By Lisa Yiasemides
Another huge day in the inaugural WPT Online Series over at partypoker.com with five more trophies and millions in prizemoney handed out!
Super High Roller – $25,500
The Super High Roller has garnered a lot of attention and last night the last eight players took a seat at the final table, ready to play down a winner. James Dempsey and Tony Dunst provided the coverage on the live stream as sparks flew from the start. It took just 2 hours and 16 minutes for the conclusion to play out and Charlie Carrel was the last player standing after eliminating some tough opposition.
Rewinding back to the start and Pauli Äyräs ($79,625) was first to go. He came to the final with the shortest stack and was unable to improve on his 8th place finish in the $10,300 High Roller the day before.
Christopher Hunichen ($98,000) was the last player to leave with less than six figures and was joined at the rail by Wiktor Malinowski ($122,500) who finished in 6th place. Arsenii Karmatckii and Ivan Galinec were the next casualties before Day 1 chip leader Elias Talvitie busted in third.
Charlie Carrel
The heads-up match between Almedin Imsirovic and Carrel lasted an hour with the chip lead changing hands several times. In the end it all came down to a cooler when Imsirovic flopped a full house only for Carrel’s trips to improve to a higher full house on the river, when the last of the chips went in. Imsirovic was left with fumes and couldn’t recover but the $428,000 prize for finishing runner up must have come as some consolation.
With no deal made, Carrel, a player who won over $2.3 million in live tournament earnings in the month of August 2019 alone, took the full $600,250 in prizemoney!
6-Max – $2,650
Eleven players came back yesterday to battle it out for their share of the $732,500 payout and Daniel Reijmer took the biggest chunk after defeating Ole Schemion heads up. Both players scored themselves a six-figure payday after outlasting Julien Perouse, Enrico Camosci, Mark Radoja and Rui Ferreira (the latter two repeatedly going deep in events this series). Pablo Brito Silva, Kfir Igvi and Nick Petrangelo all exited outside of the final table and took $19,412 home for their efforts.
Daniel Reijmer
Mini 6 – Max – $265
The lower buy-in equivalent ran at the same time and clocked up 1,446 registrations and almost doubled the guarantee with $361,500 in prizes to play for. A total of 56 players from the 1,446-field returned, and it took nearly seven hours for Aleksejs Ponakovs to win the trophy and $54,226.
Russian pro Denis Timofeev came closest to derailing him and is $38,557 better off after coming in second place, with Dean Gilbert, Stefan Jedlicka, Goran Mandic and Stoyan Obreshkov completing the final table line up. Ana Marquez (12th), Koray Aldemir (14th) and Joao Vieira (19th) were some of the big names who finished in the top twenty.
6-Max Hyper Knock-out – $530
The fastest tournaments in the calendar so far kicked off at 9 pm and within three hours the $125,500 prizepool had been distributed amongst the 30 places paid. Chad Eveslage went the distance, scoring the biggest prize and the largest bounty at $13,102 but Ihar Soika didn’t fair too badly either, taking second place and netting $6,821 in bounties, far exceeding that of their fellow competitors.
Chad Eveslage
Connor Drinan and Martin Mathis featured at the final table too, with Barry Hutter (14th) and Shawn Buchanan (16th) also running deep.
$55 Mini 6-Max Hyper Knock-out
The mini was running at the same time and 841 registrations were logged in another popular tournament that collected $42,050 for the prizepool. The one-day tournament took three-a-half-hours to complete and when the dust had settled, it was Agustin Amestoy who eliminated all the opposition, after he beat Vyacheslav Bondartsev heads up to leave himself the last player standing.
Aleksey Konoplev, Matthew Eardley, Ross Elliott and Dmitry Grigorev made up the final six with German pro Manig Loeser getting close to a final-table seat but unable to progress past 9th place.
Continues tonight
That brings us to the end of the round-up for all tournaments that concluded yesterday but the opening ‘Weekender’ events got off the mark for the first time and the two Ladies events took place too.
