Borgata Fall Poker Open 2026: Atlantic City Local Jason Nguyen Wins the $600 Kickoff for $126,727

At the start of 2026, Jason Nguyen set himself one clear goal: win a Borgata trophy. He crossed it off on Sunday night in the first major event of the Fall Poker Open. The Atlantic City local came to the final table with one of the shorter stacks. He survived a heads-up match that swung in both directions and took the $600 Kickoff title from 1,862 entries.

He described the win as “surreal” afterwards, and it’s easy to see why. This was the year Nguyen started playing tournaments seriously. He’d been on a downswing just before the series, and his previous best score was a runner-up finish at this same casino in January. For a player who plays most of his poker at the Borgata, this was the result he’d been working towards.

$600 Kickoff Final Table Results

Place	Player	Country	Prize	Buy-in Multiple
1	Jason Nguyen	USA	$126,727*	211x
2	Sebastian Crema	Canada	$125,171*	209x
3	Chadd Beatty	USA	$97,471*	162x
4	Jason Simone	USA	$50,225	84x
5	Nicholas Cassese	USA	$34,245	57x
6	James Calderaro	USA	$26,175	44x
7	Spyros Malkotsis	USA	$20,325	34x
8	Thomas Yarbrough	USA	$16,150	27x
9	Rick Zhou	USA	$12,650	21x

The top three players agreed to a three-way deal. Buy-in multiples are calculated by PokerClubGames based on the $600 buy-in.

How Nguyen Won It

A short stack at the start

Nguyen started the final table with 3,850,000 chips. At 75,000/150,000 that was just under 26 big blinds, and only about 7% of the chips in play. Crema was far ahead with 15,525,000, more than 100 big blinds. On paper, Nguyen was one of the players most likely to go out early.

Twenty-five big blinds at a final table is still enough to play, though. You can’t open-raise freely, but you can re-shove over late-position opens and get value when you find a hand. The players below him went first: Rick Zhou in ninth and Thomas Yarbrough in eighth. Then Nguyen won a big pot when his eights held against Spyros Malkotsis’s ace-seven, sending Malkotsis out in seventh. James Calderaro and Nicholas Cassese were next. Jason Simone’s run ended in fourth when his trips lost to a Crema flush.

The deal: what was left to play for

Three-handed, the remaining players agreed a chop. Crema, still the chip leader, locked up $115,171. Nguyen took $106,727 and Chadd Beatty $97,471. They left $30,000 in the middle: $20,000 for the winner and $10,000 for second place.

That matters when you read the payout table. Crema’s second-place prize is only $1,556 less than Nguyen’s first-place prize. The heads-up match itself was played for a $10,000 swing and the trophy. For a player who had spent the year chasing that trophy, it was worth plenty.

A heads-up match with plenty of swings

Nguyen started heads-up ahead, with about 34 million chips to Crema’s 21 million. The lead changed several times. There were two double-ups: one with ace-king against ace-deuce, and another on a turned nut straight. Nguyen got back in front when a jack on the turn rescued his jack-seven against Crema’s pocket eights.

The key hand was a fold. Crema bet 6,800,000 on the river, and Nguyen thought for several minutes before laying his hand down. Crema showed ten-high. Nguyen said afterwards he had considered calling with jack-high, which would have won the pot. Even good heads-up players get bluffed sometimes. What matters is not letting it affect the next few hands.

Nguyen didn’t. On the final hand, Crema called off his last 10.5 million with a flush draw against Nguyen’s straight draw with 4♣2♣. Neither draw came in, but the four on the turn gave Nguyen a pair, and the river didn’t help Crema.

Three More Stories From the Final Table

• Jason Simone’s chip-and-a-chair run. Simone was down to about 2,000 chips on one of the first hands of Day 2, less than a small blind. He finished fourth for $50,225. Short stacks can still come back.
• An $80 qualifier made $20,325. Spyros Malkotsis won his seat for just $80 and finished seventh, about 254 times what he spent. Small satellites can be very good value.
• Canada’s Crema came close. Sebastian Crema started the final table as chip leader and finished with $125,171, the second-biggest payout in the event.

