By Lisa Yiasemides
It was a massive night for poker last night with huge WPT events (and guarantees) on offer at partypoker.com. Three new winners made themselves known in the Big Game events, managing to beat extremely tough fields. Meanwhile, over in the Second Chance events, three tournaments saw their Day 1s play out and tonight they will all conclude.
Without a doubt though, all eyes will be focused on the 6-Max Championship, which will reach its conclusion later this evening. There are only seven players still in with a shot and we predict plenty of fireworks when they return to battle it out. Plus, the Mini and Micro events will also play to a winner.
$5,200 Big Game ($1M GTD)
The first of three trophies won last night, was presented to the winner of the Big Game. The final day was full of surprises with a great deal of shift in the chip counts.
First to bust was Elio Fox, and the American’s departure in 9th place was one of the biggest surprises of the night considering the pro (who resides in Mexico) had one of the healthiest stacks, good for third place at the start. His exit netted him $20,800 and it ensured the rest of the competition had secured themselves at least $4,200 more.
Next to leave was Oskar Prehm, who had started right at the bottom of the counts. He won $25,000 for 8th place. Following him to the rail was Alexandros Kolonias who finished precisely where he had started, in 7th place and claiming $32,500 for the result.
Jordan Drummond fell in 6th place and the partypoker Twitch Team member scored $42,000 in the process, leaving the top five decided. Andres Gonzalez De Agustin, Allan Berger and Dan Shak all fared extremely well. Shak, one of the most well-known players on the list did particularly well to make it to the six-figure paydays.
Joao Vieira
That left two and Joao Vieira and Espen Uhlen Jørstad were left to fight it out for the trophy and more than $50,000 difference in prize money. Vieira had done incredibly well to ladder this far after beginning second shortest at the start. He couldn’t quite go the full distance in the end, with Uhlen Jørstad coming out on top. The Norwegian takes the biggest share of the $1,000,000 prize pool as well as the title and trophy.
$530 Mini Big Game ($300K GTD)
It may have been the ‘Mini’ version but with a buy-in of $530 online, it would usually be considered a big event. The result, the field was littered with notables and last night 18 returned of the 617 total entries to play for as big a share of the $301,500 prize pool as they could manage.
Despite three tables in play, all had been decided by the time four and a half hours had passed. John Gonzalez (18th) and Andreas Klatt (17th) were first to go and they couldn’t improve on the $2,439 cash that was guaranteed coming into the final.
Nick Yunis (15th) was among those who made one ladder and added $3,071 to his bankroll as a result. Connor Drinan had yet another strong performance this series but couldn’t quite reach the final table and had to settle for $3,854 for placing 10th.
The final nine were decided and Boris Angelov (top of the Rising Star Leaderboard) was first out the door, bagging $4,637 for 9th place. Belgian pro Kenny Hallaert (8th, $5,495), Michel Dattani (7th, $6,745) and Ramon Kropmanns Da Silva (6th, $9,365) were next to depart.
Down to five and Sam Grafton busted next after reaching his third final table of the series (including one win in the Warm Up for $99,000). He won $12,889 and was the first player to hit a five-figure score. Swedish online poker legend Niklas Åstedt ($18,430) was out in 4th and it wasn’t long before Dániel Koloszár ($26,474) joined them at the rail after making it as far as third.
Dimitar Danchev
With two left, it was Lithuania versus Bulgaria. Ultimately the two players decided a deal was wise and with the bigger chip stack at the time, an ICM deal saw Dimitar Danchev take an extra $2,500 plus the title and trophy, leaving Matas Čikinas to finish as runner up. They take $48,107 and $45,652 respectively for their fantastic results.
$55 Micro Big Game ($100K GTD)
Just 64 of the original 1,970 entries were left by the time the claxon sounded to signify the start of the final day in the Micro event. It took a little longer for this one to play out, unsurprisingly, with five hours and 43 minutes of play logged before Bryan Paris came out on top. He banked $14,232 after doing a deal with runner-up Nilson Sales ($14,121). That deal was a lucrative one for the pair, securing them more than a quarter of the total $100,000 prize pool.
Event #04: $3,200 6-Max Championship ($3M GTD)
It’s Tuesday and that can only mean one thing: Another Championship event will conclude tonight! For those of you who haven’t noticed, it’s 6-Max Week this week and tonight’s final will see our second Mike Sexton WPT Champions Cup winner crowned.
