By Lisa Yiasemides
Two more winners were crowned last night with Barry Hutter and Pablo Roman taking a title each in the 8-Max Bounty Hunter events, as the festival enters its final two days!
The inaugural WPT Online Series may be drawing to a close, but it isn’t too late to join Hutter and Roman in the winners’ circle, with some fantastic tournaments still to come. One particular highlight is the latest set of Weekender events that got underway last night with Day 1a kicking off in both the Main and the Mini buy-in comps. Day 1b plays tonight or for those who are short on time, there is a turbo option on offer tomorrow.
8-Max Bounty Hunter – $1,575
It took almost six hours for the winner to make themselves known and that player was American pro Barry Hutter. A WPT circuit regular, Hutter notched up his biggest recorded live cash in the WPT Five Diamond World Poker Classic Main Event in 2018 for $344,529. Hutter has also won a side event way back in 2011, but this is his first online title to add to his WPT achievements, and it came after he defeated Day 1 chip leader Joao Vieira heads up.
Barry Hutter
The final table was a star-studded affair that featured Scott Hill in third and two Team partypoker players – Kristen Bicknell (4th) and Ludovic Geilich (6th) – with Lauren Roberts (5th), Cassio Pisapia De Almeida Kiles (7th) and Kristoffer Johan Rautio (8th) also in attendance. Combined, they took the lion’s share of the $553,500 prize pool.
László Bujtás (9th) just missed out on a seat at the final table, with Brazilian pro Rafael Moraes (10th) close behind and Paul Dando (11th), Aleksejs Meless (12th), series regular Pascal Hartmann (13th) and Javier Fernandez Alonso (14th) completing the Day 2 line up.
Mini 8-Max Bounty Hunter – $162
There were still 56 players left in when play resumed and a lot at stake with a $227,550 prize pool that had been created through 1,517 entries. It took eight-and-a-half hours to reach a conclusion and at the end of it, Pablo Roman was the victor and takes his first WPT title with a massive $13,578 in bounties to add to the $15,110 prize for coming in first.
Marco Mucha came closest to dethroning him, taking the runner up spot, while Canadian pro Francois Billard wasn’t far behind, finishing in third. Evgeny Nekrasov (4th), John Bakalis (5th), Gustavo Restelatto Tochetto (6th), Robert Kacinski (7th) – the only top five stack from Day 1 who featured on the final table – plus Brunno Botteon De Albuquerque, all managed to find a seat among the top eight players.
Francois Billard
Other notable finishes were Day 1 chip leader Mladen Petrasevic (12th), Javier Gomez Zapatero (17th), Nikolay Ponomarev (18th) who won the $1,100 partypoker MILLIONS UK Mini event in January and Simon Deadman (23rd).
Continues tonight
Both Weekender tournaments were lapped up by players with almost half the prize pool collected in both and with only one of three starting flights in the books so far!
Weekender – $1,050
There were certainly big names aplenty in the 225-strong field. With around 10% of players surviving as the top 27 made it through to Day 2. Istvan Habencius bagged a resounding chip lead, with 803,449 chips in play at the end versus Matthias Lipp’s 537,662 that was good for second place. Dylan Linde (413,497), Mohsin Charania (325,077) and Artur Martirosian (324,474) ensured it was big names all round in the top five by building the rest of the top-five stacks.
Matthias Lipp
The well-known players didn’t end there with Nicolas Yunis (10th), Govert Metaal (12th), Niklas Åstedt (13th), Francois Billard (15th) and $25,500 Super High Roller winner Elio Fox (20th) all reaching the top 20. Lucas Reeves, partypoker’s Richard Dubini, Luc Greenwood and Lauren Roberts all progressed too, albeit with shorter stacks.
Mini Weekender – $109
Almost 1,000 players took part in the Mini instalment with 910 entries logged. That means there is already $91,000 in the prize pool of the $200,000 guaranteed.
Kipras Grubys (778,128), Jose Vieira (770,183), Jakub Michalak (709,950), Valentin Ghioca (601,593) and Christos Hadjisoteriou (572,830) have set the bar for the forthcoming flights, taking the biggest chip stacks through.
Dylan Linde (330,648) hopped in the Mini as well as chipping up in the Main and Lauren Roberts (312,115) made it two for two as well, progressing in both Weekender buy-in events. Teun Mulder (307,260 and Martin Jacobson (201,352) were among some of the other notables to qualify for round two.
Dylan Linde
On today’s schedule
The Weekender events continue tonight with the Main promising at least $500,000 will be handed out in prizes and the Mini guaranteeing a prize pool of at least $200,000.
The second of three starting flights kicks off at 6 pm* this evening and the final starting flight (1c) runs at 3:30 pm tomorrow, ahead of Day 2 which starts at 7 pm the same evening.
Leaderboard
Please note this takes into account results up to and including May 28
The top five spots on the leaderboard remain unchanged, with Viktor Ustimov almost 100 points clear of Rui Ferreira in second place. Pascal Hartmann, Jareth East and Samuel Vousden take up third to fifth places.
*All times stated are BST