Cary Katz had a terrific run at Aria Resort & Casino late last week as he cashed in all three high roller tournaments the gambling venue featured to celebrate the end of the year and the arrival of the new one. Katz concluded an exciting 2016 during which a number of higher buy-in events took place at the popular Las Vegas casino as the winner of the last such event. The player topped the field of the $100,000 Super High Roller early on Saturday to scoop $733,000 in prize money.
The single-day turbo tournament kicked off on December 30. It featured an initial field of 10 entries. Players like Erik Seidel, Stephen Chidwick, and Ali Fazeli were among those to enter the event, just as expected. Registration was closed with the end of Level 10. The tournament was entered by a total of 14 entries, which meant that only the top 2 positions would get paid. If one more player had registered for the event, there would have been payouts for three players instead. The overall prize pool amounted to $1,372,000.
The bubble burst with Chidwick’s elimination in 3rd place. Katz faced Justin Bonomo heads-up. The two players battled it out for almost an hour before they stopped the clock to negotiate a deal. One was reached and they split the prize pool as follows – being the chip leader at the time, Katz collected a first-place prize of $733,000 and the tournament trophy. Bonomo settled for the runner-up finish and $639,000 in prize money, not a bad payout for a single day of poker action.
As mentioned above, there were three high roller events to take place at Aria last week and Katz cashed in all of them, scooping almost a million from those. Prior to his victory, he finished 3rd in the $25,000 Aria High Roller 48 for $93,600, and 2nd in the $25,000 Aria High Roller 49 for $155,520.
Following his most recent achievements, Katz now sports live tournament winnings of more than $10.3 million. It is interesting to note that the player finished 5th in the 2016 edition of the WSOP The Big One for ONE DROP event. Last year, the event took place separately from the summer WSOP festival and was held in Monte Carlo as part of The Monte Carlo One Drop Extravaganza. Katz received €1,750,000 for his participation in one of the world’s most expensive high roller events in poker’s history, if not the most expensive one.
