Canadian poker player Jeffrey Cormier conquered the $10,000 High-Roller + $300 6-Max Re-Entry at this year’s World Cup of Cards series. Cormier succeeded in topping a tough field of 39 players and left the final table with $160,000 in first-place prize money. The tournament was held at the Playground Poker Club in Montreal, Canada and initially attracted 26 players, with 13 re-entries joining them at the felt.
According to the schedule, the event was supposed to offer $400,000 in guaranteed prizes, but as this amount was not reached, the pool was adjusted so as to honor the top-five finishers. The $10,000 High-Roller tournament provoked interest on behalf of notable players the likes of Pascal Lefrancois, Samuel Chartier, and Jonathan Duhamel who earned a WSOP Main Event champion title back in 2010. However, none of these pros succeeded in making it to the final table.
Day 2 of the tournament commenced with a bunch of eliminations, with early exits from Lefrancois, Duhamel, and Philippe D’Auteuil, among several others. The unofficial final table was reduced to seven survivors and Kristen Bicknell, member of the partypoker Team Pro, was the first to bust out when she moved all in from the button position with a jack-five against Cormier’s aces. The six remaining players were all bent on maintaining their final-table position as only the first five places offered payouts. Bicknell’s elimination was followed by Ari Engel bursting the money bubble at 6th place which offered no cash reward whatsoever.
Five Survivors Battle for the Top Payout
Following the departure of Engel and Bicknell, the last five players commenced an intense battle for the top prize. Cormier lead the five-handed final table in chips so it did not take him long to crush compatriot Francois Billard, sending him to the fifth place for a prize of $30,000. The next player to bow out of the action was JK Kastner who surrendered his entire remaining stack with a hand of pocket tens. Unfortunately, Kastner’s tens proved worthless against Cormier’s pocket queens, so he was forced to settle for the fourth-place finish and collect a payout of $43,000.
The next player to suffer an elimination was David Ormsby but this time it was Jonathan Karamalikis from Australia who got the job done with his pocket aces. Ormsby’s attempts to bluff his opponent proved futile. He finished in third place to receive a hefty cut of the pool – $58,000. At this point, Karamalikis and Jeff Cormier started an intense heads-up battle, with both players having almost equal stacks of chips. This was soon to change as Cormier managed to prevail over his opponent in several hands to gain a 3 to 1 chip advantage.
In the very last hand of the tournament, Cormier was dealt [Ks][Kh]
pre-flop. The Canadian challenged his short-stacked opponent by opening the 40,000 big blind to 100,000 in chips. Karamalikis accepted the challenge and committed his stack with a shove for 1,045,00 while holding [Ac][8s]. The Canadian responded with a snap call. The [2s][10h][3c][Qs][4d]
board did nothing to improve Karamalikis’ situation and he was eliminated in second place for $97,000 in prize money. Meanwhile, Jeffrey Cormier earned the champion trophy and the top prize of $160,000, which is his biggest live tournament cash to date.
