Slav Rypinski has fought his way back from being severely short-stacked on the final table to win the $1,100 NLH Event at The Star Sydney Champs.
The Sydney commercial outfitter, who recently flew back from Las Vegas, defeated Nick Velcic heads-up from a field of 259 runners, earning $58,988 in cash and the trophy, which will now sit pride of place in the brand-new cabinet that he recently built for himself at home.
“Only yesterday I took a photo of the $1,100 NLH trophy and sent it to my wife, saying ‘we need this for this office!’ and now I’ve got it!”
Commencing Day 2 as one of 30 runners vying for the top prize, Rypinski held a comfortable 334,000 in chips and hovered near the top of the leader board through until the final table, where the Sydneysider had his stack decimated when his Kings ran into Michael Fraser’s Aces.
“[At that stage] I was sitting on four blinds at the final table,” Rypinski recalled. “I guess I was thinking, ‘I’m already out’, but as you can see, in poker it never ends until it ends!”
“The big hand was very soon after, Jacks versus Nines, which doubled me up to 560,000, and from there I knew I could do something.”
Rypinski is now focused on jumping straight into the remaining events during the Sydney Champs series, notably the Main Event and in his words, “definitely the $5K Challenge.”
STAR SYDNEY CHAMPS $1,100 NLH ($1,100 buy-in, 259 entries, 33 players paid)*
| Place | Name | Amount |
| 1st | Slav Rypinski | $58,988 |
| 2nd | Nick Velcic | $41,500 |
| 3rd | Michael Fraser | $26,548 |
| 4th | Stan Levitin | $16,149 |
| 5th | Luis Arrilucea | $12,471 |
| 6th | Zhengmin Zhang | $10,334 |
| 7th | Steven Green | $8,677 |
| 8th | Michael Tran | $7,252 |
| 9th | Andrew Pavlakis | $5,900 |
PokerMedia Australia‘s Live Reporting coverage of The Star Sydney Champs continues tomorrow (Tuesday) with Day 1A of the $1,000 buy-in Mystery Bounty; for more information, including the full schedule and results, log onto starpoker.com.au.
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