The Card Player Poker Tour Choctaw $1,500 main event took place at the Choctaw Resort Casino in Durant, Oklahoma where Mo Abedi-Arania fought off stiff competition to emerge as the winner. The $1,500 buy-in $500,000 guarantee main event proved to be a huge success as over 735 entered the tournament which resulted in a total prize pool of $1,103,091, easily surpassing the $500,000 guarantee. The Choctaw Resort Casino currently has more than 4,000 slot machines, its own exclusive poker room which is highly rated by players, a number of different table games.
Mo Abedi-Arani played against a number of tough players but held his nerve after having a heads-up chip deficit that was 6-1 during one particular stage of the match. Some of the other players at the final table included defending Maxx Dansky who is the CPPT Choctaw champion, last year’s runner-up Miguel Hernandez, two-time Oklahoma State Championship of Poker champion Doug Paxton, Justin “Choctaw” Kruger and Sebastian Tejada.
Mo Abedi-Arani hails from the United States and has been playing poker for a number of years. However, he has not experienced much success until now. In a statement Abedi-Arani said
It feels great but it still hasn’t hit me. Blair (Hinkle) was on my left the whole time and he busted early, so that was lucky. Then everything else just worked out the entire time. It felt good. It’s nice, the bracelet is nice, the money is nice. Obviously I’m happy. It’s great because now I can play a little bit bigger. It helps a lot.
Mo Abedi-Arani walked away with the bracelet and prize money of $220,626, followed by Allan Farber who took $136,011 and in third place came Lou Barlow who won $100,271. The fourth and fifth place went to Bruce Guin with $74,734 and Matthew Ludlow with $56,445.
The event proved to be a great success for the Choctaw Resort Casino. Jeramey Standridge, Choctaw Table Games Manager said was extremely happy with the how the tournament proceeded and was happy that his team put up a good show. There were a number of high profile players who took part in the tournament. Some of these names included Oklahoma-native Alex Phahurat, Tommy Vedes, 2012 WSOP October Niner Rob Salaburu, T.J. Cloutier and WSOP bracelet winners Grant Hinkle Blair Hinkle, Chance Kornuth and Larry Wright.
