The legality of poker in the state of Texas is a bit of a grey area, but Brendon Kaufman is going to take one of the final Run It Up no-limit hold’em back to its state of origin.

Kaufman, a French instructor at the University of Texas, defeated 182 entries in the $150 turbo no-limit hold’em green chip bounty, taking home $4,808 plus however many $25 bounties he scored along the way.

Kaufman lives and works in Austin, making live poker tournaments a rarity, but he constantly watches a lot of the Twitch streams and came out here to play with and support some of his favorite streamers.

“I’m a big fan of all the streams and wanted to meet all the streamers,” said Kaufman about why he made the flight from Texas to Reno. “I’m a big fan of Lex [Veldhuis], big fan of Jason [Somerville] and a big fan of ‘Tonkaaaap’ [Parker Talbot].”

With a turbo structure and bounties on the line, the stacks got shallow quickly and the action was mostly shove or fold. Kaufman credits Talbot’s stream, branded as Team NeverLucky, for learning the necessary skills to come out on top of the field in this event.

He even put on his ‘Team NeverLucky’ sweatshirt for his winner’s photo.

“He’s the one who taught me the push/fold strategy and I owe a lot to him,” said Kaufman.

Kaufman came into the final table in the middle of the pack, but got short-stacked about halfway through the final table. After a fortunate series of events, Kaufman found himself trending upwards and eventually with all of the chips.

“I had this one big turnaround hand where I shoved king-nine offsuit on the button and got called by ace-queen offsuit. I binked,” said Kaufman. “I had a few heads-up hands for a while and I got shoved into. I had the nuts. I had tens.”

His tens held and he defeated Debby Chang for the title. Chang’s runner-up finish earned her $3,220. Regardless of the title and the money, Kaufman echoed the same sentiment that many other winners had.

“It was a really good atmosphere,” said Kaufman. “Like everyone was cheering for each other. It was like a little league tournament. Everyone was cheering for everyone whether they won or lost. It was a really good atmosphere and a lot of fun.”

The top 24 players cashed and here is a look at the results:

1st: Brendon Kaufman – $4,808
2nd: Debby Chang – $3,220
3rd: Stephen Nahm – $2,190
4th: Jessica Welman – $1,400
5th: Kevin Martin – $930
6th: Edward Cybuiski – $650
7th: Nadia Wanzi – $500
8th: Kyle Levicki – $380
9th: Chrstopher Brandt – $290
10th: Brian Son – $290
11th: Andrew Saki – $290
12th: Wes Cutshall – $290
13th: Marty Gorenc – $220
14th: Joseph Wegner – $220
15th: Nikolas Chinell – $220
16th: Lance Donnell – $220
17th: Steven Nevius – $175
18th: Xiaochuan Xie – $175
19th: Sarah Kenyon – $175
20th: David Ollman – $175
21st: Mark Mazza – $175
22nd: Baptiste Chavaillaz – $175
23rd: Christopher Lee – $175
24th: Nick Kiley – $175