Sowers Soured, Out 3rd
by Court on 02.27.09, 1:36 am
For Mike “SowersUNCC” Sowers (below) the $656,797 payout for third place will have to serve as a consolation prize, after his run ended just a few spots away from the title at the Los Angeles Poker Championship. Sowers day had been up and 
down, with him going back and forth from the chip lead to the short stack. Sowers had a few chances to take a commanding lead, but the cards didn’t work out for him and he lost two key coinflips. From one he was able to recover, but the second left him short stacked and when his chips ended up in the middle he was in a bad spot.
With the blinds at 60k /120k and a 20k ante Mike raised to 300k and Binh Nguyen made it 1 million chips to go. Sowers quickly moved all in on the strength of any pair in 3 handed play but he happened to run into the pocket queens of Nguyen who quickly called the 2.4 million chip all in from Sowers. Mike’s pocket fours had a long way to go and the J
9
8 flop did nothing to help him. The turn and river were more of the same, no help to Sowers and the young poker pro found his LAPC run abruptly ended in 3rd place.
With the elimination of Sowers in 3rd place Binh Nguyen will take a 8.5 million to 5.5 million chip lead into heads up play against Andrew Cimpan.
