There are no animals here.
If there were, there would be anarchy.
A man, comb protruding from his top pocket, walks toward the counter swinging his cane like Charlie Chaplin. A kid, eating baked beans, steps from side to side, preventing the piss from finding a home in his pants. Two teenagers play rock, paper, scissors to see who will pay for the vegan breakfasts.
But there are no animals.
When I think of the word ‘WORLD’, I don’t think of cathedrals, crowns and the smell of cloves. I think of the animals that our greed has driven off the face of this earth since 1970.
People like us, do things like this.
Since Paul, Ringo and John went their separate ways, humanity has wiped out 60% of the world’s species.
60%.
For what?
For land.
For meat.
For clothes.
For fun.
That leaves 40% ducking, diving and trying to evade death. At least 394 of them are sharks, and this week, they have been swimming in a cove at the Baha Mar Resort in the Bahamas.
Welcome to the partypoker Caribbean Poker Party (CPP), and MILLIONS World.
partypoker announced the $25,500 buy-in event in April; promising to invest $10m before going all Snow White and the Seven Dwarves with online satellite promotions.
Let’s call it a stretch goal.
By the end of Day 1A, I imagine there were a few shredded nerves within the corridor of power at partypoker when only 77-players turned up to play. 49 escaped with ribs, femurs and breastplates intact, and Chance Kornuth had more blood on his clothes than most, ending the night with the chip lead. A certain Steve O’Dwyer also emerged in one piece, sticking 830,000 chips into a plastic bag, good enough for 41 big blinds.
Then came the big one.
Day 1B.
The $10m cliffhanger.
Had the partypoker marketing machine made the MILLIONS sound mint?
205 players entered, taking the toll to 282, and with four levels left of registration time reserved for Day 2, the team was going to need a whole lot of crazy sharks with money to burn. 59 players made it through the day, and the Brazilian, Geraldo Cesar had the chip lead. A certain, Roger Teska ended the day with 1,170,000.
Remarkably, a further 112 players entered in the first four levels of Day 2, bringing the final number to 394-players, $150,000 shy of the $10m Guarantee, and I would say that’s close enough that we don’t have to mention any of those smelly smoky things from Havana.
39 players would receive a $35,000 profit, and three would bank seven-figure scores with the winner securing $2m. Day 2 ended with 59 in the hunt for that incredible sum of money, and it was on this day that O’Dwyer took the tournament by the scruff of the neck.
O’Dwyer flew into the Bahamas on the back of a reasonably quiet World Series of Poker Europe (WSOPE), only cashing once (13/95 in the €100k), but he did win both the £10k & £25k High Rollers at MILLIONS UK in Dusk till Dawn (DTD) for close to £800,000. And outside of the live realm, O’Dwyer had also pocketed $1.1m winning partypoker POWERFEST and PokerStars World Championship of Online Poker (WCOOP) events. There were few in this competition with a bite as fierce as O’Dwyer.
The former European Poker Tour (EPT) Grand Final Champion, began Day 3 with the chip lead, and still had it going into the final table at the end of ten levels of play.
Unofficial Final Table Chip Counts
1. Steve O’Dwyer – 81,275,000
2. Ben Tollerene – 74,750,000
3. Joao Vieria – 42,675,000
4. Andras Nemeth – 42,675,000
5. Niall Farrell – 35,525,000
6. Rainer Kempe – 34,325,000
7. Roger Teska – 34,200,000
8. Charles La Boissoniere – 26,225,000
9. Paul Tedeschi – 22,475,000
Let’s get to it.
Flesh & Bones: The Final Table Feast
David Vamplew’s doppelganger, Paul Tedeschi, came into the final day as the shortest stack in the room, but that changed soon after the cards went into the air. The Frenchman doubled through O’Dwyer KK>JJ. The final nine players blinked, and Tedeschi had gone from short-stack to the biggest stack in the room.
Then we lost our first player.
Tedeschi opened to 2.5m holding pocket kings, and the card dead Joao Vieira moved all-in for 16-bigs holding pocket jacks. A crocodile snap later, and the dealer was swiftly moving through a jackless flop, turn and river, and Vieira walked over to the cash desk to collect his $250,000.
Then we lost the Triple Crown winner, Niall Farrell.
