Category: My news, views and fun facts

cpp
The Bahamas is going to get a tad busy in November.
Tiger Woods, the Phil Ivey of golf, is in town, leading 16 of the world’s best 23 players in The Hero World Challenge, and partypoker LIVE has set up camp in the Baha Mar Resort, Nassau, for their annual Caribbean Poker Party (CPP).
The first two flights of the $25,500 MILLIONS World are in the books. The event created as a direct response by PokerStars to build a $25,000 buy-in, PokerStars Player’s No-Limit Hold’em Championship, pulled in 77-entrants on Day 1A, and 205-entrants on Day 1B, for a combined 282-runners. Late registration is open for the first four levels of Day 2, and as they are more than 100-players shy of the $10m Guarantee, one suspects the CPP begins with a healthy dose of free money.
Here are the top five chip stacks going into Day 2.
1. Geraldo Cesar – 4,315,000
2. Chance Kornuth – 3,840,000
3. Calvin Anderson – 3,700,000
4. Isaac Haxton – 3,660,000
5. Andreas Eiler – 3,645,000
Also on the CPP roster is a $50,000 Super High Roller and a $250,000 Super-Duper High Roller.
Two players who made it through to Day 2 of the $25,500 MILLIONS World are Sam Soverel (1,200,000) and David Peters (900,000), and if you have a few bucks to spare, it may be worth a punt if you can find a book on the event.

David Peters

Soverel and Peters were the stars of the ARIA Poker Room’s recent Fall Madness. The series consisted of seven events, three of which had buy-ins of $25k+
Event #1: $10,500 Pot-Limit Omaha (Anthony Alberto – $128,800)
Event #2: $10,500 No-Limit Hold’em (Jared Jaffee – $132,000)
Event #3: $10,500 No-Limit Hold’em Short-Deck (Sam Soverel – $81,000)
Event #4: $26,000 No-Limit Hold’em (Stephen Chidwick – $283,500)
Event #5: $10,000 No-Limit Hold’em Short-Deck (Sam Soverel – $102,600)
Event #6: $52,000 No-Limit Hold’em (Matthias Eibinger – $575,000)
Event #7: $103,000 No-Limit Hold’em (David Peters – $1,104,000)
Here are the updated High Roller of the Year Top 5 Spots.
1. Sam Soverel – 1,560
2. David Peters – 1,325
3. Cary Katz – 1,255
4. Justin Bonomo – 1,025
5. Dan Smith – 1,025
Remember, the HR Series only includes tournaments held at ARIA or ARIA’s partner casinos, and the top five will avoid the Super High Roller Bowl (SHRB) lottery should they choose to pay the $300,000 buy-in, which I am sure they all will.
Finally, the World Poker Tour (WPT) and partypoker LIVE completed the first joint event of their new four-year deal. WPT Montreal took place at the Playground Poker Club, and despite not having a High Roller in the schedule, several of the mob put up a decent showing – Sorel Mizzi finished third, Mike Leah finished 18th, and that man David Peters was at it again finishing 83rd.

The Best of the Rest
Moving from the live arena to the digital one, and Fedor Holz will stream his involvement in the $5,300 partypoker MILLIONS Online Main Event on Twitch. The $20m GTD event promises to be the most significant ever held online and runs 25 Nov through 5 Dec. Holz is a member of the No-Limit Gaming stream team, a poker/esports streaming team created by the former Triton Poker Series Macau Six-Handed Champion, Stefan Schillhabel.
PokerStars has extended their online High Roller schedule. While the buy-ins might not feature in the $25k+ realm you are used to reading about here; they are the highest buy-ins that you will find week-in-week-out in any online poker room.
Here are the events for Mon, Wed & Sat.
$530, $150k GTD Bounty Builder High Roller
$530, $50k GTD Daily 500
$530, $50k GTD Daily Supersonic
$1,050, $100k GTD Daily Warm Up
$1,050, $100k – $225k Daily Themed $1k
$1,050, $100k Daily Cooldown
On Tue, Thu & Sun there is also a $530 Omania High Roller.
Each Sunday, the Daily Themed $1k turns into a $2,100 Sunday High Roller, the buy-in for the Sunday Cooldown inches north to $2,100, and the Supersonic moves up to $1,050.
In other news, Philipp Gruissem appeared on The Chip Race podcast this week. The two-time WPTAlpha8 winner talked about the effect that ego played during his meteoric rise to fame, drugs, and effective altruism.
Check it out here.

Dan Smith is donating 5% of anything that he makes in the $25,000 MILLION World and $250,000 Super-Duper High Roller at the partypoker CPP. The recent WPT DeepStacks Joberg winner Maria Ho immediately declared she would join him.
One area Smith might want to take a look at is smoking. There are 9 million deaths directly contributed to smoking, and Smith recently asked on Twitter if there were any two packs a day poker players? It turns out that Doyle Brunson used to eat two packs a day for breakfast.


Dietrich Fast is one of the players who recently took advantage of the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulations (GDPR) by removing his content from Hendon Mob. Poker stat fanatics were undoubtedly angry about the WPT Champions’ decision, including an old guy from Scotland.


Had that old man ran over Daniel Negreanu then we are pretty confident he would have blocked him on Twitter.


And we end with a song.
Happy birthday to you, happy birthday to you, happy birthday Erik Seidel. Happy birthday to you.
And that’s this week’s Pinnacle.

Frank Sinatra once warbled: “this town is a lonely town. This town is a make-you town, or a break-you-town and bring-you-down town.”
It sounds a lot like Vegas to me.
Many arrive hoping for Disneyland, only to leave with empty pockets and vertigo, a startling start at 5 am, riffling chips sounding like Mortar bombs, an ear canal ready to implode. Feverish scratching like a beat-up stray missing a flea collar.
“It’s a shove-you-down and push-you ‘round town. This town, it’s a use-you town. An abuse-you town until-you’re-down town.”
Not for Sam Soverel and David Peters.
Not this week.
The card room at the ARIA Resort & Casino has been banging this past week. Poker players of the highest calibre have been merging into stacks like geckos, imaginary spears, loaded and cocked; ready to bring down the world’s biggest whales.
Fall Madness.
The menu contained seven events, four of which wouldn’t typically feature in these pages, but for the sake of providing you with a more rounded piece to scoff during your morning Frappuccino, we include them.
Here were the events:
Event #1: $10,500 Pot-Limit Omaha
Event #2: $10,500 No-Limit Hold’em
Event #3: $10,500 No-Limit Hold’em Short-Deck
Event #4: $26,000 No-Limit Hold’em
Event #5: $10,000 No-Limit Hold’em Short-Deck
Event #6: $52,000 No-Limit Hold’em
Event #7: $103,000 No-Limit Hold’em
There were many first-rate performances.
Stephen Chidwick finished runner-up to Jared Jaffee in the $10,500 No-Limit Hold’em (NLHE), before winning the $26,000 event. Alex Foxen recently dethroned Chidwick from the top seat of the Global Poker Index (GPI), and what a way to respond. The $26k victory was Chidwick’s 14th career win and his sixth at The ARIA.
The World Series of Poker (WSOP) & World Poker Tour (WPT) Champion, Jared Jaffee, also had a tip-top Fall Madness, winning the $10,500 for $132,000, and picking up a third in the $26k, and Jonathan Depa, gained two runner-up finishes in both the $10,500 Pot-Limit Omaha (PLO) and the $10,500 NLHE Short-Deck.
But the stars of the show were Soverel and Peters.
Soverel was the most consistent performer, winning both $10,500 NLHE Short-Deck events, and taking second in the $52,000 NLHE for a total score of $533,600 – extending his lead at the top of the Poker Central’s Oscars: The High Roller of the Year leaderboard.
Peters…well, Peters is a monster.

