The Heartland Poker Tour comes twice a year to the Golden Gates Casino in Black Hawk. The $300 buy-in tournament is always sold out and generates a prize pool of around a half-million dollars. One of the first tournaments held a few years back produced a poker tournament that will be remembered for many years to come.
The final table of six played for a first place prize of $129,000, second place of $64,000, and 3rd-6th of $30,000 down to $10,000. The amazing part of this tournament was the heads-up battle between Mike Haggard, an amateur player and businessman from Evergreen and Steve Klaus, also an amateur and Denver chiropractor.
With four players left, Steve slow played Kings to knock out Johnny “The Lion” Lima in fourth. Next, Mike slow played aces against Steve to bring him roughly even with Steve. Professional player Mike Banducci was next out when he went all-in with Qd-Jd and failed to improve against Steve’s pair of eights.
As their heads up battle began, blinds were 45,000/90,000 and the chip count looked like this Steve 2.8 million and Mike 1.9 million. More next time.