O’Dwyer opened to 2.6m on the button with A6hh hiding underneath his fingerprints. Farrell, shoved for eight big blinds in the next seat, holding pocket deuces, and Roger Teska reshoved holding pocket eights in the big blind. O’Dwyer folded, and five community cards later, the table was minus the beast from the North.
A scarf followed Farrell to the rail.
O’Dwyer pumped the pot up to 2.5m from midfield holding AJo and then called when Rainer Kempe moved all-in from the button for 12 big blinds holding KJo. An ace on the flop sorted that mess out, and Kempe was finally able to show the vampires a little Aorta.
Six became five when we lost Ben Tollerene.
Tollerene opened to 3.5m with pocket sevens from the hijack position. Charles La Boissonniere called with the other two sevens, as did Paul Tedeschi with A9hh, and then Teska put the cougar amongst the pigeons by moving all-in for 29.3m, and only Tollerene made the call. The flop rained down 9d8d5c, giving Teska the lead, but handing Tollerene a gutshot. The 6d gave Tollerene that straight, but a cruel 4d on the river handed Teska a flush, leaving Tollerene with chip dust, and Andras Nemeth sucked it up in the very next hand.
Then O’Dwyer took command once more.
The American opened to 3.7m holding AK and then called after Andras Nemeth moved all-in for 71.5m holding pocket nines. It was a chip leading pot, and it went the way of O’Dwyer when an ace landed on the flop.
Chip Standings Four-Handed
1. Steve O’Dwyer – 220,700,000
2. Paul Tedeschi – 77,300,000
3. Charles La Boissonniere – 52,000,000
4. Roger Teska – 44,100,000
Teska emerged to become O’Dwyer’s primary pain in the arse when he took most of Tedeschi’s chips in a pocket pair versus bigger pocket pair set up, and then O’Dwyer took his head when K7o beat A2o thanks to a seven on the river.
Then O’Dwyer took the chips and momentum into a heads-up clash against Teska when he took chunks from the regally named La Boissoniere. La Boissoniere opened to 6.2m on the button holding J6hh, and O’Dwyer defended the big blind with QTo. The players checked through to the turn on QdJd7s7c, O’Dwyer led for 10m, and La Boissoniere made the call. The river was the 2c. O’Dwyer bet 26m, and La Boissoniere made the call with the weaker two pair hand. That hand left La Boissoniere as the short-stack, and he passed them to Teska when his pocket nines failed to escape a bear trap laid by Q7o.
Heads-Up
Steve O’Dwyer – 312,000,000
Roger Tesak – 82,000,000
O’Dwyer had led the field since the end of Day 2. He was the man to beat. A live tournament specialist with a near 4:1 chip lead over a man who rarely plays these things.
But this is poker.
In one of the first hands of heads-up action, O’Dwyer was five cards away from the win when he found a cooler spot KK v QQ only for Teska to flop a queen to give him the chip lead.
Then, in the final hand of what turned out to be a brilliant tournament for the organisers, O’Dwyer moved in with pocket fives, Teska looked him up holding T8cc, and an eight on the flop brought O’Dwyer’s reign of terror to an end.
The win was only Teska’s second of his career, after winning a 2009 event in the Bellagio for $26,095. His previous best performance came in 2011 when he finished fourth in the World Poker Tour (WPT) Championship for $371,665.
O’Dwyer will be disappointed to have come so close, but he’s played in enough of these things to accept when a $1.3m defeat is a win. O’Dwyer has now won close to $6m in live tournament earnings in 2018, a million more than he has ever won before. His combined all-time live tournament haul of $26,280,416 takes him above Phil Ivey in the All-Time Live Tournament Rankings where he is now ranked #8.
We may be in the midst of humanity’s sixth great extinction, but one species that doesn’t seem ready to perish quite yet are poker’s high rollers, and who would have thought that when the likes of O’Dwyer began playing $25k events with the frequency of $1k events just a few short years ago.
Here are the final table results.
Final Table Results
1. Roger Teska – $2,000,000
2. Steve O’Dwyer – $1,300,000
3. Charles La Boissoniere – $1,000,000
4. Paul Tedeschi – $700,000
5. Andras Nemeth – $550,000
6. Ben Tollerene – $450,000
7. Rainer Kempe – $350,000
8. Niall Farrell – $300,000
9. Joao Vieira – $250,000