News

Sunday, 10 October 2010 10:23

Two major poker milestones were achieved this week as Dwyte Pilgrim took his first major world title and Pokerstars dealt their 50 billionth poker hand.

In a week that saw the culmination of the highly acclaimed World Poker Tour Borgata with the top spot going to Dwyte Pilgrim, one of online poker's biggest sites drew in a huge number of players all vying to be the one dealt the coveted 50 billionth hand. That hand came on Wednesday at 10:37am EDT with a massive 220,000 players all logged on at once playing 33,000 tables in the hope of being the player to be dealt that highly sought after milestone hand.

That hand went to the player going by the name "tbvle" playing on the $.02/$.05 Ornamenta table. As a way of saying thank you, PokerStars gifted the player a cool $56,140, with every other player at that table also being given $2,990 to $3,070 depending on how many VIP points that they had racked up over the preceding 50 hands. To add to the nice boost to their bankrolls, each player at the Ornamenta table were also gifted a ticket to the WCOOP Main Event worth $5,200.

Back to the World Poker Tour Borgata with the Final Table being played down to find the winner on Thursday. Play commenced at 4:00pm EDT and the chip leader was Ofir Mor. The $733,802 prize for first place was being played for by the final six, but it was Dwyte Pilgrim that had the most to prove. He was chasing his first ever major title, something that had been eluding him for a long time. Being a regular on poker's small circuit and having won three WSOP Circuit gold rings along with numerous other smaller events, he had managed to rack up over $800,000 in lifetime cashes prior to being involved in this event.

Pilgrim fought hard and saw off the other four, with Ben Klierbeing the first to leave the table with a cool $148,427. Daniel Makowsky was next to exit, followed soon after by Brandon Novena. Third place Mor was last to be eliminated leaving Pilgrim to go heads up against Kia Mohajeri, who took over from Mor as chip leader. Both players' chips went in at the turn, with Mohajeri showing two pair against Pilgrim's straight. The river did not do anything to improve Mohajeri's hand leaving Pilgrim's straight to take the pot and first prize.

For the very first time all through the tournament, Pilgrim was left totally speechless.