David Peters Wins $100k Main Event
David Peters Wins $100k Main Event

The man from Ohio took third in the $52,000 before vanquishing 24-entrants in the $103,000 event for $1,104,000, after beating Rick Salomon, heads-up. Peters has now won six titles this year, half of which have been seven-figure scores, and this was Peters’ seventh seven-figure score in the past three years.
All told, Peters has earned $9m this year (gross) playing live tournaments, and only Jason Koon ($11.5m), Mikita Badziakouski ($13.8m), and Justin Bonomo ($25.2m) have collected more.
The win sees Peters, depose Antonio Esfandiari in the sixth spot of the All-Time Money Earned charts with $27,815,923, and it won’t be too long before he surpasses Dan Colman, who has his handbrake firmly applied in $28,925,059th gear.
Only a fortnight ago, Peters finished runner-up to Martin Kabrhel in the €100,000 Super High Roller at the World Series of Poker Europe (WSOPE) for $1.8m.
“This town is an all-right town.”
Here are the results in full:
Event #1: $10,500 Pot-Limit Omaha
28-entrants

ITM Results
1. Anthony Alberto – $128,800
2. Jonathan Depa – $78,400
3. Craig Varnell – $44,800
4. Sean Winter – $28,000
Event #2: $10,500 No-Limit Hold’em
33-entrants
ITM Results
1. Jared Jaffee – $132,000
2. Stephen Chidwick – $85,800
3. Ali Imsirovic – $52,800
4. Brian Rast – $33,000
5. Bryon Kaverman – $26,400
Event #3: $10,500 No-Limit Hold’em Short-Deck
15-entrants
ITM Results
1. Sam Soverel – $81,000
2. Jonathan Depa – $45,000
3. Cary Katz – $24,000
Event #4: $26,000 No-Limit Hold’em
21-entrants
ITM Results
1. Stephen Chidwick – $283,500
2. Bill Klein – $157,500
3. Jared Jaffee – $84,000
Event #5: $10,000 No-Limit Hold’em Short-Deck
19-entrants
ITM Results
1. Sam Soverel – $102,600
2. Koray Aldemir – $57,000
3. Sampson Simmons – $30,400
Event #6: $52,000 No-Limit Hold’em
25-entrants
ITM Results
1. Matthias Eibinger – $575,000
2. Sam Soverel – $350,000
3, David Peters – $200,000
4. Justin Bonomo – $125,000
Event #7: $103,000 No-Limit Hold’em
24-entrants
ITM Results
1. David Peters – $1,104,000
2. Rick Salomon – $672,999
3. Jake Schindler – $384,000
4. Ben Tollerene – $240,000
Both Schindler and Rast cashed in the Fall Madness event, extending their lead over Justin Bonomo in the Most Money Earned at the ARIA charts.
1. Brian Rast – $12,196,295
2. Jake Schindler – $12,060,839
3. Justin Bonomo – $10,681,322
Cary Katz cashed once, as did Schindler, so stalemate at the top of the ARIA ITM finishes list.
1. Cary Katz – 53
2. Jake Schindler – 49
In the Poker Central High Roller of the Year Standings, the only member of the Top 5 not to register a point during Fall Madness was Dan Smith.
Poker Central High Roller of the Year Standings
1. Sam Soverel – 1,560
2. David Peters – 1,325
3. Cary Katz – 1,255
4. Justin Bonomo – 1,025
5. Dan Smith – 1,025
The people finishing in the top five positions will bypass the Super High Roller Bowl (SHRB) lottery system scheduled for Tuesday, November 27, streamed live on PokerGO.
That’s it for me.
Ol’ blue eyes will see you out of the door.
“And I am leavin’ this town. You better believe that I’m leavin’ this town.”

Learn to speak Texas Hold’em as well as you play it! Some of the terms and slang used are self-explanatory, some humorous, others startlingly apt, but all very relevant to the game and your knowledge of it.

The terms are a discovery in themselves!

You will discover things such as why “Angle Shooting” is a “no-no”, being on the end of a “Gutshot” is not a good place to be, but certainly is when you produce one, and why being the “Nuts” is definitely what you want time and again!
To help you along we have put together a comprehensive list of terms. Read them, memorise the ones you find worthy of repeat, and begin to speak Hold’em as well as you play it!
This is part 1 covering terms beginning with the letter A. The remainder of the alphabet will be gradually introduced to allow meanings to soak in.
Have fun reading!

A is for:

Ace ariations include

• Aces Full: A Full-House with 3 aces and any pair
• Ace-High: A 5 card hand containing just one Ace with no Straight or Flush or a hand with no pair in it
• Ace in the Hole: This is when a player has an ace as 1 of their 2-hole cards
• Aces Up: A hand containing 2 pairs, one of which is a pair of Aces

Action (various meanings including):

• A player’s turn to act during a round
• Bet or Raise
• Description of a game that involves lots of betting and raises

Active Player:

• This term is used to refer to any player who is still in the current hand

Add-On:

• Some tournaments allow players to choose whether they wish to “add on”. This means the player(s) concerned can pay extra to get more chips. The add-on usually occurs during and at the end of the rebuy period

Air:

• Not what you want. This basically means a player has a hand that is of no value

American Airlines:

• Mentioned when a player has 2 Aces

Angle shooting:

• Don’t do it! This is when a player makes an illegal play in an attempt to get extra information or to cheat

Ante:

• A small wager each of the players must make before the hand is dealt. The combined sum of each players ante gives immediate pot value

All-In:

• A wager that puts all of a player’s chips in the pot
That’s it for the letter ‘A’ in our 1st installment of “Texas Hold’em – The A-Z of Poker speak”. There is little doubt you will be familiar with some of the terms above, but hopefully you have added to your Texas Hold’em vocabulary with ones previously unheard of.

