He continued running good, flopping a set of deuces against Abratique’s top two pair to send the latter out in third, and took a nearly three-to-one chip lead into heads up. I kept grinding, got lucky in a few spots, and it paid off.”

That hand gave Hunkin his first lead of the day and he never looked back. First, he doubled with ace-deuce suited versus John Hadley’s pocket queens when he found two aces on the flop Hadley was left with crumbs and was the next one out.ĭown to four players, Hunkin went on a tear, doubling through Abratique when his pocket nines held versus pocket deuces, then eliminating Nick Wooderson winning a flip with pocket eights versus ace-king. They lost the first three players in fairly quick succession, start-of-day chip leader Mike Abratique responsible for two of the early eliminations.Īfter Aaron Dalnoot was eliminated in sixth place, Hunkin started his ascent from short stack to chip leader. The final nine players returned on Monday and Hunkin was in the middle of the pack. WPTDS Thunder Valley Final Day's Action The final nine players in the Thunder Valley WPTDS Main Event. Some notables falling in the money short of the final table were Ian Steinman (11th), Brett Murray (15th), Sean Yu (16th), Martin Gorenc (35th), Kao Saechao (44th), Michael Loncar (57th), Alex Greenblatt (63rd), Tyler Patterson (76th) and Mimi Luu (77th). WPTDeepStacks Thunder Valley Main Event Final Table ResultsĪ total of 85 players cashed in the event. 'God is good, for sure.' Tuiofu Hunkin had the support of his family at the final table. “Hard work, I’ve been playing a long time, I have really good support from my wife and my mom and my brother,' he told WPT officials after the win. On his road to victory at Thunder Valley, Hunkin got through a field of 678 in the $1,100 buy-in event, and attributed the his recent good run to hard work and familial support. He has increased that to $200K in less than one month. Before that win, Hunkin had under $20K in live tournament cashes on his Hendon Mob. The win continues a hot start to the year for Hunkin, who last month won a $1K prelim event for $50,565 in the Bay 101 Shooting Star event in San Jose. WPTDS Thunder Valley Final Day's Actionīay Area local Tuiofu Hunkin mounted a final table comeback to secure his first WPTDeepStacks title and his biggest tournament score of $121,000 at Thunder Valley Casino in northern California on Monday.WPTDeepStacks Thunder Valley Main Event Final Table Results.

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