New York poker pro David Paredes has scored his biggest live tournament win yet after claiming the winner’s prize of $723,227 in the World Poker Tour Borgata Open. The $3,500 buy-in event carried a guarantee of $3 million and attracted a large field of 1,027 – many of them top professional players.
Paredes has been a professional since 2011 and was originally a lawyer by discipline, having graduated from Harvard in 2002, worked in hedge fund management on Wall Street and dabbled in fiction writing, video gaming and chess. He played an important role in the 2plus2 player investigations that exposed the UltimateBet cheating scandal several years ago.
With the field whittled down to a final table of six, Paredes was around the middle of the survivors in chip counts as James Gilbert led the table into the last phase of the game.
When third placed Joe Kuether was eliminated for $262,994 Paredes and Gilbert faced off in the heads up, with Paredes holding a 2 to 1 advantage which he shrewdly leveraged into victory within 20 hands, sending Gilbert home with the runner up prize of $434,598.
The rest of the table’s take-homes were:
Maurice Hawkins $220,258
Jerry Payne $180,808
Roman Valerstein $146,291