Over the Day 1 starting flights 999 clambered to take part, (just one short of the 1,000 needed to hit that incredible $3 million guarantee). Yesterday, that number had been whittled down to 142 and following another nine and a half hours of Day 2 play, we have our final table line up at last.
And what a line up it is, with Artsiom Prostak (33,833,961) leading the pack with a 2:1 chip lead over Elior Sion (17,045,406). Both players are formidable for sure, with Prostak regularly running deep in this and the previous WPT/partypoker series. Sion won an internationally renowned Mix Game trophy for a cool seven-figure score back in 2017 and, with so much at stake, he will certainly do his best to challenge Prostak.
Elior Sion
The big names don’t end there, Patrice Brandt (15,922,894) sits in third and is closely followed by high stakes regular Nick Petrangelo (15,396,787) in fourth. There is a large gap between them and the remainder of the field, with Russian pro Arsenii Karmatckii (8,518,522) in fifth and American powerhouse Jake Schindler (7,153,210) in 6th. Jiachen Gong, who made the final table of last week’s 8-Max Championship, starts at the rear with only 2,029,220, just 4 big blinds.
Still, with $70,200 locked up and the potential to pick up more – anything up to $494,550 – Francisco Pinho Correia will still be envious of Gong’s situation after the Brazilian was the last player to bust outside of the final table. He picked up $54,000 for 8th place, the same that start-of-the-day chip leader Chris Hunichen banked for 9th place.
Not all of the 142 who progressed to Day 2 saw a return on their investment. Chance Kornuth (141st), Sergi Reixach (138th), Dominik Nitsche (131st) and Ryan Riess (122nd) all left empty-handed, as did bubble boy Pavlo Kolinkovskyi (121st).
That meant reigning WPT Germany Champion Christopher Pütz was able to sneak into the money in 121st, for $7,137. Mikita Badziakouski (103rd, $7,650), Alex Foxen (96th, $7,950), Jason Koon (86th, $8,100), Daniel Dvoress (85th, $8,100), Kahle Burns (80th, $8,250) and Pascal Hartmann (74th,$8,400) were just a handful of the big names that also returned a small profit.
Steve O’Dwyer (51st, $9,150), Sam Greenwood (49th, $9,150), David Peters (39th, $11,100), Adrian Mateos (32nd, $13,200), Tom Hall, (24th, $19,200), Sergio Aido (18th, $25,500) and Romanello brothers Antoni (16th, $25,500) and Francesco (11th, $37,500) fared better but fell short of making the elusive final.
Play resumes at 7pm (BST) tonight and will be broadcast in full on the partypoker Twitch channel. With state-of-the-art visuals, including cards-up coverage, there will be an hour delay on the stream. You can join hosts Matt Savage and Jamie Kerstetter who will provide analysis from start to finish, plus they will be joined by special guest Tony Dunst!
Blinds increase to 30 minutes long, worthy of a championship event, and will start back at Level 21: 250,000/500,000 (62,500 ante). Alongside the money and their name engraved on the Sexton Cup, the winner will also secure themselves a $15,000 ticket to the WPT Tournament of Champions presented by Baccarat Crystal, and a Hublot Classic Fusion Titanium watch, worth $7,500.
Event #04: $320 Mini 6-Max Championship ($1M GTD)
Overall, 2,979 entries had been counted in the Mini event. 416 of those made it through to Day 2 and by the end of the night last night, just 12 were still standing. Dylan Rowe (52,622,071) is the player to catch, but he will face stiff competition from the likes of Bruno Volkmann (45,024,455) and Thiago Azevedo Grigoletti (44,177,488) who will no doubt do all they can to challenge for that $121,980 top prize.
Former online No.1 Chris Moorman (30,920,011) starts in fourth and there is a decent gap between him and Allan Udeajah (23,665,511), Andrei Kriazhev(22,614,399) and Mauricio Farias (21,595,398) in fifth, sixth and seventh places.
WPT500 Online winner Fabio Sperling (19,650,030), Matthias De Meulder (12,414,741) Luis Gustavo Fontes Ribeiro (10,913,546), Danilo Costa Gomes (7,470,161) and Sébastien Proulx (6,912,189) may be short but they have notched up at least $7,970 for making it this far.
