Derek Childress Wins BPSO $600 Deep Stack Kick Off Title

When Derek Childress flopped the nut flush to knock out defending champion James Lauer late yesterday, it turned out he wasn’t just ending Lauer’s bid to go back-to-back. He was seizing his crown.

A day later, and the Virginia native has emerged as champion of the $600 Deep Stack Kick Off at the 2026 Borgata Summer Poker Open powered by BetMGM Poker. Childress defeated a massive field of 2,390 players to take home the trophy and $170,610 top prize after a heads-up deal with Lingyu “Roger” Zen.

$600 Deep Stack Kick Off Final Table results

*- denotes heads-up deal

The victory was a surprise, most of all, to Childress himself, who admitted he never imagined he would be the one left standing when he began the tournament. His expectations were much more modest.

“I came up here just hoping I was going to get a min-cash. To even make Day 2 surprised me, so getting here to the final table and taking it down, I can’t even put it into words. I’m really, really happy,” he said.

Childress says he employed a simple strategy throughout the tournament: push and pray. The luck of the cards would do the rest, and it ran out perfectly for him over the last three days.

“It was a lot of just tight folding and pushing when I had something worthwhile, putting it all in. I got lucky a couple of times with a set on the flop, the right pair on the river to keep me going. But I usually, usually, had the best hand when I pushed all in. I can think of, like, three or four times that I didn’t, and the cards just fell perfectly,” he said.

Childress did have one distraction during the final table: his watch. With his friends watching the live stream back home and messaging him constantly, his watch went off on a constant barrage of alerts. “My frickin watch was going off nonstop, people texting me. My friends back home, because they were watching the live stream. I tried to concentrate on playing, and my wrist was just going buzz, buzz,” he said.

The prize far exceeds anything Childress has accomplished in his poker career. He came into the event with just three recorded cashes for $3,100 in live earnings, according to The Hendon Mob. While he had been playing for nearly 30 years, his job prevented him from truly dedicating himself to tournaments like this one. Now that he’s retired, those plans might change in the future, although he admits, still on a limited basis.

“I had my first casino tournament in, like 2005 maybe. It was a radio-sponsored tournament, a morning program down where I live in Northern Virginia. And I was lucky enough to win that one. I didn’t do too many tournaments after that, relatively speaking, but I’ve always liked to play them,” he said.

“I’m retired, so now I have the opportunity to come and play stuff like this. Whereas I really couldn’t do multi-day tournaments before with the job. So I might get more involved with it, but it’s probably going to be, like, a two or three times a year kind of thing.”

Zen Scores the First Four Final Table Eliminations

Childress came into the day second in chips as the final six players returned to the Borgata poker room for the live-streamed final table. Short stack Leo Saiag lasted just two hands, his ace-five falling to Zen’s ace-ten as Saiag busted in sixth place.

Craig Robertson got in his last 3,800,000 with king-nine and Zen called him with the same hand. The two players were poised to chop the pot, but Zen turned a flush to win the pot and score his second straight knockout at the final table.

Start-of-day chip leader Coleem Chestnut constantly pressured his opponents to continue to build his stack, but that same hyper-aggressive style eventually proved his downfall. Childress picked off Chestnut with two pair and held on to earn a massive double up to more than 30,000,000, leaving Chestnut with just over 2,000,000. He was eliminated by Zen soon after in fourth place as Zen took the chip lead.

Jordan Williamson, who arrived more than 20 minutes late for the start of day, got two double ups off Zen, including when his fives flopped a set against Zen’s jacks, but Zen then spiked a flush on the river to eliminate Williamson in third place.

Two Preflop Races Determine the Champion

Zen and Childress entered heads-up play nearly even in chips, Zen with 37,900,000 to Childress’ 35,500,000. Zen won most big pots during the match, including firing two bullets with a pair of fives as Childress called him down with ace-high and another pot with two sevens to climb up past 55,000,000. He then had a chance to end the tournament in a preflop race, but Childress’ pocket fours held on against Zen’s ace-seven as Childress doubled into the chip lead. Just one hand later, the two players were racing again, with Zen the player at risk this time holding two sixes. Childress had ace-queen, and he flopped an ace to win the pot and secure the title.

“Roger was really good. He never really got out of pocket. I knew when he was raising that he had something. I did not seem like he was much into bluffing, so I had to give him a lot of credit and got lucky a few times,” Childress said.

“The turn of the tide was those fours against ace-seven. When he didn’t flop anything against my pair, and he didn’t have the spade draw as a backup, you know, I just kind of kept my fingers crossed. The fours held, and that just put him in a tough place. Immediately after that, he got a pair that he had to go all in with. I had ace-queen. I can’t fold. So, I mean, it just fell perfect.”

Childress has a long drive back home to Virginia awaiting him later tonight, and while he admits he likely won’t be back to play again this festival, he had nothing but praise for the Borgata staff.

“I’m so exhausted right now. I cannot believe I have to drive back to Northern Virginia sometime tonight. It’s like a three-and-a-half hour drive, and I did not sleep much at all last night. Unless I can finagle another room—and I’ve been here since Wednesday night—I don’t know that I’ll be back up playing the other events. You all ran a great thing up here. It was really well organized. Floor staff was friendly, dealers pretty much knew what they were doing all the time. It was just a really good time,” he said.