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
- Ivan Leow – €1,251,455
- Martin Kabrhel – €773,457
- Michael Soyza – €521,471
- Tony G – €351,579
- Dominik Nitsche – €237,038
€100k Bracelet Event
- Martin Kabrhel – €2,624,340
- David Peters – €1,621,960
- Julian Thomas – €1,116,308
- Mikita Badziakouski – €789,612
- Dominik Nitsche – €574,466
- Jan Schwippert – €430,217
- Adrian Mateos – €331,943
- 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.
- Shaun Deeb – 5,073.92 pts
- Ben Yu – 3,746.04
- Joe Cada – 3,531.86
- John Hennigan – 3,499.91
- Scott Bohlman – 3,155.88
- Michael Addamo – 3,028.78
- Paul Volpe – 2,859.76
- Anthony Zinno – 2,593.34
- Eric Baldwin – 2,516.30
- 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.
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.