – and also the tournament’s finale, aka Event 21 – $200 Turbo NLH Closer.
Mixed-Game legend Ken Po scored a win in the $300 PLO, Jasthi Kumar out-dueled Koo FTW in the $1,100 NLH DeepStack and David Prociak was the other two-time winner in the series, taking down both the $300 TOE, and $300 HORSE.
You can check out all of the results from the tournament series right here.
Koo put an exclamation point on the series not only by winning the final tournament, but with his classic Steph Curry Night night pose captured below by RunGood photographer Spenser Sembrat.
Ryan is one of the original PokerLiveUpdates team members, a veteran poker tournament reporter who provides live updates reporting from the World Poker Tour, along with other tours and locations. He developed the FunTour2.0 concept of providing tremendous tournament coverage while exploring the world's best craft beer venues.