There’s lots more to come

Do keep a close eye out as we build this extensive compendium on the A-Z of Hold’em jargon. It will add to your knowledge of common terms as well as the more obscure ones. What is more, you will be able to impart your knowledge to friends as well as foes!
Our next article covers the letter ‘B’ from ‘Backdoor’ to ‘Buy-In’ and also mentions why we hope you do not have too many ‘Bad Beat’ Stories to consistently repeat!

073584
Welcome to another round-up of all the news, views and gossip from the world of high stakes poker, and we will begin with the World Series of Poker Europe (WSOPE).
The 2018 WSOPE ended with Jack Sinclair taking down the €10,300 buy-in Main Event for €1,122,239, and although Sinclair doesn’t spend most of his time hanging out in the bowels of the high stakes universe, he did win the €25,000 No-Limit Hold’em (NLHE) High Roller at the 2017 partypoker LIVE German Poker Championships for €250,000, and came 16/132 in the €111,111 NLHE One Drop High Roller at the 2017 WSOPE, so the British pro is likely to dabble when the bankroll suits, and it suits.
Regular high rollers that went deep in this one included the former WSOP Main Event Champ Ryan Riess (4th), the former Triton Poker Series Champion, Koray Aldemir (7th), the Russian powerhouse Vladimir Troyanovskiy (11th), PokerStars ambassador Igor Kurganov (22nd), and the Triton Poker High Roller Sochi winner Aymon Hata (24th).
The most profitable high roller throughout the WSOPE was Martin Kabrhel. The #1 All-Time Czech Live Tournament Money Earner, won two gold rings in the World Series of Poker Circuit (WSOPC) side of things before beating 95-entrants to bank the €2,624,340 first prize in the €100,000 NLHE Super High Roller, and then finished second to Ivan Leow in the €100,000 NLHE LEON’s High Roller for another €773,457 (the second event wasn’t a bracelet event).
LEON’s High Roller attracted 23-entrants, and Leow banked €1,251,455. Leow also finished second to Mikita Badziakouski in the €25,000 NLHE King’s Short Deck Championship. The planned €50,000 Short-Deck Championship didn’t run.
Here are the final table results from those two €100k events.
 
€100k LEON’s High Roller

  1. Ivan Leow – €1,251,455
  2. Martin Kabrhel – €773,457
  3. Michael Soyza – €521,471
  4. Tony G – €351,579
  5. Dominik Nitsche – €237,038

 
€100k Bracelet Event

  1. Martin Kabrhel – €2,624,340
  2. David Peters – €1,621,960
  3. Julian Thomas – €1,116,308
  4. Mikita Badziakouski – €789,612
  5. Dominik Nitsche – €574,466
  6. Jan Schwippert – €430,217
  7. Adrian Mateos – €331,943
  8. Michael Addamo – €264,110

 
Not everyone was thrilled with Martin Kabrhel’s promising run. It seems Daniel Negreanu feels the Czech star is a little noxious. During an appearance on Dat Poker Podcast, (http://datpodcast.libsyn.com/) around the 40-min mark, Negreanu had this to say about Kabrhel.
“If I ran a tournament series, I would seriously consider banning Martin not because he is cheating but because he is disruptive to the players in several ways,” said Negreanu. “His tanking, his poor behaviour and incessant whining and complaining and just being a disruptive force. Every time Martin is at the table, there are problems.

“I would let him play my series first. Then I would say to him, you are on the shortest leash ever, if you are UTG and take 30 seconds to make any fucking decision, you are out. I am going to take your chips and throw you out of the tournament. If you say anything past four words to a Tournament Director, you’re out. He is the number one worst experience player to play with in all of poker, today. We can’t let behaviour like that destroy the game.”
Ouch.
Rounding off the news from the WSOP, and Shaun Deeb took down the Player of the Year award. He is the 14th player to win the prize (Negreanu won it twice), and every single one of them has had experience playing high stakes poker.
Here are the final results of what turned out to be a one-horse race.
 

  1. Shaun Deeb – 5,073.92 pts
  2. Ben Yu – 3,746.04
  3. Joe Cada – 3,531.86
  4. John Hennigan – 3,499.91
  5. Scott Bohlman – 3,155.88
  6. Michael Addamo – 3,028.78
  7. Paul Volpe – 2,859.76
  8. Anthony Zinno – 2,593.34
  9. Eric Baldwin – 2,516.30
  10. Romain Lewis – 2,460.14

 
Super High Roller Bowl Changes
I won’t go into great detail here, because I covered the full story in my article Super High Roller Bowl: December Move, Lottery, Aria Picks, Hr Leaderboard Selections – Have They Got This Right? (https://paulphuapoker.com/super-high-roller-bowl-december-move-lottery-aria-picks-hr-leaderboard-selections-got-right/), but here are the cliffs.
The ARIA and Poker Central have shifted the 2019 SHRB from May to December of this year, so they can use it as a way of putting the cherry on the top of the High Roller of the Year Series.
In moving the SHRB back to December, it means that the Triple Crown of Poker Masters, US Poker Open, and SHRB are all contained within the calendar year.
The other change the SHRB has made is giving the players who finish in the top five positions in the High Roller of the Year leaderboard a spot in the SHRB should they choose to pay the $300,000 needed to compete.
This means those five will avoid the lottery. Yes, there will still be a lottery, this time choosing 25-entrants, and the ARIA will handpick the final 18 positions.
 
partypoker High Roller News
partypoker’s high rollers were in the news, this week.
I was fortunate enough to spend an hour talking to Jason Koon at the Triton Poker Series in Montenegro, where he put a lot of his success down to his relationship with his girlfriend Bianca Armstrong, and this week, she became his fiancee.


 

 
 
 
View this post on Instagram

Biancée my fiancée.

A post shared by Jason Koon (@jasonkoon) on


Sam Trickett knows how Koon feels after getting hitched in 2015, and this week the former One Drop runner-up, talked to the UK daily rag The Mirror about his high stakes jinks, including talking about players competing in pots worth $50m during his time in Macau. You can check out the nitty-gritty, right here (https://www.mirror.co.uk/sport/other-sports/inside-life-high-stakes-poker-13515378).
Finally, Kristen Bicknell isn’t someone that we consider a regular high roller, but hopefully, that will change after the Global Poker Index (GPI) #1 Female Poker Player competed in her first €100,000 at the WSOPE. Bicknell didn’t make it past Day 1, but speaking to PokerNews, she confirmed that the experience didn’t feel that much different than playing a €25k. Let’s hope the experience has left her wanting more because we could desperately do with some female players in these games.
 
