2016 Coco Poker Showdown
Seminole Casino Coconut Creek
Coconut Creek, Fla.
Event #6
$350 No Limit Hold’em
Entries: 721
Prize Pool: $250,000
January 26-30, 2016

Coconut Creek, Fla. (January 30, 2015) — Edward Novak put on a convincing performance in the Coco Poker Showdown $350 buy in Event 6 Saturday night at Seminole Casino Coconut Creek. The 20-year-old newly-turned professional maneuvered through a 721-entry field before winning the event outright, pocketing $63,323 in the process.

“I ran pretty well when we started out,” Novak said of the late stages of play. “I had king-jack. I flopped a straight and held up against a flush draw. After that I clashed with a big stack and made a pretty big hero call with top pair […] I was just cruising. I had half the chips in play and there was no looking back from there — no thoughts of chopping.”

It’s not often poker players sell themselves short, but Novak did just that describing his stack as “half the chips in play”. In fact, Novak claimed nearly 6,000,000 of the roughly 8,700,000 chips in play five-handed. He never faltered en route to a heads up berth versus Fort Lauderdale pro Nancy Birnbaum. Birnbaum was at a severe disadvantage and chipped up only slightly before her pocket fives were bested by Novak’s all in preflop. Birnbaum earned $36,906 for her runner-up finish. The score moved her over $600,000 in career earnings.

“I know [South][Florida] has a lot of good poker and some series were going on. I figured I’d take a trip [to][Coconut][Creek],” Novak, a resident of Simsbury, Conn., said.

Event 6 featured eight starting flights. The 721-entry field came up shy of matching the guarantee, but the property chipped in to get the prize pool to $250,000. All Day 2 players were in the money with notables Ory Hen (44th), Abbey Daniels (36th) and Adam Levy (11th) joining Novak in the money.

At only 20 years old, this marks Novak’s first major tournament score.

“I might have to be now. I don’t know,” Novak laughed when asked if he was a professional poker player.

Event 6 final results:

1st: Edward Novak – $63,323
2nd: Nancy Birnbaum – $36,906
3rd: Mike Chiappetta- $24,131
4th: Kimberly Jones – $16,313
5th: Paul Steiner – $11,438
6th: Andrew Smith – $8,891
7th: Ruben Ybarra – $6,844
8th: Sergio Alves – $5,047
9th: Mark Nahama – $3,547
10th: Sean Anderson – $2,594
11th: Adam Levy – $2,594
12th: Ryan Anderson – $2,594
13th: Steven Cohen – $2,047
14th: Manuel Soltera Luna – $2,047
15th: Gabriel Sack – $2,047
16th: William Handwerker – $1,719
17th: Willy Baptiste – $1,719
18th: Robert Williams – $1,719
19th: Michael Newman – $1,484
20th: Yuan Shen – $1,484
21st: David Barbieri – $1,484
22nd: Raymond Roberty – $1,484
23rd: Elliott Saydman – $1,484
24th: Oneil McCalla – $1,484
25th: David Shaw – $1,484
26th: Steven Jordan – $1,484
27th: Mike Chang – $1,484
28th: Joshua Wasserman – $1,259
29th: Scott Zakheim – $1,259
30th: Luke Doolittle – $1,259
31st: Joseph Patalano – $1,259
32nd: Clinton Bowles – $1,259
33rd: Courtney Rowe – $1,259
34th: Michael Cohen – $1,259
35th: Plamen Stoyanov – $1,259
36th: Abbey Daniels – $1,259
37th: Cory Blum – $1,059
38th: Kevin Almon – $1,059
39th: Scott Wyler – $1,059
40th: Jerry Wong – $1,059
41st: Louis Leo IV – $1,059
42nd: Eric Riley – $1,059
43rd: Giuseppe Lunetto – $1,059
44th: Ory Hen – $1,059
45th: Frank Scala – $1,059
46th: Colny Covington – $934
47th: Jorge Gomez – $934
48th: Scott Efron – $934
49th: Bryan Rodriguez – $934
50th: Zoltan Czinkota – $934
51st: Benjamin Robinson – $934
52nd: Lawrence Paden, Sr. – $934
53rd: Kevin Chan – $934
54th: Darren Stabinski – $934
55th: David Albertson – $834
56th: Robert Midgette – $834
57th: Timothy Shortell – $834
58th: Johnny Tang – $834
59th: Timothy Kegel – $834
60th: Robert Miller – $834
61st: Pedro Palacio – $834
62nd: Michael Merisier – $834
63rd: Edward Medoff – $834
64th: Carlos Loving – $725
65th: Juan Cardona Garcia – $725
66th: Dolphus Powers – $725
67th: William Beasley – $725
68th: Peter Fellows – $725
69th Francois Tremblay – $725