The Boragata Hotel Casino in Atlantic City, New Jersey was the venue of the Borgata Poker Classic held from January 27, 2008 to January 31, 2008. This 5 day event saw 507 hopefuls paying $10,000 each to vie for a chance at the total pool prize of $4,917,900. There were 54 payouts by the end of the tournament and the final table saw a motley mix of professional players, young internet players and local talents.

Final game play began at Level 26 with blinds of 20,000 to 40,000 and antes at 4,000. Crowd favorite, Thomas Hare, an Internet young player and local hopeful, was in Seat 5 with 2,851,000 chips. The seating arrangement and chips count for the rest of the players were:

• Seat 1 - Lee Watkinson with 397,000 chips
• Seat 2 - Noah ‘FourUhaters’ Schwartz with 1,313,000 chips
• Seat 3 - Ervin Prifti with 289,000 chips
• Seat 4 - Gavin Griffin with 5,105,000 chips
• Seat 5 - David Tran with 5,271,000 chips

At the beginning of heads up play, poker pro David Tran had a 2 million chip lead over Gavin Griffin, who played aggressively to emerge as the Borgata Poker Classic champion with his winning hand of Queen spades and Jack clubs to Tran’s King spades and 8 spades. Gavin Griffin’s cash prize totalled $1,401,109 whilst Tran was runner-up with $737,685.

The cashes for the rest of the players were:

• Thomas Hare ($381,137)
• Noah ‘FourUhaters’ Schwartz ($331,958)
• Lee Watkinson ($282,779)
• Ervin Prifti ($233,600)

Gavin Griffin is 27 and was born on August 28, 1981 in Darien, Illinois. He’s now a professional poker player having attended Texas Christian University in Fort Worth, Texas to major in speech pathology after giving up baseball scholarships. At age 22, Griffin won his first World Series Poker bracelet in 2004 as the winner of the $3000 Pot Limit Texas hold‘em event. In 2007, Griffin won the European Poker Tour Grand Final in Monte Carlo, bagging over $2.4 million in cash. With the World Poker Tour title gained at the Borgata Poker Classic, Griffin claimed the triple crown of the WPT, WSOP and the EPT.

His total live tournament winnings as at the end of 2008 is in excess of $4.5 million. He credits much of his success to this friends, family and girlfriend, Kristen Roberts. Griffin is active in raising awareness of breast cancer and he walked on the Avon Walk for Breast Cancer in September 2007, in Long Beach, California, dying his hair pink in the process.

-- Reinu C.