The Best of the Rest
Doug Polk doesn’t seem to be doing a great job of quitting poker. This week, the YouTube star was a guest on Joe Ingram’s Poker Life Podcast where he talked about poker’s corporate shills, suggesting that for most people, a PokerStars contract is the Holy Grail and that being the person shouting from the rafters is not the way to go about landing that sort of lucrative gig.
Check it out, right here.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3qnS5UpIjJA
Patrik Antonius continued his recent decision to spend more time in the limelight by making a surprise appearance at the €500 buy-in Battle of Malta this week, and the ARIA is running a full schedule of events that include several $10k and $15k events. The ARIA is also considering hosting a nightly $140 or $240 Short-Deck event, in a bid to boost interest in the format that became a global superstar thanks to the Triton Poker Series.
Here is the schedule:
10/30 – $10K PLO
10/31 – $15K PLO
11/1 – $10K NLH
11/2 – $10K Short Deck
11/3 – $25K NLH
11/4 – $10K Short Deck
11/5 – $50K NLH
11/6 – $100K NLH (2-day event)
 
And that’s this week’s Pinnacle.
 

Super High Roller Bowl
I have no idea how to start this article. I’ve been staring at a blank screen for 30-minutes hoping that it will write itself. I’m not suffering from writer’s block. That’s not my problem. I can’t stop thinking about Making a Murderer.
The anticipation.
I can’t keep running away from Google.
I need to know if Steven Avery did it.
I don’t want to be a poker writer; I want to be Kathleen Zellner.
Who would have thought of turning a court case into a top-rated documentary? No, the word ‘documentary’ doesn’t do it justice. It’s not a documentary. Then again, it’s not a movie. It’s not a TV series. It’s your first visit to a Chinese restaurant; it’s your 18th birthday party, it’s the day you gave the bully a black eye.
Reed Hasting and the gang began with a library full of shitty old movies we had all seen before, but took a keen interest in the types of shit we liked to watch, did some classic genre fornication, and came up with the concept of Original Programming.
Sound familiar?
A poker broadcaster like Poker Central hasn’t smashed the nose of a thing like this since the invention of the hole camera.
And this is why some of their decisions surrounding the Super High Roller Bowl leave me wanting to give someone smaller than me a thick lip. I am expecting, no demanding, more of the same par excellence that has spewed from PokerGO from the moment the midwife checked it had ten fingers and ten toes.

The Super High Roller Bowl Moves to December

Poker Central officials have declared that The Super High Roller Bowl V (SHRB) will vacate its May 2019 plinth, and bounce forward to newly laid December 2018 concrete.
The shift means the Poker Central High Roller of the Year will end with the $100,000 buy-in at the Bellagio on December 15. Poker Central can wrap the High Roller Triple Crown of the SHRB, US Poker Open and Poker Masters into a neat calendar package, with the High Roller of the Year as the sparkling bow.
Here is the current High Roller of the Year standings.
High Roller of the Year Rankings
1. Sam Soverel- 1,220 points
2. Cary Katz – 1,205
3. Justin Bonomo – 1,025
4. Dan Smith – 1,025
5. David Peters – 975
Five excellent poker players, but have they been the most consistent High Rollers of 2018? Justin Bonomo and David Peters deserve their spot, but Soverel, Catz and Smith? What about Jason Koon, Mikita Badziakouski or Stephen Chidwick?
Why aren’t the PokerStars European Poker Tour (EPT), World Poker Tour (WPT), partypoker MILLIONS, and Triton Poker Series results included to make it the real deal?
“The High Roller of the Year points system today includes events that are organised by Poker Central and its affiliated partners,” Sam Simmons, VP of Content at Poker Central tells me via email. “Like any similar season-long points system, the intent is to create storylines around a lengthy series where coverage is provided of included events so that the stakes are raised well beyond the scope of a single event. Thus, events are largely limited to those of which Poker Central provides coverage.”
“That would be a GPI High Roller, and that has nothing to do with Poker Central,” says the 2017 Poker Masters Champion, Steffen Sontheimer. “They have their brand and want to make it as interesting as possible, and they do a great job. I don’t think a global HR-leaderboard would make sense.”
Ok, I get it now.
Poker Central is creating a narrative for their viewers, and the EPT, MILLIONS and Triton brands don’t fit into that narrative because they don’t control the content. It would be like the BBC obtaining the TV rights for the World Cup, but the final is on BT Sports.
And Sontheimer makes an excellent point when it comes to a broader High Roller Leaderboard. I have always felt it would be cool to have one, but a glance at the Global Poker Index (GPI) shows they already have one.
Check out the current Top 10.
1. Alex Foxen
2. Justin Bonomo
3. David Peters
4. Stephen Chidwick
5. Jake Schindler
6. Adrian Mateos
7. Ben Pollak
8. Joe McKeehen
9. Mikita Badziakouski
10. Jason Koon.
Every single one of them is a $25k+ high stakes regular.
Simmons and Sontheimer have convinced me that the current High Roller of the Year concept makes sense, but can they assure me that a 48-player cap, lottery system, and lack of a mandatory spot for past champions and potential Triple Crown winners, make sense?

