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| 2018 Battles At The Beach $1,500 No Limit Hold'em Championship Event winner Uri Kadosh (Davie, FL) |
"Hard to win...even harder to retain." A saying that's long been in competitive circles, and it's in regards to championships. Since 1976 (over forty years), in the four major American sports, a team has successfully defended their title just (31) times. Breaking down the numbers even more in depth, only seventeen teams have accomplished the feat of defending a title. Those are team sports though...and we are about to discuss poker...so let's take a look at golf. Golf is similar to poker in more ways that people may acknowledge, as a player's future is strictly predicated on the decisions sometimes made two or three shots prior. There are lucky bounces, poor decisions that end up working out, and perfect shots that somehow end up in a hazard. The Masters tournament (widely considered the sport's premier major) has been around since 1934, and only three times has anyone defended their title in back-to-back years. With all of that being said, while it's on a platform that pales in comparison to major athletic competition, Uri Kadosh (Davie, FL) winning the Battles At The Beach $1,500 No Limit Hold'em Championship for the second year in a row...that's something special.
Just over a year after besting a field of (482) entries, Uri was back in the Isle Poker Room, with the distinction of defending champ. The championship event, which was Event #16 of this year's series, was the same $1,500 No Limit Hold'em tournament as 2017. With a $500,000 guaranteed prize pool, the event would attract some of Florida's (and the countries) best poker players, as a combined (433) entries made up the field. World Series Of Poker bracelet winners...World Poker Tour champions...top ranked online players...they were in the field, and they wanted what Uri Kadosh currently held.
After three starting flights, a total of (142) players were able to bag chips for this past Sunday's Day 2, including names like Loni Harwood, Joshua Beckley, Ryan D'Angelo, Brian Hastings, and Ian O'Hara. Registration stayed open for the first two levels of Day 2, giving players an opportunity to try and make a cinderella run to the title. In total, thirty-three more entries joined the action before the window closed, bringing the official prize pool to $569,550. Once the payouts were posted, players still remaining learned that (55) players would reach the money, with first place scheduled to take home $114,993. Former WSOP Main Event runner-up Joshua Beckley would be eliminated on the money bubble, by eventual tournament runner-up Marshall White, sending the remaining field to dinner break. Play resumed shortly after 7:00pm, with the goal for the night, to get down to the final two tables. Players like Nancy Thomas (55th place), Jonathan Borenstein (42nd place), Daryl Jace (37th place), and Donald Williams (28th place), all recorded cashes for their tournament resume.
With three tables remaining, defending champion Uri Kadosh still remained, quietly maneuvering himself to the top of the leaderboard. His title defense hit a bump in the road though, as Uri lost a massive pot to Jake Schwartz when (26) players remained, after flopping a set and losing to Jake's larger full house. Kadosh would eventually get his revenge though, as both he and Schwartz reached Day 3, with Jake leading the eighteen players that were returning.
After just three hours of Day 3 play, the final table of Event #16 would be reached, with over $10,000,000 in live tournament earnings sharing the felt. Accomplished tournament veteran TJ Shulman (Boynton Beach, FL) would be the first player eliminated, after a three-way all-in against both Joshua Kay and Jake Schwartz. TJ would flop a set to grab a commanding lead, but watched as Joshua rivered a straight to eliminate him. The final table then became the "Jake Schwartz show," as he eliminated Loni Harwood in ninth place, and Bill Farnan in seventh place (with a short-stacked Jacobo Fernandez departing in eighth). In both hands, Schwartz was racing with two over-cards against a pair, each time making a straight to eliminate his opponents. Marshall White would then take out Qasem Jamhour (sixth place) and Joel Deutsch (fifth place) in succession, leaving the final table four-handed.
With the amount of experience (and incredible structure) at the time that four remained, one would think that the crew was in for a long evening. That was until the one hand that changed the eventual outcome of the tournament. With the stacks spread evenly across the table, Jake Schwartz and Uri Kadosh would get their chips all-in pre-flop, for a pot worth just over 7,000,000 (which was more than sixty-percent of the chips in play). Kadosh held A K against the 8 8 of Schwartz, with Uri flopping an ace to take the lead, one which he would never relinquish. With Joshua Kay and Jake Schwartz now hampered by super short stacks, they would be eliminated in third (Schwartz) and fourth (Kay) places.
Before the cards were dealt for heads-up play, Uri Kadosh and Marshall White struck and agreement, with Uri taking first place money (and the trophy). The businessman from Davie, who owns two companies and does real estate, had accomplished what nobody in Isle Poker history had done before...back-to-back titles. "I don't do this for the money," Kadosh said after the event has concluded, "I do it because I want to win." What Uri did was best some of the top tournament poker players for the second year in a row, netting himself over $200,000 from the two titles combined. It's now "back to business" for Kadosh, who we will see during the next Isle Poker championship event, which will be this upcoming July (Florida State Poker Championships).
2018 Battles At The Beach $1,500 NLH Championship (Final Table Results):
- Uri Kadosh (Davie, FL) $98,993*
- Marshall White (Garner, NC) $96,660*
- Jake Schwartz (New York, NY) $51,880
- Joshua Kay (Boca Raton, FL) $34,970
- Joel Deutsch (Ft. Lauderdale, FL) $26,883
- Qasem Jamhour (Miami, FL) $22,326
- Bill Farnan (Jupiter, FL) $18,698
- Jacobo Fernandez (Coral Springs, FL) $15,093
- Loni Harwood (Staten Island, NY) $11,499
- TJ Shulman (Boynton Beach, FL) $9,739
* Denotes heads-up chop
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