Chad Kopplin Goes From 1st Out to Winning
At the SD State Championship Chad Kopplin (far right) from Starters in Redfield had one heck of a swing. The tournament went for over an hour and a half before we even had our first all in and a call. Chad Kopplin was the first player in the tournament at risk. He was down to 2,100 in chips and was holding K-Q against pocket jacks. The window card was a jack putting Chad in a huge hole. The turn brought some help with a ace giving him four outs. Chad had his jacket on and was three steps away from the table when the 10 of spades popped giving him a straight. With the winning hand Chad was not the first player eliminated, but still was in a huge hole doubling up for less then half his starting stack.
As play continued to grind we were almost at the first break before we lost our first player. No state tournament with more than 50 players has ever came that close before. When we came back from our first break short only one player it seemed that players started busting left and right and within a blink of an eye we were down to four tables. Right around this time Chad got them all in against two players as he got cought bluffing. Chad had raised pre-flop former National Champ Troy Sattler re-raised with pocket Aces. A third player was also all-in with A-K, Chad was holding J-3, but said he was priced in to call at this point. He flopped a jack and rivered another jack to give him trips taking a huge monster 50k pot.
When we were almost to the final table on the opposite side of the spectrum Tanyia Rausis was having a great tournament if she could only avoid bad luck. Twice she had pocket Kings only to lose both times all in pre-flop as a huge favorite. The first was against A-J and the second was against 10-9 when the flop brought a 9 and the river brought a second 9.
When we had reached the final table it looked like this:
Seat 1: Gary Diltz from the Only One in Lennox with 165.5k
Seat 2: Ben Tesch from Shenanigan's Pub in Sioux Falls with 77k
Seat 3: Stephen Stuelpnagel from Geo's in Freeman with 68.5k
Seat 4: Ron Larson from the Brandon VFW with 32k
Seat 5: Harold Jorgensen from the Only One in Lennox with 16.5k
Seat 6: Chad Kopplin from Starters in Redfield with 83.5k
Seat 7: Jim Severson from the Only One in Lennox with 50.5k
Seat 8: Mike Stahl from Geo's in Freeman with 48k
Seat 9: Shannon Voegle from the Only One in Lennox with 156k
Seat 10: Tony Binger from Starters in Redfield with 19k
The top four players all qualified for the National Championship with the top two winning the airfare allowance and hotel stay. Coming in fourth place was Stephen Stuelpnagel getting knocked out in an epic way. Stephen moved all in after the flop with a shorter stack with a A-9-6 board holding a 9-3. Unfortunately for Stephen he went up against Chad who at the time was a big underdog when he flipped his pocket ducks. But you guessed it Chad went runner-runner 2's to make quads.
In third place Ben Tesch got tangled up with Ron Larson with a K-8-2 board. Ben was holding KQ and thought he was crippling Ron, but it turned out the other way when Ron flipped over pocket two's. The turn made it interesting as another King came out, however the river was a blank and Ben was eliminated in third.
This left Ron Larson and Chad Kopplin as the top two winning the airfare and hotel packages and qualifying for the National Championship. On a side note, when we were down to five players Chad had about 70-80% of the chips in play.