The Player Cap, the Lottery and Past Champions

Firstly, let’s focus on the lottery system.
On November 27, PokerGO will stream a live lottery to select the first 25 of a 48-player roster. The ARIA and Poker Central handpick 18 players, and five will qualify for a seat by finishing in the top five positions in the High Roller of the Year leaderboard.
Imagine if FIFA decided to populate the World Cup Finals with 16 teams coming from a live lottery, and Gianni Infantino and the gang handpicking the final 16 teams. Wouldn’t it blemish the prestige of the event, and open up the process to the potential for corruption and nepotism?
I thought the SHRB was supposed to be the FIFA World Cup of poker.
FIFA don’t take this route because they have a qualification process meaning you earn your right to play in the Finals. Poker Central now have that qualification process in the High Roller of Year series. And it’s fantastic to see them use it for the top five players, but because of Poker Central’s restriction (only allocating points for ARIA and Poker Central partner events), you could end up with an SHRB with a big chunk of the most deserving players not getting a seat.
“I don’t think the lottery system is perfect, but it’s still giving people a fair chance to get in while making sure they have certain people who are ARIA regulars or people who they think will make for a good TV show,” the former GPI Player of the Year, David Peters, tells me. “Having someone who only plays the SHRB and nothing else all year at ARIA get a seat while someone who plays events year-round misses out is something they understandably don’t want to happen.”
Meditor Capital Management Ltd, CEO, Talal Shakerchi, is an SHRB regular, but he’s not someone who is going to be appearing in enough ARIA or Poker Central partner events to make it via a leaderboard system. So the lottery system works for him, but he would like some tweaks made to the way things go down.
“The event is attractive because it is rake-free and good player numbers for an SHR so no surprise there is high demand,” says Shakerchi. “Given there is oversubscription a lottery system is a fair way to choose. However, I would prefer greater transparency such as a fixed deadline for applications or a statement on the basis for the decisions and who has input.”
Shakerchi is referring to the handpicking of the 18 players that ARIA and Poker Central choose after the lottery. Last year, the 2017 Poker Masters Champion, Steffen Sontheimer, got into the SHRB, only after Andrew Robl had to withdraw at the last minute.
Poker Central has done a grand job of piecing together a story framework that works with the Poker Masters, US Poker Open and SHRB forming a High Roller Triple Crown, but any fan of sports knows that the defending champion is an essential member of the cast, as is the person who could potentially win the Triple Crown.
In addition to the five High Roller of the Year seats, the winners of the Poker Masters and US Poker Open should receive a mandatory position, as should the defending champion. So for 2018, Stephen Chidwick, Ali Imsirovic and Justin Bonomo shouldn’t have their balls in the tombola machine.
Simmons tries to alleviate my concerns.
“Although it is not formally stated, the previous years’ Super High Roller Bowl champion is taken into consideration for the reserved seat selections,” says Simmons. “For the May edition, while Brian Rast and Christoph Vogelsang were lottery selections, Rainer Kempe was given a reserved seat so that all previous champions were able to participate in the event.
“The High Roller of the Year system provides a chance for players to automatically qualify through participation in Poker Central-affiliated high roller tournaments. With High Roller Triple Crown events like U.S. Poker Open and Poker Masters weighted more heavily in points, the winners of these events have a great chance to capture one of the top five spots in those standings.”
I’m still not convinced.
Neither is Sontheimer.
“They want to reward the players that play at ARIA nonstop,” says Sontheimer. “It’s nothing else but extending ARIA picks to 23 since the top 5 would always get picked anyway. It just makes it easier for them to justify certain picks because there is a “system” compared to the shit shows of the last two years, especially the adding of seats two years ago after the lottery ended up with too many Germans.”
Shakerchi would also like to see a slight change.
“It’s their prerogative {handpicking 18-players},” says Shakerchi. “It doesn’t seem to sit well with a lottery though. Perhaps it would be better if they chose a smaller number and restricted it to non-professionals. That would serve everyone’s interests.”
Like me, Peters thinks there needs to be a place for the former champions, and Triple Crown potentials, but feels there needs to be loyalty to regular ARIA players.
“They are running a rake free event, and should be able to give priority to loyal customers and make sure certain people don’t get shut out who have been a big part in ARIA’s success in the high roller scene,” says Peters before continuing, “I think the top 5 is a good incentive to try to get numbers up during the slower times of the year, but yes having the winners of those series’ probably should get a seat in SHRB.”
In March, the SHRB extended its brand outside of Las Vegas for the first time with the HKD 2,100,000 Super High Roller Bowl China, and 75-entrants created a prize pool of $18.5m.
It showed a real craving for the brand.
Doesn’t a 48-player cap go against customer demand?
Sontheimer doesn’t think so.
“Keep it; it’s good for TV.”
Peters is sitting on the fence.
“I don’t feel too strongly either way,” says Peters. “It would be nice to have a very big field, but at the same time it will also be more pro heavy whereas at 48 it has a good balance of pros and recs.”
And the switch to December, what’s the lowdown?
“I think putting the SHRB to the end of December makes a lot of sense to promote the yearly leaderboard,” says Sontheimer. “It will also help a lot to make it less interesting for “randoms” to join the lottery. Before they were in Vegas, now it would be an extra flight. I’m thinking of people that have a ridiculously small piece in themselves and sell at 1.01-1.03. These are the people that Poker Central doesn’t really want to see while they still want to run it as an “open” event.”
That’s the view of Steffen Sontheimer, Talal Shakerchi, and David Peters.
What’s yours?
Has Poker Central and ARIA got this one right?

Ivan Leow Wins Kings Cup
Imagine for a moment that you’re the lord of some castle somewhere. Your billionaire father blew his brains out, leaving you the lot. You can’t tie your shoelace, you love the game of poker, but you’re crap at it.
You decide to find a few horses.
Stallions, that dominate the high stakes.
Who do you choose?
As impatient as a bull waiting for someone to open the door to the china shop, it’s crucial the kid gets off to a good start.
Justin Bonomo is the best shout.
The American has won $25.1m this year.
Mikita Badziakouski, Jason Koon and Alex Foxen are worthy of a text.
But the lad wants a dark horse.
One that the world won’t see coming.
Rewind to the beginning of the year, and you couldn’t get a better pick than Ivan Leow.

The Rise of Ivan Leow

A few weeks ago, Leon Tsoukernik’s mind was whizzing as he saw his waiters and waitresses providing the goods for the players who hang out in the higher echelon of poker’s ecosystem.
The €25,000 & €100,000 World Series of Poker Europe (WSOPE) bracelet events had come and gone, but it was clear there was enough value to set up more games.
With the Triton Poker crowd in the building, Tsoukernik announced the €25,000 & €50,000 No-Limit Hold’em Short-Deck Championships, and a €100,000 Super High Roller named LEON’s.
Maybe the €25,000 price tag was a tad too high because only 15-entrants took a punt. Only two people left with a profit, Mikita Badziakouski, who won the thing for €213,750, and Ivan Leow, who banked €142,500.
I have waxed lyrical on Badziakouski’s 2018 accomplishments many times, so it’s time to give the Belarusian the day off. Today, we focus on the astonishing rise of Leow.
Then Malaysian part-time poker player began racking up Hendon Mob dollars in 2015, and by the end of the year, Leow had earned a paltry $5,631. The following year, those four digits hardly moved, with annual earnings of $7,096, and then things changed in 2017, with Leow earning $110,547.
But this year has been different gravy.

Ivan Leow Wins €100k LEON’s High Roller

A few days ago, Leow conquered a field of 33-entrants to win the €1,251,455 first prize in the €100,000 LEON’s High Roller. It is the fifth time that Leow has won a tournament this year, and most of them have been monsters.
1/43 in the HKD 100k No-Limit High Roller in the Oriental Poker Championships for $183,745.
1/44 in the HKD 500k No-Limit Hold’em Short-Deck at Triton Jeju for $1,079,367
1/29 in the RUB 6m No-Limit Hold’em Triton Poker Super High Roller at the partypoker MILLIONS Sochi for $1,133,555
1/20 in the KRW 15.5m No-Limit Hold’em Super High Roller at the WPT DeepStacks Korea for $118,036
All told, Leow has earned $5,434,307 in 2018, better than all but 11-players in the world, and he now ranks #3 in the Malaysian All-Time Money list where previously he ranked 5,000,000,000,000,000th.
Leow defeated that other dark horse, Martin Kabrhel, in heads-up action. The Czech player has had a marvellous time at the WSOPE and World Series of Poker Circuit (WSOPC) winning two gold rings, a gold bracelet, and more than $3.8m in tournament earnings including the one-two in both €100k events.
Here are the final table results:
Final Table Results
1. Ivan Leow – €1,251,455
2. Martin Kabrhel – €773,457
3. Michael Soyza – €521,471
4. Tony G – €351,579
5. Dominik Nitsche – €237,038
The €50,000 No-Limit Hold’em Short-Deck Championship was expected to round things off on Wednesday 31 October, but it seems the event didn’t run.
Maybe the players knew, that had it run, Leow would have likely won it.