Just eight players needed to go before the bubble burst and Joseph Kuether (409th) was the last to leave without a penny. Gustavo Mastelotto (408th) did just enough to make the $800 min-cash, while Mike Watson (97th, $1,600), Jeff Gross (74th, $1,800) and Richard Dubini (57th, $2,000) and fell by the wayside. Scott Margereson ($2,300) won’t be winning his second WPT title either after he busted in 45th place.
As in the Main, play resumes at Level 21: 250,000/500,000 (62,500 ante), with each level lasting 20 minutes.
Event #04: $33 Micro 6-Max Championship ($300K GTD)
A huge 7,524 registrations were logged in the Micro event, with 985 advancing to Day 2. The clock was paused at the end of Level 20, by which time 39 were still in contention. It may be the smallest buy-in of the three but there is still a very nice $35,859 prize for first place. An incredible bankroll spinner for whoever manages to go the distance. At least $525 has been locked up for 39th place.
Just five players came back only to leave with nothing and Nazar Symotiuk’s exit in 981st allowed Felipe Buitrago to take $87 for the min-cash. The bustouts came thick and fast from that point and benefitting the most was Michal Krůta. The Czech returns with 52,548,691 and is trailed by Craig Swatton (45,230,744) in second, with Marc Schembri (40,582,255), Daniel Camacho (36,398,764) and Carlos Andres Herrera (32,680,986) all bagging a top-five stack.
$1,575 6-Max Second Chance PKO ($250K GTD)
Three more final tables will play out tonight and all of them are progressive knock out tournaments. The most expensive to enter was the $1,575 Main and there were big names spotted throughout the player list.
A total of 22 15-minute levels were played and by the end, after more than six hours of play time, there were 12 still in the running. Arlem De Souza Lisboa Arlem has nabbed pole position ahead of the final, with 2,368,168 chips and $4,921 in bounties already in the bag. Arnaud Enselme (2,276,341) is hot on his heals and has also banked some decent bounty value, with $3,304 secured.
Stefan Huber (2,164,052 and $4,910 bounties), Pablo Lopez Soriano (1,948,955 and $4,031 bounties) and Istvan Habencius (1341,731 and $2,625 bounties) also finished well, doing enough to make the top five.
A $2,548 slice of the main prize pool is already guaranteed for those returning but $22,916 is available for whoever wins it, plus thousands of dollars of bounty value on top of that. Blinds start back at 15,000/30,000 (3,750 ante) and will increase to 20 minutes long.
$162 Mini 6-Max Second Chance ($100K GTD)
Pascal Hartmann leads when 49 return to fight it out for that $7,019 top prize (plus bounties) later today. Hartmann,who won a WPT Onlinen High Roller event in May, chipped up to 4,770,821 by the end, significantly ahead of Caio Pessagno (3,102,152). The Austrian also added eight bounties ($847) to his wallet, compared to the Brazilian’s seven ($667).
Coincidentally another Austrian and Brazilian took third and fourth spots with Stefan Raschbauer (2,942,377) and Jhony Fonseca (2,836,614) starting ahead of Peter Boruta (2,753,065) in fifth. They come back to play blind levels of 15,000/30,000 (3,750 ante), with each lasting 15 minutes.
$16.50 Micro 6-Max Second Chance ($30K GTD)
The final tournament on last night’s menu was the Micro edition. 1,462 entries and re-entries were taken, and they were reduced to 98 by the end of Level 22. Maksim Peshnenko (4,768,890), Dmitrii Sibirin (3,957,288), James Rodgers (3,579,684), Theodoros Theodoridis (3,418,059) and Marcio Przedzmirski (3,392,242) had the most productive nights and make up the top five when play resumes at 7pm this evening.
It may be the smallest buy-in of all the tournaments covered today but the winner will walk away with $2,206 – an amount not to be sniffed at for a $16.50 buy-in, with the potential to win much more than that when the bounties are accounted for.
Player of the Championship Leaderboard
It’s all gotten very interesting at the top of the leaderboard, with Kristen Bicknell now sharing the lead with Lars Kamphues after the German added a fourth-place finish in the 8-Max Championship to his resume last week. Just a whisker behind them are 8-Max Champion Gavin Cochrane, and Sam Grafton, Bujtas Laszlo and Roberto Romanello have all accrued at least 100 points each.
Rising Star Leaderboard
Boris Angelov has moved ahead, taking the top spot and sending previous leader Radjendernath Chigharoe down into second.
The winner of the Rising Star leaderboard receives $10,000 – for the Player of the Championship, it is $50,000! – and you can read more about both by clicking here.
Tonight’s schedule
