If you’ve been following the coverage of the partypoker MILLIONS Super High Roller Series in Sochi, Russia, you may have noticed the name of ‘Jason Koon’ has been sorely lacking in the headlines.
Knowing Koon’s love for the game, one doubts he’s flown to Sochi to spend most of his time on the piste. So, the other alternative is that, so far, Koon’s Sochi experience has been as pleasant as sepsis.
All that can change if Lady Luck walks you through the minefields of an $8.5m (and rising) prizepool.
Nobody knows that more than Koon – the big man, for the big occasion.
The $250,000 buy-in Super High Roller Bowl (SHRB) Russia, the cherry on top of the partypoker MILLIONS Super High Roller Series in Sochi, attracted 34 entrants on Day 1.
Even without late registration remaining open for another full level on Day 2, SHRB Russia has dwarfed the field sizes of SHRB London (12) and SHRB Australia (16), held in 2019 & 2020 respectively. Of the other non-American SHRB events, SHRB Bahamas (51) in 2019 and SHRB China (75) in 2018 remain out of reach unless the crazy get a whole lot crazier.
Three former SHRB winners remain in the field, and two of them amongst the brands most recent Cheshire cats. Cary Katz took down the 2019 SHRB London for $2.6m, and Timothy Adams won SHRB Australia for $1.4m in February. Christoph Vogelsang is the third former winner. The German star won the 2017 SHRB in Aria for $6m.
Here are the main highlights.
The Main Highlights
Nick Petrangelo fell into a $500,000 hole when his pocket kings failed to hold when all-in versus the AK of Timothy Adams. An ace on the river making an exit, even more, excruciating for Petrangelo.
Adrian Mateos joined Petrangelo in the cash desk’s ‘re-entry’ column when his AhJh felt like a mussel against the oyster-like pocket aces of Alexey Rybin.
Kahle Burns became the third player to lose his stack. Artur Martirosyan played the role of vanquisher holding pocket sevens on 6h5s4c9d, with Burns holding Kd6s. The Russian put the Australian all-in on the turn, and the call came. The Qd on the river confirmed Burns’ fate. If he wanted to win this thing, it would cost him another $250,000.
Then a cooler sent the leader of the All-Time Money list to his hotel room knowing he would have to dip back into his bank account to find another $250,000. Bryn Kenney got it all-in pre-flop with pocket aces versus the pocket queens of Paul Phua. The board ran out Jh8d7d9cTd to hand Phua a straight – good enough for second in chips.
Chip Counts
- Jason Koon – 745,000
- Paul Phua – 690,000
- Adrian Mateos – 550,000
- Stephen Chidwick – 550,000
- Ben Heath – 545,000
- Mikita Badziakouski – 465,000
- Timothy Adams – 420,000
- Phil Ivey – 390,000
- Artur Martirosyan – 386,000
- Ivan Leow – 380,000