Canadian Sam Greenwood secured the champion title at the second EPT Season 13 Prague €25,500 Single-Day High Roller event. The Canadian left the table with a first-place prize amounting to €226,600. Greenwood emerged victorious after a fierce head-to-head battle with French opponent Jean-Noel Thorel which lasted for 90 minutes.
It was American poker professional Steve O’Dwyer who started the idea for the event after the success of the €25,500 Single-Day High Roller event which was held the previous day. O’Dwyer’s idea attracted the interest of several high roller regulars and the EPT staff decided to comply with their request.
The second edition of the single-day high roller event at the 2016 EPT Prague festival had a starting stack of 100,000 and gathered a field of 25 entries, with 19 players and 6 re-entries. The levels lasted thirty minutes each. A prize pool of €612,500 was to be divided among the top five spots with the first-place winner claiming €226,600 in addition to the high-roller champion title.
Some of the players who took part in the single-day event were Ben Heath, Paul Newey, Vladimir Troyanovskiy, Ole Schemion, Justin Bonomo, Timothy Adams and Isaac Haxton, among others.
Issac Haxton was the first one to get disqualified. British player Charlie Carrel, who previously secured the runner-up position at the 2016 EPT Season 13 Prague €50,000 Super High Roller event, became the bubble boy at the second single-day tournament.
Six players returned to the table after the dinner break. Carrel and Ali Reza Fatehi were the two with the shortest stacks. Fatehi doubled and Carrel shoved jack-nine suited into the ace-king of opponent Thorel only to miss out on yet another high roller score.
O’Dwyer’s king-jack suited was powerless against the ace-queen of Sam Greenwood. The Irish player had no other option but to settle for the fifth-place prize of €58,200. Fatehi soon followed in O’Dwyer’s footsteps as his ace-seven suited earned him the fourth place with a prize of €71,970. Again it was Thorel who did the work with his ace-king.
The game was down to three players, with the lead changing several times. Mikita Badziakouski from Belarus managed to rebound from almost zero but soon ran low on chips again. The Belarusian’s queen-jack suited was out-flopped by Greenwood’s jack-ten. Badziakouski finished third and walked away with €99,530.
Thorel started with a small lead and pulled away several times. Greenwood doubled up three times and claimed the champion title after calling Thorel’s shove on a king-high river with ten-three suited for second pair. It was Thorel’s bluff with four-deuce that sent him to the runner-up position with a prize of €156,200.
The staff of the EPT and O’Dwyer already confirmed yet another edition of the single-day high roller tournament is scheduled. The action will start today at 2 pm local time. Both the last EPT High Roller tournament and the €5,300 Main Event will play down to a winner from December 17 to December 19.