The Weekender – $1,050
During both weekends throughout this festival there will be a Weekender and a Mini Weekender taking place. Day 1a played last night, Day 1b is tonight and the third and final Day 1c (turbo) flight is tomorrow afternoon, before Day 2 commences at 7 pm that evening.
Many well-known names flocked to play the event and many of them bagged big when the clock was paused at the end of level 18. Manig Loeser (575,260), Ognyan Dimov (502,290), Tom Middleton (493,102), Claas Segebrecht (368,616) Sylvain Loosli (320,852) and Mohsin Charania (310,600) were all in the top-ten stacks. Fellow WPT champion Sonny Franco, Marvin Rettenmaier, Gianluca Speranza, Team partypoker Anatoly Filatov and Dylan Linde also survived to Day 2.
That was not the case for Dominik Nitsche and Team partypoker Dzmitry Urbanovich who fell in the last minutes, nor WPT title-holder Matas Cimbolas, Koray Aldemir or Team partypoker Richard Dubini, but there are two more chances to qualify for the second day so it may not be the last we’ve seen of them.
The Mini Weekender – $109
More than half of the $200,000 guarantee has been collected after 1,279 players registered for the first of three starting flights.
Ronni Ravnholt Borg (895,239) and Martynas Vitkauskas (796,231) finished first and second in the counts respectively, whilst Freek Scholten (718,436), Ioannis Angelou-Konstas (703,512) and Chris Da-Silva (702,222) all built stacks worthy of the top ten.
Ladies event – $530
There were 78 entries in the Ladies event and at the end of 18 levels, just 6 remain. Team partypoker Kristen Bicknell, Maria Lampropulos and Ema Zajmovic all took a stab but were unable to make it to the top 10 places that saw a return on their money.
Team partypoker Natalia Breviglieri ($2,000) reached 10th and teammate Louise Butler ($2,375) got a little further busting in 6th place just before the end of Day 1. The final six return tomorrow with Russia’s Daria Krashennikova (715,248) in front and Rebecca Lynn Pack (561,593) in second. Kelly Saxby, Catarina Ferreira, Laurie Tournier and Laura Burland are all still in with a shot of the $14,250 top prize.
Daira Krashennikova
Mini Ladies – $55
The Mini Ladies also concludes tonight with 14 returning to play for up to $2,200. Christina Barrett is the runaway chip leader with 1,310,515 – almost three times her closest rival, Elaine Rawn, who has 441,489! Laura Burland is still in contention too – the only player with a shot at taking down both events.
WPT500 & WPT Super 50 continue
The $530 WPT500 Championship event continued with Day 1f yesterday. 364 entries were counted, and Philipp Dietrich chipped up the most with 393,082 in the bag at the end of five hours of play. Brunno Botteon De Albuquerque (390,506) finished very close second, and Carlos Chadha Villamarin (386,541) and Bartlomiej Ryszard Machon (362,085) weren’t far behind either. Notably, Julien Martini (252,469) and Florian Duta (237,110) were also among the top ten.
Meanwhile, 899 players pulled up a chair in the WPT Super 50. Liliia Kasiuk (616,321) has one of the biggest stacks across all starting flight so far after finishing top of Day 1f out of the 116 who progressed. Adrian Kinecki (470,885) and Dimitri Gringenkov (406,139) also built well in the 18 levels of play.
Coming up tonight
As well as Day 1b of the Weekender and Mini Weekender and Day 1g of the WPT500 and WPT Super 50 coming up tonight, there is the $3,200 PLO ($300,000 guaranteed) and the $320 Mini PLO ($100,000 guaranteed) kicking off this evening at 7 pm*. Also playing are the $530 Turbo ($100,000 guaranteed) and the $55 Mini Turbo ($50,000 guaranteed), so plenty to get your teeth stuck into!
Leaderboard
Please note this takes into account results up to and including May 7
There is no change in first and second places as Paul Höfer sits at the top and Leo Fernandez is right behind him. Rui Ferreira’s continued deep runs have moved him into third, whilst Zach Clark (4th) has also overtaken Alberto Meran (5th) after he reached the final two tables of the $10,300 High Roller on Thursday.
*All times referred to are BST.