Who Is Jason Nguyen?

Nguyen isn’t a well-known name on the circuit, and that’s partly the story. Before Sunday, The Hendon Mob had him at around $170,000 in live earnings. His biggest score was second place in a Progressive Bounty event at the Borgata Winter Open in January, for about $76,000.

The Kickoff win is about 67% bigger than that previous best. On its own, it’s worth about three-quarters of everything he had won live before. It also continues a trend at Borgata’s $600 openers. In July, Derek Childress, a retiree from Virginia with only about $3,100 in recorded cashes, won the Summer Kick Off for $170,610. Fields this big tend to reward local regulars and part-time players who know the room, not just travelling pros.

How the Fall Kickoff Compares With Previous Borgata Kick Offs

• Fall 2019: $500,000 GTD, 1,425 entries. Winner Soukha Kachittavong (7-way ICM deal), $87,443.
• Summer 2025: $600,000 GTD, 2,026 entries, $1,053,520 prize pool. Winner James Lauer.
• Summer 2026: $1,000,000 GTD, 2,390 entries, $1,242,800 prize pool. Winner Derek Childress (heads-up deal), $170,610.
• Fall 2026: $1,000,000 GTD, 1,862 entries, $899,200 listed prize pool. Winner Jason Nguyen (3-way deal), $126,727.

Two things stand out.

1. The fall field was smaller than the summer one. The 1,862 entries were 528 fewer than July’s 2,390, a drop of about 22%. That fits the usual pattern at Borgata: November is quieter than summer, when tourists are in town. It’s still about 31% more than the 2019 fall Kick Off.

2. The guarantee looks to have been missed. Borgata’s published structure sheets for its $600 Kick Offs put $520 of each buy-in into the prize pool. That matches the Summer 2026 figure exactly (2,390 × $520 = $1,242,800). At the same rate, the event needed about 1,924 entries to reach $1 million, so it was around 62 short. PokerNews lists the fall pool at $899,200, which is even lower than the $968,240 the $520 rate would suggest. We haven’t found a published explanation for the gap. Either way, the entries didn’t cover the guarantee, which points to an overlay that Borgata had to make up. Borgata hasn’t published the final figure.

For players, that’s useful information. An overlay means the prize pool was worth more than the buy-ins paid in, which gives everyone in the field extra value. It’s also a sign that the Fall Championship field could come in lower than summer’s. That’s worth knowing if you’re deciding whether to play it.

What Players Can Take From This Result

• Twenty-five big blinds is enough to win. Nguyen came in as one of the shorter stacks. Patience and good spots got him to three-handed.
• Read the deal before the payout table. Many big Borgata finals end in a chop. Here, second place earned almost the same as first. Check the deal details before assuming what a finish was worth.
• Look for overlay events. A big guarantee with a smaller off-season field is often where the extra value is. Keep an eye on entry counts once late registration closes.
• Satellites can pay off. The $80 qualifier who finished seventh shows how good the return on cheap satellites can be. Borgata’s $320 Championship qualifiers on 12–13 November work the same way.
• Move on from a bad fold. Nguyen folded the winning hand to a ten-high bluff in a big pot and still won the tournament. Nothing that happened in that hand was a reason to change how he played.

What’s Next at the Borgata Fall Poker Open

The festival runs through 17 November. The 600FallHalf-a-MillyAlmighty(500K GTD) finishes its starting flights on 11 November, with the final days on 12–13 November. The 350Mini-Main(500K GTD) keeps running flights until 16 November.

The main focus now is the 2,700BorgataFallPokerOpenChampionship(1M GTD). Day 1A is Friday 13 November, Day 1B is Saturday 14 November, and the live-streamed final table is on 17 November.

Our full Borgata Fall Poker Open 2026 Championship guide covers the schedule, late registration, our estimate of the entries needed to reach the $1M guarantee, satellites and past winners. Nguyen has already met his goal for the year, so it will be interesting to see whether he takes a shot at the bigger event.

More Borgata coverage on PokerClubGames

• Borgata Fall Poker Open 2026: $1M Championship Guide
• Randy James Finishes 5th in the Borgata $600 O.E.

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