6b9ba7420e
Picture the moment.
Your pocket sixes square up to AK. You stand on tippy-toes reaching over the table, trying to scare the deck into delivering an aceless, kingless flop, turn and river.
As the dealer burns and turns you hear nothing but the delightful sounds of Mozart’s Piano Concerto No. 21 in C Major, as each street produces a playing card that goes according to the movie script you have played over in your mind since the day you fell in love with the game.
And then, just like that, there are no more cards to come.
No more starving children, no need to fight with the rats with whiskers like fencing foils over the mouldy bread.
You’ve won Event #9: €100,000 No-Limit Hold’em King’s Super High Roller at the World Series of Poker Europe (WSOPE) for €2,624,340. The trumpets blow a fanfare, the geese break V formation overhead to spell your name, and the photographer asks you to pose for a photograph your kids will one-day point to and say proudly, “That’s my Dad.”
That’s what happened to Martin Kabrhel this week.
Only, if you look at that winner’s photo, you can be pardoned for thinking he has just realised his Type 1 Diabetes has run amok, and underneath the poker table, someone is amputating both of his legs without anaesthetic.
Cheer up, Martin, it might never happen.
Although it did, didn’t it?
Kabrhel conquered a field of 95-entrants in the most substantial buy-in event at the 2018 WSOPE, 37 fewer than attended the 2017 event, which Dominik Nitsche took down to register his most significant prize to date. And talking of Nitsche, he was one of a handful of players who put in a decent shift.
The German star came close to defending his title, finishing fifth. Last year’s third-place finisher, Mikita Badziakouski finished fourth, and Michael Addamo continued his superb run of form, finishing eighth a few days shy of picking up the win in the €25k High Roller.
There was also a personal best for Julian Thomas (€1,116,308), a young man Nitsche told me is the next big German star in the making. Thomas exited in third at the hands of the man who seemingly has control of the high stakes jukebox, David Peters.
The American entered the heads-up phase with Kabrhel with a 3.5:1 chip lead, but the Czech star evened things up when his flush extracted value from Peters’ top pair, and then the duo got it in with the 66 v AK hand I went a little over the top with at the start of this thing.
According to the scribes at PokerNews, Peters’ runner-up position, and fourth seven-figure score of the year will likely see him replace Alex Foxen at the top of the Global Poker Index (GPI) World Rankings.
Kabrhel is unlikely ever to reach those dizzy heights, but he did overtake Martin Staszko at the top of the Czech All-Time Live Tournament Rankings after his win, and what I love about Kabrhel is his penchant to playing anything.
With most high rollers choosing to join the WSOPE fray at the bitter end. Kabrhel was there at the start of September when the World Series of Poker Circuit (WSOPC) hit town, winning both a €299 and a €550 buy-in event to take his total of WSOPC gold rings up to four.
When Kabrhel sits down to play poker in the King’s Casino, it feels like his front room. This time last year, he was winning his first gold bracelet after overcoming 325-entrants in the €1,100 No-Limit Hold’em Super Turbo Bounty event for €53,557.
Now he has two.
And if that’s not worth smiling about, I don’t know what is.
 
Final Table Results

  1. Martin Kabrhel – €2,624,340
  2. David Peters – €1,621,960
  3. Julian Thomas – €1,116,308
  4. Mikita Badziakouski – €789,612
  5. Dominik Nitsche – €574,466
  6. Jan Schwippert – €430,217
  7. Adrian Mateos – €331,943
  8. Michael Addamo – €264,110

Three other players were brewing the late night coffee in this one including the 2017 Super High Roller Bowl winner, Christoph Vogelsang (10th), the man who wins everything except this one, Steve O’Dwyer (13th), and the former Poker Masters Champion, Steffen Sontheimer (15th).

As another week sends us hurtling towards our inevitable doom, it’s time to bring you up to speed with the narratives that have spewed forth from the soap opera that is high stakes poker.
We begin with live tournament poker, and there is only one place for high stakes poker players to be this week, and that’s the World Series of Poker Europe (WSOPE) in the King’s Casino, Rozvadov, Czech Republic.
The €25,500 No-Limit High Roller was a resounding success with 133-entrants ensuring Leon Tsoukernik surpassed the €1m Guarantee by three-times as much. The final table housed such luminaries as former Triton Poker Series Main Event winners, Mikita Badziakouski and Manig Loeser, and the former One Drop High Roller winner, Dominik Nitsche. But it was the Australian Michael Addamo who banked the €848,702 first-prize after beating Christian Rudolph, heads-up, for his second World Series of Poker (WSOP) bracelet of the summer, after winning The Marathon in Las Vegas.
Outside of the WSOP, but within the walls of the King’s Casino, and the owner, Leon Tsoukernik, announced three more high rollers this week.
Here they are:
23 October – €25,000 King’s Short Deck Championship
30 October – €100,000 Leon’s High Roller
31 October – €50,000 King’s Short Deck Championship II
As you can tell, one of those is old news, and it wasn’t anywhere near as successful as the event Addamo won.
Only 15-entrants (nine unique, six re-entries) showed an interest in the €25,000 King’s Short Deck Championship, and Mikita Badziakouski beat Ivan Leow, heads-up, to bank the €213,750 first-prize, with Ivan Leow taking €142,500 for his efforts.
From the past to the future, and Phil Hellmuth, Doug Polk and Ryan Fee will be amongst the high rollers attending World Crypto Con (WCC) at the ARIA Resort & Casino in Las Vegas on the final day of October.
The trio will compete in the world’s first blockchain poker tournament. Hellmuth is acting in an emcee role, and both Polk and Fee are present because Coin Central (an online crypto news channel co-founded by the pair) is partnering with WCC.
Other celebrities/poker players scheduled to compete are the 1998 WSOP Main Event winner, Scotty Nguyen, Litecoin creator Charlie Lee, and former Disney star and crypto entrepreneur Brock Pierce.

