It was a great day for poker on Saturday, May 2nd, 2009.  300 Nebraska Poker Events players had accumulated enough points to qualify for the tournament.  At 1pm, 165 players were in their seats and were ready for the long day ahead of them.  We had approx. 90 players from Central Nebraska and 80 players from the Omaha area.  Either way you look at it a 1 in 165 shot at a $2,000 1st place payout wasn’t bad for free poker.
The blinds were long and the beats were bad.  At last we narrowed it down to our final 16 players.

16th Scott Stambach (Omaha)
15th Brad Marr (Omaha)
14th Bryan Kemper (Central NE)
13th Dave Patterson (Central NE)
12th Dave Cushing (Central NE)
11th Mike Townsend, Sr (Omaha)
10th Darius Robinson (Omaha)
9th Jessica Bruggeman (Central NE)
8th Cory May (Central NE)
7th Cory Waller (Central NE)
6th Darrell Budlong (Omaha)
5th Alicia Gile (Central NE)
4th Jeff Eppenbach (Central NE)
3rd Justin Bullis (Central NE)
2nd Rich Novotne (Central NE)
1st Tony Nguyen (Central NE – Grand Island)

Congrats to Tony Nguyen.  He played solid poker all day, amassing a big stack early and there was just no stopping him. Willing to put his opponents’ tournament life at stake at almost every bet, he showed composure and experience as he narrowed down the field with each all-in bet and all-in call. Once again in back to back state tournaments, the players from Central Nebraska dominated the top 16 and final table. Only 1 of the 9 players on the final table was from Omaha and that didn’t last long as Mr. Budlong got knocked out in 6^th place. It was a heated top 3 with Justin Bullis and Tony Nguyen as the chip leaders, but a quick double-up put Rich Novotne right in the mix of things. In the end, Justin and Rich just didn’t have enough to hold off Tony’s aggressive big stack play.

Congrats again to Tony Nguyen. He walked away with $1,000 cash and a $1,000 buy-in into any tournament of his choice. Tony is planning on venturing to Vegas to play in a $1,000 WSOP event. We wish him the best of luck.

Thank you to all of the players who supported and continue to support Nebraska Poker Events. We were able to give over $13,000* in cash back to our players at Districts and Finals from July 2008 to May 2009.  (*doesn’t include nightly payouts) Please continue to support the venues each night. The venues are the reason we are able to offer everyone such great entertainment.

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