Event #5: $580 H.O.R.S.E.

Hammond, Indiana (October 19, 2016) — Kenny Jackson is the champion of Event #5 at Horseshoe Hammond, defeating a field of 116 players to win the $580 H.O.R.S.E. event. The victory is Jackson’s first on the Circuit and the first significant result on his live tournament record. He collected the top prize of $17,399, his first ring, and 50 points in the race for Casino Champion at this venue.

Jackson is a 29-year-old Political Science student at DePaul University. He recently finished a stint as an Army medic in Alaska, and he’s back at home focusing on his education. And poker. He’s been dabbling in the game for about a decade, originally finding some good success in online mixed games. “I had a few big wins when those sites were still around,” he said. “But after they took that away, I switched to playing live whenever I could. So it was mostly just hold’em them. But my game was seven-card stud.”

Jackson certainly flexed his mixed-game muscles in this H.O.R.S.E event, building a huge stack early on Day 1 before a late tumble down the leaderboard. He ended the day in tenth place with 22 players remaining, but he found his stride once again on Day 2.

Entering the final table with one of the biggest stacks, Jackson tore through his final eight opponents, beginning the heads-up match with a huge chip lead against Bill Higgins. Higgins had been heads-up for a ring twice before, and he’d been denied a win on both occasions. Unfortunately for him, the third time was not the charm; Jackson was simply unbeatable, and Higgins was once again forced to settle for a runner-up finish.

As an observer of the final table, the outcome almost seemed foregone, and Jackson saw it that way, too. “I was thinking about the ring before the tournament even started,” he said. “This was my plan. I got in a little funk outside of poker, and I was just at home bumming and being lazy. I didn’t even want to come play poker sometimes. I told my friends, ‘I got this H.O.R.S.E. tournament, I’m going to try to take it down. I think I have a good chance.’”

Jackson says he’ll continue to pursue the game in a more serious capacity in the future, but for now, school and family come first. His little sister, Kat, is a tattoo artist and one of the stars of VH1’s series Black Ink Crew: Chicago, while his younger brother lives a more traditional life. “He’s the straight-forward one,” Jackson said with a laugh. “He’s getting married next year… he does normal stuff.”

Poker may not be “normal stuff” for most people, but the new champ seems to have found his second home at the tournament tables. “I just felt like I was going to take this one down,” he said. “It was about time. And it happened exactly the way I imagined it.”