The inaugural Epic Poker League Main Event was completed over the weekend and it was David “Chino” Rheem who was crowned the champion, earning himself $1,000,000 in the process. Or has it?
Rheem has a very impressive record in live poker tournaments, having cashed no fewer than 40 times, won eight titles (including a World Poker Tour Main Event), reached the final nine of the World Series of Poker Main Event in 2008 and has over $4,900,000 in live tournament winnings. Despite this it appears that Rheem has suffered from bankroll issues and it has come to light that he may owe large sums of money to several of his fellow poker professionals.
The first negative publicity Rheem received was via the Two Plus Two poker forums where Wil Molson revealed that Rheem had essentially stolen from him last year when Molson made a mistake and transferred Rheem some funds via an online poker site as he was planning to back him in the £10,000 High Roller Turbo event at EPT London. However, instead of sending him $20,000, Molson sent Rheem $40,000 but Rheem did not send this money back and still did not when he came third in that tournament for £94,760 ($148,290). Several other notable players have since come forward and outed Rheem as a scammer, which is a shame as it certainly takes some shine off this latest win, which should really have been celebrated, after all he did overcome one of the strongest, if not strongest tournament field ever.
Rheem started the six-handed final table second in chips albeit it hot on the heels of Hasan Habib. Each of the players who returned to the Palms Resort Casino were guaranteed $107,980 but knew they had a realistic chance of walking away with a cool $1,000,000 for becoming the eventual winner. The first player to bust out was Huck Seed, his pocket jacks being no match for Jason Mercier’s big slick and Mercier despatched of fifth place finisher Gavin Smith when the latter three-bet squeezed all in with pocket nine and ran straight into Mercier’s queens. Ouch.
Four became three with the elimination of the aforementioned Habib, he three-bet shoved for 600,000 chips after Rheem had opened to 70,000. Habib had a legitimate hand in two jacks but Rheem snapped him of with the best starting hand in No Limit Texas Hold’em, a pair of aces. No help came from the five community cards, in fact Rheem hit an unnecessary heart flush on the river.
Mercier was the man who went into the record books as the third place finisher as he went from hero to zero in a short space of time. Just before his exit hand he had been in a raising war with Erik Seidel that resulted in Seidel calling off his stack with ace-king and being up against a lowly pair of fives. Seidel spiked a king which left Mercier with around 12 big blinds. These found their way into the middle when the action folded to Mericer in the small blind and he open-shoved with 9c8d and was called by Seidel in the big blind holding KcJc. Neither player paired any of their holecards and Mercier was sent packing in third spot.
Seidel trailed Rheem by 3,125,000 to 3,730,000 chips and despite winning the first few pots could not really get any momentum going and Rheem constantly chipped away at Seidel’s stack. Eventually Seidel found himself down to 1,000,000 chips and trailing five-to-one and needing to make a move sooner rather than later. With blind at 25,000/50,000/5,000a Seidel opened to 100,000 on the button with AcQh and snap-called when Rheem moved all in. Unfortunately for Seidel, Rheem had done this with a dominating AsKd and Seidel was drawing to just three outs. The final board ran out 8c-4d-Ad-3d-Td and with that Seidel became the second placed finisher and Rheem became the most unpopular winner in the history of poker!
It is not known if Rheem plans to pay off any of his debts with his new found fortune but one man who has received some money, in fact $100 more than he was owed is Ben Lamb, the man who has been on an absolute tear this summer at the WSOP. Lamb tweeted that he had received 100% of the money he was owed (for a bet that Rheem backed out of) and had actually been given an extra $100 by mistake! Others have reportedly been given 10% of the money they are owed so perhaps Mr Rheem is going to do the hnourable thing and pay his dues. Only time will tell.
Final table payouts
1st: Chino Rheem: $1,000,000
2nd: Erik Seidel: $604,330
3rd: Jason Mercier: $360,970
4th: Hasan Habib: $237,560
5th: Gavin Smith: $154,260
6th: Huck Seed: $107,980
