By Lisa Yiasemides
Yesterday two new trophy winners made themselves known as the $530 6-Max Turbo and $55 Mini 6-Max Turbo both took place. The two one-day events were the only tournaments to play to a winner but the $2,100 PLO Knockout and $215 Mini PLO Knockout also got out of the starting blocks on a Saturday that has been a little quieter than usual for this series. That is because for the next few days, the focus will be firmly set on the WPTDeepStacks event.
The final flagship event completes the trio of WPT branded tournaments on offer this series and with a $3,000,000 guarantee for a $1,050 event, some players will walk away with some serious life-changing money. Day 2 is just around the corner, taking place at 8 pm on Tuesday, May 26. There are still several starting flights between now and then, including three today so don’t worry, you haven’t missed your chance to play.
For those who want a piece of the action but the WPTDS buy-in is a little out of their price range, there is the $109 Mini WPTDS, which has a cool $1,000,000 guarantee of its own, and which also has three Day 1 options today.
6-Max Turbo – $530
There was another win for Brazil last night, as Pablo Brito Silva became the latest player to find success and a WPT trophy this festival. Silva has had an incredible 2020, first taking down the $10,300 No Limit Hold’em partypoker LIVE MILLIONS South America Main Event, then winning the first Irish Open Main Event held online – also held on partypoker. They say things come in threes and his success supports that theory as Silva can now add a WPT Online title to his resume as well as the silverware to add to his growing collection.
Pablo Brito Silva
Martin Gaudreault-Remillard came closest to toppling him. The WPTDS Montreal champion made it as far as heads up but that signaled the end of his deep run. He outlasted Fabio Sperling, who adds another final table result to his achievements this series, after he took down the WPT500 event less than two weeks ago.
The event collected $10,000 more than its guarantee and Ankush Mandavia, Arnaud Enselme and Linus Thor all bagged themselves a final table seat, to take home a decent chunk of the prize pool. Eric Wasserson (7th), $3,200 Second Chance winner Phillip Mighall (13th), Ivan Luca (14th), Stewart Kirby (21st) and Christopher Oliver (23rd) also saw a return on their investment, reaching the money stages of the competition out of the 170-strong field.
Mini 6-Max Turbo – $55
A total of 802 entries meant the pot collected double the guarantee with $40,100 to play for in the Mini event. Great Britain’s Alastair Smith took the second title and trophy of the night after coming out on top following a heads-up clash with Finland’s Joel Holmberg.
David Greene, Breno Andrade, Garry Stevens Smith and Ilya Yakunin also had very impressive runs. Despite its turbo format, the tournament took a lengthy five hours to reach its conclusion, with no deals agreed upon.
Concludes tonight
PLO Knockout – $2,100
The 6-Max events have been extremely popular, as have the PLO and Knockout tournaments on offer this festival, so the PLO Knockout was always going to appeal. The prize pool collected $208,000 via the 104 entries and by the end of Level 20, that field had been reduced all the way to five.
Norway’s Benjamin Voreland leads the pack, with 1,366,932 bagged – almost double that of second chip leader Sam Higgs who returns with 780,664. All five players have locked up at least $7,590 but there is still plenty more at stake with $23,691 up top. Voreland is not only in the best position to challenge for first place, he has already extracted an impressive $13,934 in bounties.
Connor Drinan (386,637), Joni Jouhkimainen (371,260) and Niki Juhani Nurmisto (214,507) are the shorter stacks still in play, while Jason Mercier (6th) made his second appearance in two days and nabbed the last spot at the table, busting just before the end of play for $5,151 plus $2,625 in bounties. Team partypoker Patrick Leonard (7th), had a deep run too, walking away with $3,380 and bounties worth $1,375.
Mini PLO Knockout – $215
Running at the same time was the Mini event and it attracted 320 players to the virtual felt, putting $64,000 into the pot. There were some big names left standing among the 12 survivors. Niklas Åstedt (1,828,079) and Javier Zarco (1,795,776) bagged the top two stacks. Li Zhang (1,200,678) also bagged over a milly, with Sebastian Berg Sandin (811,690) and Danil Karavaev (767,644) making up the rest of the top five.
The final 12 have won at least $581, with a top prize of $5,283 on the cards. That doesn’t take into account those all-important bounties though, which at the moment have exceeded the four-figure mark for the top four stacks and will only go up from here.
Continues tonight
WPTDeepStacks – $1,050
So far 1,695 registrations have been logged in the WPTDS and 5,313 in the Mini WPTDS.
Another 175 players got stuck into the Day 1f event and 20 qualified for Day 2. Mike Watson (732,770) built a resounding chip lead at the end of 18 levels. Roger Tondeur (499,246) and Andrey Osipov (451,679) finished second and third in the counts. Preben Stokkan, Koray Aldemir, Adrian Mateos, and Team partypoker Dzmitry Urbanovich and Jamie Staples all progressed too.
Dzmitry Urbanovich
176 entries were logged in Day 1g and Joao Vieira took the top spot with 407,492 chips acquired by the end. Pierre Paul Paulin (397,246) and Adam Hari (391,559) fared extremely well too, finishing just behind Vieira, while Connor Drinan, Lucas Reeves, Vadim Shlez and Steven Van Zadelhoff were some of the notables among the 23 players coming back for Day 2.
Mini WPTDeepStacks – $109
Over in the Mini Day 1f, Maximilian Klostermeier (515,686), Adi Rajkovic (514,848), Ivan Poroliev (441,199), Felipe Lobato (434,909) and Alan Dillon (422,342) were the flight’s biggest success stories. They will be joined by Gediminas Uselis who had an incredible run, bagging 1,183,884. Eduard Peregi (744,961), Rodrigo Semeghini (549,107), Alexandre Reard (537,640) and Dominykas Mikolaitis (518,290) completed the top five stacks from Day 1g.
Alexandre Reard
On today’s schedule
Alongside the 2 pm, 5 pm and 8 pm starting flights in the WPTDS and Mini WPTDS, there is also a $530 8-Max Turbo Bounty and a $55 Mini 8-Max Turbo Bounty to look forward to at 9 pm.
Leaderboard
Please note this takes into account results up to and including May 22
Once again there is no change in the Leaderboard standings, with Viktor Ustimov, Rui Ferreira, Samuel Vousden, Sam Greenwood and Pascal Hartmann remaining in the top five spots.
*All times stated are BST