Tag: ivan leow

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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.


 

 
 
 
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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.
 

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.

In the summer, the World Series of Poker (WSOP) held the $1m buy-in Big One for One Drop. Locksmiths, coffin makers and freight drivers talked about the ridiculousness of the situation over a heart-attack inducing fry up.
“A million bucks!” Exclaimed the Locksmith.
“Can you believe it!” Said the Coffin Maker.
“Who are these people?” Asked the freight driver.
Who would have thought the world of high stakes poker would have grown to such an absurd height. As people floated on inflatable turtles, holding strawberry daiquiris, shades protecting eyeballs from the glint of the Parker probe, people played poker for a million bucks.
Well, guess what?
It’s not as isolated an occurrence as the locksmiths, coffin makers and freight drivers may think.
Take Ivan Leow, as a shining example.

Ivan Leow

A few weeks ago, Leow competed in every event the Triton Poker Series, Jeju threw at him, making three final tables, and winning the HKD 500,000 (USD 64,000) Short-Deck, Ante-Only event for a clean one million bucks.
Wow!
What an outstanding achievement.
Until you learn that Leow bubbled the HKD 2,000,000 (USD 255,000) buy-in, No-Limit Hold’em Main Event after firing four bullets. And, if you do the math, you rapidly learn that Leow paid a million bucks to play in that event.
Nah.
In the high stakes universe, people like Leow pass one million buck pots around as frequently as a handshake and a hug at the death of a fashionable friend. The bug bites. You have to keep on playing.
“Where is the next game?”
The answer is Russia.

Triton Poker Joins Forces With partypoker

For the second time this year, Triton Poker joined forces with partypoker LIVE, to put on a stunning display of high stakes elbow bending. The first dalliance produced nothing more than heavy petting when partypoker sponsored the Russian live stream during the Triton Poker Series in Montenegro.
This time there were bras, knickers and underpants hanging off purple velvet lampshades.
partypoker LIVE moved into the Sochi Casino & Resort in Russia to launch another mission on their megalomaniacal MILLIONS marathon, and Triton Poker’s head was lying on their belly.
There would be two Triton branded events.
The first, an R 3,000,000 (USD 44,000) buy-in Triton High Roller 47 entrants, primarily colonised by German, Russian and Asian players, saw Aymon Hata win his first career title after beating the Russian star Vladimir Troyanovskiy, heads-up, to bank the R 48,000,000 (USD 755,384) first prize.
Aymon Hata

ITM Results

1. Aymon Hata – R 48,000,000 (USD 756,000)
2. Vladimir Troyanovskiy – R 31,860,000 (USD 501,795)
3. Konstantin Uspenskii – R 22,500,000 (USD 354,375)
4. Patrik Antonius – R 15,000,000 (USD 236,250)
5. Paul Phua – R 10,500,000 (USD 165,375)
6. Philipp Gruissem – R 17,500,000 (USD 118,125)
Imagine competing in a USD 44,000 tournament with unlimited re-entries and finishing seventh. Well, that’s what happened to Ivan Leow, a week shy of also bubbling that HKD 2m buy-in event in Jeju.
Lesser men would have ripped the Pirelli calendar off the office wall, and ran to the hills.
Not this man.

Ivan Leow Wins The Triton Poker Super High Roller in Russia

Day 1 of the R 6,000,000 (USD 87,000) buy-in event attracted 14 entrants. The former Triton Poker Series Montenegro Main Event winner, Manig Loeser, led the way.
Late registration and the unlimited re-entry stipulation saw the attendance swell to 29 entrants (20 unique, and 9 re-entries), and one man who took full advantage of both of these elements was Leow.
The Malaysian re-entered on Day 2 after failing to place a chip into a plastic bag at the end of the first day of action. Leow blazed through his early work, doubling through Phil Ivey 77>AQo, and sending Philipp Gruissem to the cash desk A9o>A7s.
However, by the time we reached the final two tables, Leow was sitting 9/16 with plenty of work to do.
As the money bubble approached, Leow must have been wondering if he was going to be blowing them for the third time in a matter of weeks, especially when Niall Farrell’s pocket treys cracked the Malaysian’s pocket nines, and Ivey gained revenge doubling through Leow A8s>AQs after finding more diamonds than a South African miner.
But here’s the thing with Leow.
He plays a lot of hands.
A lot of hands.
And, now and then, he turns up with the rockets.
Ivey picked up A6o.
Timothy Adams found AQo.
The money went in three-way, Leow’s AA held, Ivey and Adams were out, and he moved into the final table with the chip lead.

Final Table Chip Counts

1. Ivan Leow – 1,934,000
2. Dietrich Fast – 1,516,000
3. Manig Loeser – 1,474,000
4. Niall Farrell – 643,000
5. Abraham Passet – 639,000
6. Wai Leong Chan – 584,000
7. Paul Phua – 285,000
8. Wai Kin Yong – 173,000
Leow expanded his lead, sending the Triton founder, Richard Yong, back to his suite when A4o beat Q9o. Then Leow eliminated his chief rival, Deitrich Fast on the bubble after the money went in on the turn with Leow holding KQcc, and Fast holding 9c9s on 8c3c2hQd.
The German extermination continued as Leow sent the Day 1 chip leader Manig Loeser packing in fourth when he went for it holding the middle pin and the flush draw only for Leow to be holding top pair and the nut flush draw.
Leow wasn’t done firing his weapons of mass destruction.
Wai Leong Chan was the next player to feel his wrath, this time under fortuitous circumstances when the pair got it in on the turn with Chan holding two pairs for the superior hand, only for Leow to river a stronger two pairs.
Chan’s elimination set up a heads-up encounter with Abraham Passet, but by this time Leow had built a significant stack on the dead bodies of Passet’s countrymen.
Leow had the higher ground.
Passet didn’t stand a chance.
The final hand saw the pair limp into a pot with Leow holding J5o, and Passet holding 62hh. The dealer burned and turned Jh4h4d; the couple got it in, and the two pair hand of Leow granted him the third win and second seven-figure score of his career – all five arriving in an outstanding 2018.
“Another million bucks, can you believe it!” said the Locksmith.
“I heard he bashed the Germans around like a kid playing with his toy soldiers!” Said the Coffin Maker.
“Who are these people?” Asked the freight driver.

ITM Results

1. Ivan Leow – R 72,000,000 (USD 1,134,000)
2. Abraham Passet – R 47,040,000 (USD 740,880)
3. Wai Leong Chan – R 30,000,000 (USD 472,500)
4. Manig Loeser – R 8,000,000 (USD 283,500)