Live Cash Games: Bobby’s Room on PokerGo; Baldwin and Co Hit WSOPE

Moving swiftly on to the live cash games, and this week Poker Central announced that Bobby’s Room would be migrating to PokerGo for the week. The Godfather themed Poker After Dark (PAD) show would move away from its traditional No-Limit Hold’em offering by showcasing the $1,500/$3,000 Mixed Game that often takes place in the Bellagio. Bryn Kenney, Gus Hansen, Brian Rast, Scott Seiver and Daniel “Jungleman” Cates were a few of the names scheduled to take part.
Interestingly this week, Dan Smith took to Twitter to list his most ‘fun’ players to compete with when playing live tournaments and the Jungleman was top of that list. I am sure he is just as much of a blast playing live cash games if he can keep awake long enough that is.


The cast of Bobby’s Room may be moving to the ARIA this week, but the man they named the gaff after is not.
Bobby Baldwin is amongst a host of high rollers currently playing in some pretty hefty Pot-Limit Omaha (PLO) games in the King’s Casino, Rozvadov during the WSOPE.
The game of choice seems to be €1/2/4k PLO.
As you can see in this snap, joining Baldwin are the likes of Leon Tsoukernik, Ben Lamb, Matt Kirk, Tony G, and Rob Yong.

Listen or Watch: Negreanu on Jon Taffer, and Luckychewy on YouTube

Neither Daniel Negreanu or Andrew “luckychewy” Lichtenberger are at ARIA or King’s Casino, but if you are missing them both you’re in luck.
Negreanu appeared on Jon Taffer’s podcast this week where he talked about his beginning in the game, the need to treat poker as a business, and much more.

And LuckyChewy popped up on his YouTube Channel to share his thoughts on Compassion, Love, Freedom.

Out And About

Michael ‘The Grinder’ Mizrachi is on his way to Australia. The four-time WSOP bracelet winner and two-time World Poker Tour (WPT) Champion is in Queensland with the former WSOP Main Event champion, Joe Hachem.
The pair will light up the Australian Poker Open Grand Final with a Masterclass for the fans, before competing in a Best of Three Heads-Up Exhibition match with $5k on the line.


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Just before cards in the air. Very first hand( no word of a lie) get it all in JJ<AK lol fastest match in history #apt

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And Dan Smith is taking a mini-sabbatical from the high stakes poker tables by taking up a spot of snowboarding in Japan. Smith wants to learn some basic conversational Japanese ahead of his trip, so if you have any tips, send him a tweet to @DanSmithHolla.

Charity: Smith & Loeser Shine

Sticking with Smith for a few sentences longer and the man who once raised $4.3m for effective charities (with a little help from the Daily Fantasy Sports stars the Crowley Brothers), was firing a few more bucks to charity this week. Smith chose to send $2,000 to the Lineage Project, a non-profit introducing mindfulness programs to the incarcerated, homeless and vulnerable youth.
Check them out, here.
http://www.lineageproject.org/
And the former Triton Poker Series Montenegro Main Event winner, Manig Loeser, was also in a charitable mood this week. It turns out that the German star donated €3,000 to a man who lives in the middle of nowhere so he can take care of over 450 stray dogs.
The location in Serbia was chosen because it was cheap enough and remote enough that it could house so many dogs but doesn’t possess running water or electricity, and with temperatures dropping to 25 below that’s a problem. Loser’s €3,000 donation helped the dog-carers install a solar panel to power a water pump.
Check out the story, right here.

The Best of the Rest

With the $20m Guarantee Online MILLIONS scheduled to take place in a month’s time, partypoker has drafted in a little help to promote the event prompting speculation of potential sponsorship deals in the offing.
Jason and Natasha Mercier ran a competition on Twitter where players had to guess how many nappies Jason had changed in 2018. The answer was a measly 11, and eight people won an online satellite into the big one, including Ismael Bojang.
The other high roller parading partypoker promotions online is Sorel Mizzi. No nappies, just an ad.
Will the Merciers and Mizzi be joining partypoker?
Finally, if you are out of work, and feel you have what it takes to front a Twitch show, then head to Bill Perkins’ Twitter feed. The high stakes star is currently searching for a host for his Thirst Lounge Twitch Channel, and the gig looks better than this one, that’s for sure. The winner gets a staking deal, use of his private yacht for streaming, use of his house in St.Kitts for the same purpose and housing.
And that’s this week’s Pinnacle.

Like Coldplay preparing to play Yellow to a packed house, the World Series of Poker Europe (WSOPE) is preparing to enter their curtain falling phase of the event, and that means a hive of activity for our high rollers.
Leon Tsoukernik and those that crack the live tournament whip within the corridors of power at the World Series of Poker (WSOP), pencilled two events into the 2018 WSOPE calendar.
1. €25,500 No-Limit Hold’em.
2. €100,000 No-Limit Hold’em.
Once seven events had passed into the ether, the organisers knew there was a thirst for more high stakes action. Bobby Baldwin and the Las Vegas tribe were in town, as were Paul Phua, Richard Yong and the rest of the Short-Deck crew, and rather than have a dance off; they wedged three more big buy-in events between dessert and the wafer-thin mints.
Here are the results for two of those events.

Michael Addamo Wins Event #8: €25,500 No-Limit Hold’em High Roller

Michael Addamo
Event #8: €25,500 No-Limit Hold’em High Roller attracted 133-entrants, tripling the €1m Guarantee, and the last person with a bum glued to a seat was Michael Addamo.
The Australian star became the second player of 2018 to win a WSOP bracelet on both sides of the pond, joining Hanh Tran and Timur Margolin who achieved the same feat earlier in the series.
Like a top of the range mower, it doesn’t matter the size of the field, Addamo is capable of taking it down as proven by his first WSOP bracelet win in the summer when he defeated 1,637-entrants to win the $2,620 No-Limit Hold’em Marathon for $653,581.
Back to this one, and Addamo defeated the German star Christian Rudolph (otherwise known as Unknown Player on The Hendon Mob), in a long arse grind of a heads-up match that saw both players trade the lead before Addamo got the job done at 6 am when his AQ improved to beat the pocket sevens of the German star.
The victory is Addamo’s seventh live tournament win, and the €848,702 currently flying down an electrical wire is the most significant chunk of electronic cash he has ever won.
Addamo has now won $3.1m playing live tournaments.

Final Table Results

1. Michael Addamo – €848,702
2. Christian Rudolph – €524,532
3. Benjamin Pollak – €370,219
4. Mikita Badziakouski – €266,767
5. Dominik Nitsche – €196,328
6. Winfred Yu – €147,642
7, James Romero – €113,505
8. Manig Loeser – €89,253
20-players finished ITM including the Austrian powerhouse Matthias Eibinger (9th), the Canadian star Timothy Adams (10th) and the 2016 Super High Roller Bowl winner, Rainer Kemper (13th).

