Meet the WPT Borgata Poker Open Final Tablists

Here are the official chip counts for today’s televised WPT Final Table of the WPT Borgata Poker Open, followed by the remaining prizepool:

Seat 1.  Kane Kalas  –  14,025,000  (87 bb)
Seat 2.  Ray Qartomy  –  1,795,000  (11 bb)
Seat 3.  Darren Elias  –  8,000,000  (50 bb)
Seat 4.  Blake Bohn  –  7,705,000  (48 bb)
Seat 5.  Jose Serratos  –  2,050,000  (12 bb)
Seat 6.  Aaron Overton  –  3,245,000  (20 bb)

1st:  $843,744*
2nd:  $500,364
3rd:  $308,067
4th:  $259,012
5th:  $213,999
6th:  $174,637

* Total first prize amount includes a $15,400 seat into the season-ending WPT World Championship.

And now, a closer look at the six final tablists who are looking to join the elite ranks of the WPT Champions Club. (Career live tournament results were compiled from The Hendon Mob’s Poker Player Database.)

Seat 1.  KANE  KALAS  –  14,025,000  (87 bb)

Kane Kalas may not be a household name in the poker world (yet), but this Philadelphia born-and-raised 25 year old comes from a fairly famous family in this part of the country — his father is the legendary Harry Kalas, long-time sportscaster for the Philadelphia Phillies up until his death in 2009. Kane’s older brother Todd is also a baseball broadcaster, working for the Tampa Bay Rays.

Kalas would like to continue the family tradition as a sports broadcaster, but for now, he’s making his living playing poker. An analytical player who studies game theory, Kane plays some of the highest online stakes in both no-limit hold’em and pot-limit omaha ($500/$1,000).

Primarily an online player, Kalas is still making a name for himself in live tournaments, with career live earnings of $177,444. Even a sixth-place finish at this final table would nearly double his career earnings — but with nearly twice as many chips as anybody else, his ambitions are much higher than sixth place.

While Kalas has the lineage for sports broadcasting and the skills to play high-stakes poker, his interests spread across a much wider spectrum than that. Most notably, Kalas is a talented singer, capable of everything from opera to the Star-Spangled Banner. How many professional poker players can claim to have sung the U.S. National Anthem before a Major League playoff game? That list begins and ends with Kane Kalas.

Seat 2.  RAY  QARTOMY  –  1,795,000  (11 bb)

Ray Qartomy (pronounced “car-too-me”) has become a regular on the World Poker Tour in recent years, and he’s hard not to notice. Born in Jordan and raised in the United States, Qartomy is a lively 48-year-old business owner who has been playing poker for eight years.

This final table represents the fourth WPT cash of Qartomy’s career, to go along with four WSOP cashes. His most notable finish was final tabling the inaugural 2013 Seminole Hard Rock Poker Open $10 Million Guaranteed Championship, where he finished fourth. That was good for a cool $639,925 score, his biggest to date.

Qartomy also has a six-figure score from a $5,000 no-limit hold’em event at Bellagio in 2011, where he earned $133,230, and his career live earnings add up to more than $1.7 million. But Qartomy is still looking for a signature victory to elevate his poker resume, but he’ll have to overcome a very short chip stack to earn that victory tonight.

Qartomy thinks other players would consider his playing style to be “crazy,” and he even uses that word himself to describe his style. One word you can’t use to describe Qartomy at the table is “boring,” whether it’s his playing style or his table talk.

Seat 3.  DARREN  ELIAS  –  8,000,000  (50 bb)

Darren Elias is a familiar face in the Borgata Poker Open, having finished fifth here during Season X for a career-high $230,610. That showing was one of two final table appearances for Elias that season. He also took third in the Jacksonville bestbet open event. The Pennsylvania native’s list of live scores is an impressive one, totaling over $1.7 million, but he is also an incredibly accomplished online player as well with over $3.3 million in tournament earnings. His reputation amongst his peers is so well-respected, he has earned the nickname “The End Boss”, referring to the final, toughest bad guy you have to beat in order to win a video game.

The recently-married 27-year-old currently resides in Cherry Hill, NJ and is a full time poker pro. He may be quiet at the tables, but don’t think Elias doesn’t know how to express himself. He studied Creative Writing at the University of the Redlands, which is also where he first learned to play poker ten years ago.

Seat 4.  BLAKE  BOHN  –  7,705,000  (48 bb)

Blake Bohn is a 42-year-old professional poker player from Minnesota. He has been playing for eight years and in that time has amassed more than $1.7 million in live tournament earnings.

It’s been over the last two years where Bohn’s poker success has taken him to the next level. After winning the Chicago Poker Classic in March 2013 for nearly $300,000, Bohn had two six-figure scores at the 2013 World Series of Poker. He finished runner-up in a $1,500 No-Limit Hold’em event for just more than $281,000, and followed that up by finishing 15th in the One Drop High Roller event for just over $200,000.

This marks his third cash on the WPT, including a 31st place finish right here at the Borgata in the Season XII WPT World Championship. He’s been on a hot streak coming into the Borgata Poker Open, having just last month won an event on the Mid-Stakes Poker Tour in Sioux Falls for $54,607 and finishing seventh in the Seminole Hard Rock Poker Open for about $250,000.

Seat 5.  JOSE  SERRATOS  –  2,050,000  (12 bb)

Jose Serratos is a 31-year-old rental property manager and poker player from Detroit, Michigan who is having quite the case of beginner’s luck, as this is his first-ever WPT event and here he is at the final table. A WSOP Circuit ring winner, Serratos’ biggest career cash prior to this event was $45,000—an amount he is guaranteed to exceed several times over today.

Serratos got into poker playing mixed games with friends prior to the poker room, then found success in tournaments like low buy-in WSOP Circuit events and the Rio Daily Deepstacks tournaments in the summer. He decided to take his shot in this bigger buy-in tournament and sold some action on the TwoPlusTwo forums. He hopes to prove to his investors that they put their money to good use today with a strong showing at the final table.

Seat 6.  AARON  OVERTON  –  3,245,000  (20 bb)

Aaron Overton is a 32-year-old professional poker player from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Over the course of his poker career, Overton has earned nearly $250,000 in live tournament earnings.

Though he prefers to grind at the cash-game tables, between the World Series of Poker and the WSOP circuit Overton has 11 cashes. It’s on the North American Poker Tour where Overton had his largest individual score of $50,000, finishing seventh at the 2011 NAPT Mohegan Sun event.

This marks Overton’s third career WPT cash and he is already guaranteed to more than triple his previous largest cash. Away from the table, Overton like to snowboard and bike.