Dakotah O'Dell Wins RunGood Poker Series Contenders Council Bluffs Main Event ($48,771)
A massive field of 813 entrants turned up for the RunGood Poker Series (RGPS) Contenders Horseshoe Council Bluffs $575 Main Event, 137 of whom returned for Sunday's Day 2 hopeful to claim the title. Up for grabs to the eventual winner was the first-place prize of $80,853 along with the RGPS trophy and a seat to the next RunGood ProAm event held in Las Vegas at the end of the year.
Thirteen hours after cards went in the air, four players were left standing and agreed to an even chop of $48,771 apiece while leaving the trophy and the ProAm seat to play for. When all was said and done, Dakotah O'Dell emerged victorious, and in doing so he more than doubled the $33,462 career live earnings he had coming into the day.
O'Dell started the day with an above-average stack of 177,500 and became one of the largest stacks in the field not long after the first break. He was involved in a few roller-coaster hands, but ultimately maintained an upward trajectory and took a top-three stack into both the dinner break with 20 left and to the final table of 10, where he scored an early elimination and coasted through to the end.
The other three players involved in the four-way deal were Guanyun Cheng, Kaleb Dunn, and Eric Kyle, all of whom also earned the far-and-away largest scores of their careers.
RGPS Council Bluffs Final Table Results
| Place | Player | Prize |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Dakotah O'Dell | $48,771* |
| 2 | Guanyun Cheng | $48,771* |
| 3 | Kaleb Dunn | $48,771* |
| 4 | Eric Kyle | $48,771* |
| 5 | Vicki McKee | $20,765 |
| 6 | Donald Nimneh | $15,901 |
| 7 | Rob Palacios | $12,331 |
| 8 | Mike Henrich | $9,682 |
| 9 | Nick Barksdale | $7,696 |
| 10 | Chris Fraley | $6,190 |
*Denotes four-handed deal.
Day 2 Action
More than one-third of the 137 returning players would come back to Day 2 and fall short of the money, as 90 places got paid. Stacks got into the middle from the very first hand, when Nancy McDonald ran four of a kind into a Royal Flush held by Saif Sayah (45th - $1,468) on the very first hand of the day. Other notable players in RunGood Ambassador Blair Hinkle, Johnnie Moreno, and Jeff Grimes also were eliminated as play reached nearer to the bubble.
Play slowed down momentarily on the bubble before Ryan Phan found himself eliminated in 91st place by eventual third-place finisher Kaleb Dunn, who woke up with two queens in the small blind after Phan re-jammed pocket nines in the cutoff over an early-position open. From there, the eliminations began to pile up once more as other notables Brian Frenzel (77th - $1,020), former RGPS Council Bluffs Champion Mark Fink (49th - $1,323), Mike Vanier (24th - $2,915), Jeff Tebben (16th - $4,150), and November 2021 RGPS Champion Nate Steuer (12th - $6,190) all eventually found their way to the payouts prior to the final table of 10.
ClubGG qualifier Vicki McKee entered the final table with the chip lead and a stack of over two million. She quickly claimed the first casualty, knocking out Chris Fraley when her queen-jack suited made quads on the turn of an all-in preflop scenario against Fraley's red eights. Moments later, Nick Barksdale went out in ninth, marking his second consecutive RGPS Council Bluffs final table after a seventh-place finish this past November.
O'Dell then knocked out Mike Henrich in eighth after it would be his turn to win a coin flip, which proved to be the theme as Rob Palacios fell to Chen gin seventh shortly thereafter in similar fashion when Cheng's ace-jack made a backdoor wheel to best Palacios's pocket tens. From there, Cheng took center stage, hitting improbable rivers on back-to-back all ins versus sixth-place finisher Donald Nimneh, the winner of the very first $250K prize from the Wynn's inaugural Mystery Bounty tournament last October.
The final five players went on a scheduled break shortly after Nimneh's elimination, and Cheng picked up where he left off when play resumed, flopping Broadway with ace-jack. He bet and was faced with a raise from McKee on his left, which he three-bet and quickly called McKee's four-bet shove. McKee had king-queen for top two pair and did not improve to a full house, bringing about her elimination in fifth.
After McKee's departure, the final four players became eager to complete a deal, ultimately agreeing to an even $48,771 apiece as was allowed by the venue, and it wasn't long from there before O'Dell took home the trophy.
This concludes PokerNews coverage of the RGPS Council Bluffs Main Event. The RunGood Poker Tour will return March 1-6 to Tunica, MS at the Horseshoe Tunica. More information can be found on the RunGood Events Website.