Mini-Series Gets Almost Half a Million in Prizes

It only lasted a week, but it was a week packed with poker at Pure Casino Edmonton (Argyle). With 11 events over 7 days of action, the most recent Pure Poker Tour mini-series, exclusively hosted by PokerPro, had nearly 1,000 entries across all the events for prizes a bit lower than half a million dollars.

Action kicked off on Oct 15 with the traditional opening event on the PPT, the Seniors First game for players 50+. That kicked off a week of poker that saw at least two events on most days.

While the full story was yet to be told, it turned out the series opened with a bit of a big result. Kim Graham, a retired oil & gas consultant and businessman, took down the Seniors game to start a series worth nearly $30k to him.

Other stories from the week include a husband/wife team final tabling a PPT event for the second series running, repeat winners in the team game, a dominating performance from a Vancouver player in the Main Event, and an astonishing feat in the High Roller by Saskatchewan crusher Daniel Lefebvre.

The Series at a Glance

Date	Event	Name	Entries	Prizes	Winner	First Place
15-Oct-24	1	$340 Seniors First	75	$21,375	Kim Graham	$7,271
15-Oct-24	2	$230 NLH Turbo	88	$16,720	Jose Carpio	$5,354
16-Oct-24	3	$560 6-Max	76	$36,100	Rhett Stensrud	$10,580
16-Oct-24	4	$340 NLH/PLO Mix	84	$23,940	Daniel Hicks	$6,691
17-Oct-24	5	$670 PLO Big Bounty	55	$31,350	Ryan Comely	$7,532
17-Oct-24	6	$340 NLH	93	$26,505	Ed Zurawell	$7,868
18-Oct-24	7	$1,100 Main Event	226	$212,553	Kevin Lee	$35,804
18-Oct-24	8	$200 Turbo	110	$18,810	Deven Lane	$5,339
19-Oct-24	9	$230 Tag Team	41	$7,790	Rob Lothian / Brent Baxter	$2,585
20-Oct-24	10	$2,000 High Roller / Series Saver	27	$46,170	Daniel Lefebvre	$20,880
20-Oct-24	11	$230 Little Bounty	92	$17,480	Resul Dauti	$4,125
Totals:			967	$458,793		$114,029

Main Event Title Goes West

The Main Event title left Alberta once again, after two local winners in the past two series. Unlike the first two series of 2024 when the big trophy traveled east to Manitoba to the over-stuffed trophy case of Eric Wasylenko, this time it took a trip west across the Rocky Mountains to Canada’s Left Coast in the hands of Vancouverite Kevin Lee.

Lee put on a dominating performance in the endgame, making crucial decisions quite quickly throughout the final table. While he was very aggressive at times, he picked his spots and seemed dialed into the playing styles and dynamics of his tablemates.

At one point late in Day 2 at the final table, he made a big laydown on the river of sizable pot showing pocket kings face up on a board where they were an overpair. He was facing a big bet and admitted out loud as he folded that he “didn’t know what was going on in the hand.” The other hand wasn’t shown, so we’ll never know for sure if it was a good laydown or not, but it saved him chips on his way to the big prize.

It took an extra day to settle the matter as well. Despite the fact that Sunday was supposed to be the official final day of Main Event, they were still four-handed after almost 13 hours of play on Day 2 and as a result, they came back for a Day 3 to decide it on Monday.

When they arrived under the light of a new dawn on Monday, they all decided that an ICM chop with about $11k and the trophy to play for was the way to go. Lee was the big stack coming into Day 3 and so he secured the biggest guaranteed prize of almost $25k then went on to win the extra money for a total prize of almost $36k.

Seniors Winner has Big Series

Kim Graham started off the series with a win, but he wasn’t going to settle for just a single result this time around. Graham is no stranger to deep runs on the PPT – he and his twin brother Keith waged a twin-on-twin team battle back in the first series of 2024, falling to the Strap brothers in a spirited fight.

In this series, Graham had two significant results. After grabbing his second career win in the Seniors game, he found a medium-sized bag in Day 1a of the Main Event and played that all the way to the runner-up spot. On the added Day 3 of the Main, the final four players, including Graham, cut an ICM deal that saw Graham secure a cool $20k for his efforts, bringing his series total to more than $27k.

Main Event Final Table Results

Place	Vancouver, BC	Home	Prize (deal)
1	Kevin Lee	Vancouver, BC	$35,804
2	Kim Graham	Millet, AB	$20,000
3	Ed Zurawell	Sherwood Park, AB	$21,799
4	Johnny Dalphond	Edmonton, AB	$20,910
5	Andy Wong	Fort McMurray, AB	$11,100
6	Tim Arnold	Edmonton, AB	$9,290
7	Jay (Jason) Tran	Edmonton, AB	$7,840
8	Victor Xie	Vancouver, BC	$6,600
9	Daniel Hicks	Leduc, AB	$5,360

The Daniel Lefebvre Special

Whatever they call it, the biggest buy-in event on the Pure Poker Tour has typically served as a series-ending High Roller game with a limited number of entries, but as expected from the top end of the buy-ins, a game full of some of the toughest players around.

Saskatchewan player Daniel Lefebvre has made a habit of slicing through those fields over the past two seasons, pulling off an astonishing fourth win out of the last seven $2k events on the final day of this Series #5. After bursting onto the Canadian poker radar in 2018 with a big win in the SIGA Poker Championships on the Whitecap Dakota First Nation near Saskatoon, Lefebvre won the last three $2k events of the 2023 season on the trot.

There has been some fluidity in the branding of the biggest buy-in game on the PPT. Traditionally called the High Roller, for the last few events it’s become known as the Series Saver instead. With this fourth win, however, the logical answer may just be to rename it to the “Daniel Lefebvre Classic” and be done with it.

Stacked Endgame for High Roller

Lefebvre wasn’t up against “random recs” when he took down his 4th High Roller title this week — the other three players in the money were Alex Liu, fresh off his career-high crushing of the most recent WSOP-C Main Event, Colten Yamagishi, who can give you nearly any equity spot in seconds from his head, and Deven Lane, who was fresh off his win in the Turbo event earlier in the week.

The final four in-the-money players played a cutthroat battle on the felt while maintaining a jovial atmosphere typical of a game between skilled players who know each other well. All four are members of “the usual suspects” anytime I write up a tournament report and, as such, they often find themselves staring across final tables at each other in local poker events.

Tag Team Double and a Happy Couple

It was a good series for teams this time around, both figuratively and literally. After the Tag Team game, the pairing of Rob Lothian and Brent Baxter appeared to be aiming for “the Daniel Lefebvre” of the Team event as they picked up their second Tag Team title on the trot.

The other double-act that had a solid week this time around was Jose Carpio and Grace Quijano. Alberta has more than one couple who play poker together and the latest is Carpio and Quijano. After they both got through to Survivor cash in PPT #4 a couple of weeks ago, they once again found themselves together in the endgame of a PPT event when Jose won Event #2 with Grace finishing in 3rd place. “… plays together, stays together …” and all that — no doubt in poker, it also helps when you both win.

Final Series of 2024 Looming

The stage is set for the final Series of the 2024 season with trophy action starting Nov 21 and live qualifier action starting Nov 17. The final day of PPT action for 2024 should be Dec 1 when they wrap up the Main Event. Once again, reporting for this series will be exclusively hosted on PokerPro.

Of particular note in this year’s season closer are the changes to the High Roller. In addition to being moved up in the schedule to avoid conflicting with the Main Event, there will be a discount in rake for players who opt to jump in on Day 1 and Day 2 will include some levels of late registration.

Stay tuned for more details on the entire schedule as the series approaches.