The 25th edition of the Master Classics of Poker is drawing to a close, with the €4,250 Main Event final table slated to be played today at 3 pm local time at Holland Casino Amsterdam. Finland’s Juha Helppi is leading the nine finalists after building a solid stack of 2,360,000 over the past several days.
The MCOP, the massive Dutch annual poker festival, is celebrating its 25th anniversary this year. And Holland Casino, the Netherlands’ exclusive casino operator, is celebrating its 40th anniversary. As part of the festivities, MCOP organizers added several special events to the festival’s schedule, with the €25,000 Super High Roller being one of those. German poker pro Ole Schemion topped the event’s field a few days ago to scoop €160,875 for his efforts.
It will be an international Main Event final table, with three Dutch, two Finnish, one Russian, one Romanian, one German, and one UK player comprising the final nine.
Kicking off on November 18, the event took precisely a week to set its official nine-handed final table. Overall, the €4,250 buy-in tournament attracted 356 entries, up significantly from last year when a total of 291 entries paid the fee to enter the event. This year, a €1,409,760 prize pool will be split among the top 53 finishers.
The money bubble burst on Wednesday, or Day 2 on the event’s schedule. Foeke Deinum was the first player to leave the tournament with a payout. Day 3 was played yesterday, starting with 53 players and ending with the final nine bagging and tagging to return at the host venue this afternoon and to contend for victor’s share of the prize pool.
As mentioned above, Finland’s Juha Helppi will begin the final table as the chip leader. The Finn has secured himself with a comfortable advantage over his opponents but nothing is certain in poker so it is yet to be seen whether he would manage to maintain his momentum.
Helppi is among Finland’s most profitable players with live tournament winnings of $6.5 million and in-the-money finishes in some of the world’s major poker tournaments.
UK’s Charlie Carrel’s participation in the final table also deserves to be noted. The young Englishman cashed in four MCOP events during this year’s edition of the festival, making two high roller final tables within a several-day span. Making it to the Main Event’s final table will secure the player with a minimum payout of €27,349.
Last year’s MCOP Main Event champion, Jussi Nevanlinna, failed to grab a back-to-back title. The player was eliminated in 35th place this year, scooping a payout of €9,586.