Mikita Badziakouski Does it Again.

The first of three non-bracelet high rollers is also in the bag, and the numbers weren’t great.
Mikita Badziakouski conquered a field of 15-entrants (nine unique, six re-entries) to win the €25,500 No-Limit Hold’em Short-Deck event, beating Ivan Leow, heads-up.
Given the shortage of meat, those were the only two people to bank any money in the event. Badziakouski’s 2018 run has been insane, netting $12,964,213 in live tournaments, second only to Justin Bonomo ($25,143,935). Leow is the most in-form high stakes No-Limit Hold’em Short-Deck live tournament player in the world, so it was a nice scalp for the Belarusian.
Here are the results:

ITM Results

1. Mikita Badziakouski – €213,750
2. Ivan Leow – €142,500
Other players competing in the event included Richard Yong, Paul Phua, Winfred Yu, Wai Kin Yong, Wai Leong Chan and Leon Tsoukernik.
Two high rollers remain.
Here they are:
1. €50,000 No-Limit Hold’em, Oct 31
2. €100,000 No-Limit Hold’em: LEON’s High Roller, Oct 30-31

With a viewership of 2 billion people, the Olympics is the third most-watched sporting event on the box behind the FIFA World Cup (3.5 billion) and the Tour de France (2.6 billion).
But the Olympic movement has a problem.
Despite close to a third of the population expressing an interest in the event, data gathered by Nielsen shows that the median age of viewers has risen from 45 in 2000 to 53 in 2016, and folk aged between 18 & 34 had dropped by 30%.
The Olympics need new blood, and that’s good news for poker, with the International Olympics Committee (IOC) crazy enough to take a look at events like rolled up sock football, kerby, and hide and seek.

Poker and The Olympics?

The likelihood you will see a form of poker in the Olympics by the time a mortician is stuffing your eyeballs back into your socket to make you presentable for your open coffin hoorah is quite high, but it won’t be the poker you want to see.
Back in November 2017, several media sources went to print that the IOC recognised Esports as a potential Olympic sport and that it would be on the list of full medal events at the 2022 Asian Games in Hangzhou, but it seems that the idea is now in the garbage can, after the Olympic Council of Asia (OCA) took it off the menu because Esports don’t have a unified international federation.
Poker does, but not in the No-Limit Hold’em, Fedor Holz, World Series of Poker sense of things.
The only recognised international federation in poker is the International Federation of Match Poker (IFMP). Born in 2009, those behind the alliance have done everything in their power to make Match Poker (a form of poker played live on electric devices where everyone has the same hand) an Olympic sport. Last winter The Global Associaton of International Sports Federations (GAISF) handed Match Poker ‘Observer Status’, meaning the game is one step closer to becoming a bona fide Olympic sport.
But does anyone care?

Does Anyone Care That Poker Could Become an Olympic Sport

Last week, Rahul Sood, CEO of the Esports sports-betting outfit, Unikrn, had some interesting thoughts on the Olympics. It seems clear to me that Esports is likelier to beat poker to the honour of becoming an Olympic sport, and when it does, the likelihood that poker follows suit increases, so what Sood has to say is worth a listen.
Rahul Sood
By Rsvdhd (talk) – self-made, CC BY 3.0, Link
Sood told Reuters in an email interview that he believes the IOC needs Esports more than Esports needs the IOC.
“It’s extremely unlikely top athletes would choose the Olympics over top esports events, said Sood before continuing. “It’s misguided, or egotistical, of mainstream culture to think the Olympics are somehow a greater honor than The International, Worlds or a CS:GO (Counterstrike) major.
“Esports athletes haven’t been playing for years, sometimes over a decade, putting everything into a grind to win a gold medal. They’ve been doing it to win the top title in their game.”
Sood makes some good points, but the weak link in his argument is a lack of input from the players themselves. It got me thinking about poker players. If poker was successful in its bid to become an Olympic sport (and Fedor Holz, Alex Foxen, and the likes can play Match Poker), and let’s say hypothetically, the games clashed with the WSOP (they wouldn’t), would a high stakes poker player choose to win a gold bracelet or a gold medal?
Partypoker ambassador, Philipp Gruissem, is more than just a high stakes poker player. The German star is an effective altruist, meaning he plays poker to earn money to reduce suffering in the world, and yet, Gruissem would still choose the Olympics over the WSOP.
“I would choose the Olympics,” said Gruissem. “There is so much energy and intensity in Olympic competitions. I would love to experience that…we love the intensity of high stakes poker, but the Olympics is one of the few things that provide more intensity.”
Gruissem isn’t the only German high stakes star who would choose the Olympics. The 2017 Poker Masters winner, Steffen Sontheimer, said, “It’s not even close.”
“The WSOP has no special meaning for me,” said Sontheimer. “It’s “just” a pure EV-calculation. The Olympics are one of the biggest things for me. To participate and to spend two weeks with all the other great people would mean the world to me.”
What about the other nations around the world, do they share the same view as the Germans.
It seems they do.
Sergio Aido has won close to $8.3m playing high stakes live events, and the Spaniard said:
“I would love poker to be an Olympic sport, and I think that would be very positive for The game. My main motivation in poker is money, but this would be a clear special case.”
Bryn Kenney has a WSOP bracelet amongst his many trinkets and trophies, so would he exchange that feeling for the chance of Olympic gold?
“Yes I would because I’m all about the glory and being the best at what I do. I never thought about the money; just the love of the game and competition.”
And the Brits?
After spending 25-consecutive weeks at the top of the Global Poker Index (GPI), amassing close to $19m on live tournament earnings, and winning the US Poker Open, Stephen Chidwick, is still missing a WSOP bracelet, but that wouldn’t stop him skipping the event to compete in the Olympics.
“There are like 80 chances a year to win a WSOP gold bracelet and only one chance every four years to win an Olympic medal,” said Chidwick. “Also, having the chance to meet elite performers in all kinds of different fields would be really fun…and likely in a nicer location than the Rio.”
Even the part-timers seem to agree.
“I would choose the Olympics if I thought I had any chance of a medal,” said the CEO of Meditor Capital Management, and avid poker fan, Talal Shakerchi. “I guess I see that as more of an achievement.”
And sometimes, just sometimes, competing in the Olympics isn’t only about the medal.
“I’d definately skip the WSOP for the Olympics if only to put “Olympic athlete” in my Twitter bio,” said the Triple Crown winner, Niall Farrell.
It seems the answer is unanimous.
If the Olympics clashed with the WSOP, then the games’ elite would choose medals over bracelets.
How about you?
What would you choose?