19-Year-Old Florida Kid Wins $2.2 Million in PokerStars Caribbean Adventure

The seventh PokerStars Caribbean Adventure main event, the richest poker tournament ever held outside of Las Vegas, ended with a 19-year-old from Jupiter, Florida, raking in the $2.2 million first prize.

Harrison “gibler321” Gimbel bested a mammoth 1,529-strong field from 57 countries after winning his seat into the $10,000 no-limit hold’em tournament in a $1,000 satellite held the night before the event started.

Gimbel – who started college in September but gave it up three weeks later – beat Tyler Reiman after a heads-up battle lasting less than an hour. Prior to this year’s PCA, Gimbel’s best live result was winning the 2009 Florida State Poker Championships for $67,860. He has numerous big cashes in online tournaments including a $47,000 payday for finishing sixth in a PokerStars Sunday Million tournament in November.

The victory makes the Palm Beach County player – who has since turned pro – the youngest ever PCA champion.

“I’m so excited,” he said in a fit of understatement following the final table. “It’s been a really good day. It feels amazing. I’ve always wanted to win a major tournament and luckily I have accomplished it on one of my very first ones. A lot of these players were very good but I had a lot of confidence in myself coming into today, and it really showed. I’m now going car shopping!”

Runner-up Tyler Reiman, who was chip leader for much of the final day, takes $1.75 million back home to Morton, Illinois. Third place – and $1.35 million – went to Barry Shulman, 63, of Las Vegas.

Some of the best players in the world competed in this year’s event, as well as dozens of stars from the worlds of sport and entertainment, generating a prize pool of $14,831,300. More than 750 players won their seats – and trips to Atlantis Resort on Paradise Island in the Bahamas – online with PokerStars. One player, Darren Keyes, qualified using just 75 Frequent Player Points and left the islands $150,000 richer after cashing in tenth place in the poker site’s signature event.

Tournament Director Mike Ward said: “With more than 50 events on the schedule, we expected a lot from this year’s PCA, and it certainly didn’t disappoint. The main event has generated the biggest prize pool and the biggest field we have ever had and the buzz in the Atlantis Imperial Ballroom was astonishing. Congratulations to winner Harrison Gimbel, as well as to all 224 players who cashed and the 756 players who won seats to the event on PokerStars.”

EPT founder John Duthie survived the longest out of the 55 members of Team PokerStars Pro who competed. He busted in 12^th place, winning $130,000. The other Team Pros to cash were Vicky Coren, Ivan Demidov, Dario Minieri, Victor Ramdin, Johnny Lodden, Florian Langmann, Matthias De Meulder, Luis Medina and former PCA champion Steve Paul-Ambrose. Other main event entrants included world champion Joe Cada and all-time tournament money leader Daniel Negreanu.

Celebs who competed included American rapper Nelly, Playboy Playmate Jayde Nicole, tennis legend Boris Becker, NHL star Mats Sundin, ex-pitcher Orel Hershiser, Teddy Sheringham and Dutch hockey pro Fatima Moreira de Melo.

Since it started in 2004, more than $53 million has been won at the PCA, with more than 6,000 players taking part, including thousands of PokerStars qualifiers. The huge field shows that the event – and online poker – is still alive, well and growing.

Previous winners include Bertrand “ElkY” Grospellier and poker pro Gus Hansen. Last year’s event was captured by Poorya Nazari from Canada.

Four of the final eight qualified on PokerStars.

Seven of the final eight were from the U.S. American players accounted for 739 of the 1,529 entrants, with Canada adding 164, Germany 100, Netherlands 60, UK 56, France 44 and Brazil 37.

The PCA main event was filmed for television broadcast all over the world.

The Result

.