by Frank Op de Woerd
The calm before the storm, there were just two key events on the WPT World Online Championship schedule on Thursday. But with the unique format of Mix-Max ánd progressive knockout, they were events not to glance over. A ton of people joined in on the action, playing levels in the 8-max and 6-max format. With the bounty on their head increasing with every bust-out, some unique strategic adjustments needed to be made. Let’s see who did well!
Main: $530 WPT Mix-Max Knockout ($100K GTD)
The $530 buy-in Mix-Max event attracted 260 entries, easily enough to cover the $100,000 guarantee. Every player contributed $250 to the regular prize pool with the other $250 going on their head as a bounty.
The event started eight-handed for the first sixteen levels. When Level 17 got underway, the format switched to a six-max, forcing all players to adjust.
Players like Vitor Dzivielevski, Scott Margereson, Lars Kamphues, Simon Mattsson, and Steven van Zadelhoff had long busted when the switch took place, though they all had the chance to buy back in once.
With thirty players finishing in the money, Vitor Abreu bubbled when he busted in 31st place. The Portuguese player, playing from Malta, still took $187.50 in bounties to soften the pain.
Igor Kurganov
Julien Perouse, Ben Warrington, and Paul Höfer were the first to hit the virtual rail, followed by Niklas Åstedt. By the time the final table came in sight, Jonathan Proudfoot ($653.90 + $687/50), Igor Kurganov (16th, $752.05 + $531.25), and Bertil Andreas Samuelsson (12th, $1,117.80 + $375) had already said their goodbyes.
Well-known Belarusian player Aliaksei Boika was the highest placed player not to earn a bounty. He made it all the way to fourth place ($5,76278) without knocking out a single player.
Diego Falcone came out on top, taking the biggest slice of both the regular prize pool and the bounty prize pool pie. With $11,356 earned for finishing first plus $15,457 for busting numerous players, he collected $26,813 from the event. Heads-up he beat Portuguese player (but playing from the Netherlands) Manuel Soares Ruivo. Ruivo hadn’t been as busy knocking out people and only received $671.87 in bounties to go along with his $11,343 cash for second place.
Mini: $109 WPT Mix-Max Knockout ($50K GTD)
No fewer than 802 entries were collected in the $109 Mix-Max Knockout, crushing the $50,000 guarantee put on the event. Like the $530 buy-in edition, the $109 Mix-Max played as an eight-max for the first sixteen levels before switching to six-max from the seventeenth level onwards.
Former poker coach Felipe Boianovsky bubbled the event in 109th place. He still came close to getting the buy-in back, having collected $93.75 in bounties.
Zachary “Zackattak13” Korik (83rd, $115.48 + $171.87), James Higgins (57th, $131.52 + $25), Lars Kamphues ($135.53 + $168.75), and Charlie Combes (11th, $509.27 + $207.81) all made a deep run but came up short when it came to the big money places.
Marc-André Ladouceur came out on top, adding another title to his extensive honors list. Ladouceur earned $5,390 from the regular prize pool for his first place, plus $8,156 in bounties for a combined score of $13,546.
Marc-Andre Ladouceur
The French Canadian had some fierce competition vying for the title. Heads-up, he beat Andreas Näsmann from Finland, who had to settle for $5,384.22 plus $1,324.99. Joonas Pöyry, also from Finland, placed third for $4,047 plus $335.
Leaderboard update
Kristen Bicknell still leads the player of the Championship leaderboard with 157.94 points. Lars Kampghues is nearing, though, having collected 130.62 points so far. There’s still plenty of room for a shakeup, any deep run can alter the standings considerably. Nick Petrangelo (128.77) sits in third place before Gavin Cochrane (4th, 127.87) and Sam Grafton (5th, 122.66).
There’s $50,000 set aside for the winner of the leaderboard. There’s a substantial drop off to second place who’ll get $10,000.
The Rising Star leaderboard, the ranking for events with a buy-in of under $300, is still headed by Boris Angelov. He’s leading with 181.66 points, well ahead of Mats Ullereng, who collected 159.01 points. Radjendernath Chigharoe, who lead the leaderboard for some time, dropped down to the third place with 141.90 points.
The winner will get an additional $10,000, next to his or her tournament earnings. Second-place gets $6,000, third gets $3,500.
Daily Schedule
Tranquillity before the party, a time to breathe before the next plunge. While Thursday was a relatively easy-going day when it came to the WPT World Online Championship, the weekend is upon us now, and the schedule is racking up to its old strengths.
After the successful PLO8, PLO, 8-Max, and 6-Max weeks, it’s time for Knockout week! That means there’s a bounty on your head in all the significant events you register, like the Knockout Championship this weekend. Like in the old west, people come gunning for you – especially when you have a big reward displaying. If you’re short, you can bet your tournament life on it that players will look you up light. The bounty is sometimes more significant than the regular payout, so there’s all the incentive to get frisky.
Bounty events traditionally take just a single day to complete. But for the WPT World Online Championship, the structures are so good that trying to finish it in a single day, would equal it to become an iron man contest. Instead, all the major events are multi-day affairs, and the progressive knockout tournaments are no exception.
In some events, like this weekend’s Knockout Championship, you can even play more than just a single starting day. That brings to question what happens when you qualify for Day 2 more than once with different bounties. Like the traditional multi-day events, the biggest stack moves forward. The same goes for the bounty; the biggest one moves forward. Suppose you have more chips after Day 1a but a bigger bounty when you qualified for Day 2 on Day 1b, the biggest of both moves forward. In other words, you can take your chips from one day and your bounty from the other. If you qualify twice, the smaller of your two bounties flows back to the regular prize pool.
As you have come to expect, there’s a big slate of qualifiers and feeders available for this weekend’s big events. So get ready for another thrilling ride as the Knockout week culminates in the Knockout Championship!
