By Lisa Yiasemides
It has been a great ride for the last four weeks, but all good things must come to an end and tonight the finale of the inaugural WPT Online Series is upon us. Do not despair though, there are still four titles up for the taking and four huge prize pools to be distributed as the immensely popular Weekender and Mini Weekender, plus the Closer and Mini Closer are all on the menu for today!
Weekender – $1,050
The structure and format of the Weekender events have appealed to lots of players and with one starting flight still to play in the larger buy-in tournament, the prize pool is only $3,000 away from reaching its $500,000 guarantee.
Last night 272 hopefuls sat down to try their best to progress and 31 succeeded in doing so. Guillaume Nolet (618,742), Pedro Marques (581,652), Pascal Hartmann (428,242), George Wolff (426,248) and Enrico Camosci (378,082) built the biggest stacks and the well-known names didn’t end there.
$5,200 High Roller winner and Online Championship finalist Hartmann wasn’t the only title holder to survive as $530 6-Max Turbo winner Andrey Kotelnikov (370,304) finished sixth in the counts. Christopher Andler (354,810), Alexandre Reard (303,251), Adrian Mateos (221,936), Steven Van Zadelhoff (216,498), Jiachen Gong (181,143) and WPT Champions Club member Alex Foxen (177,821) are among those who will return for the final round tonight.
Pascal Hartmann
The prizes will be determined once registration has closed for Day 1c, but what we can say is that they will be big! Below is a list of the top 10 stacks from Days 1a and 1b combined with blind levels starting at 4,000-8,000/8,000 big blind ante when play resumes.
Mini Weekender – $109
The Mini event has been no less attractive to players with $206,900 collected for the prize pool so far and one more flight still to go. The $200,000 guarantee has already been beaten, and in just a few hours we will find out by how much.
A total of 1,139 players wanted in on the action and 124 made it through, with $55 Mini Turbo winner Alastair Smith topping the field with a massive 1,004,962 bagged at the end. No one else eclipsed the seven-figure mark but Frederico Lopes David came closest and chipped up to an impressive 823,654 for second place. Elliott Peterman (731,863), Pierre Bredin (703,631) and Mihail Surin (680,842) also fared well and took up the remainder of the top five spots.
Once again offering players an incredible opportunity to spin up a $109 investment, there were a host of notables in the running. WPT500 Champion Fabio Sperling goes through with 539,258 and he will be in good company with Robert Heidorn (336,310), David Hu (307,318), WPT Tournament of Champions winner Ole Schemion (291,116) and Team partypoker Josip Simunic (225,137) among the notables joining him.
Ole Schemion
Blind levels will also start at 4,000-8,000/8,000 big blind ante and below is a table of how the top ten stacks (as they currently stand) are looking.
On today’s schedule
Alongside the final turbo starting flights of the Weekender comps, which start at 3:30 pm* ahead of Day 2 at 7 pm, there will be a $1,050 Closer and $109 Mini Closer, which also get off the mark at 7 pm. The 10-minute blind structure, progressive knock out format and respective guarantees of $500,000 and $200,000 will ensure this incredible series goes out with a bang this evening!
Leaderboard
Please note this takes into account results up to and including May 29
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