With a buy-in fee of €50,000, the Super High Roller, an indispensable part of the schedule of almost all EPT poker festivals, is among those events that traditionally gather together some of the world’s best players. And the EPT Season 12 Prague €50,000 Super High Roller was no exception. The three-day event attracted a field of some well-known names to see poker pro Steve O’Dwyer emerge victorious and grab the title as well as the amount of €746,543 in prize money.
The Super High Roller drew a total of 50 entries, of whom 42 unique ones. They created a prize pool of €2,688,840 and the top eight finishers received a portion of the money, with payouts starting from €107,550.
Day 3 of the event saw eight players return to the tables at Hilton Hotel Prague to play down to the eventual champion. Eight-handed action started with Luuk Gieles from the Netherlands as the chip leader, holding a total of 2,556,000. O’Dwyer was third in chips at the beginning of the final table.
Poker pro John Juanda, originally from Indonesia but now residing in the US, was the first to go. The player was eliminated in 8th place by Austrian Thomas Muehloecker. His payout amounted to €107,550. Juanda was recently inducted into the WSOP Poker Hall of Fame.
Gieles was the next to leave the final table. The player, too, fell victim to Muehloecker to collect the amount of €137,140 for his 7th place in the prestigious tournament. Canadian Daniel Dvoress took 6th place in the Super High Roller, after he was busted by fellow countryman Sam Greenwood. Dvoress scooped €172,100 of the prize pool for his efforts.
Muehloecker was then eliminated in 5th place. The Austrian could not make it against Russian poker pro Igor Kurganov and collected a payout of €220,500 for his performance in the tournament. Poland’s Dzmitry Urbanovich was the next to leave the final table. His 4th place in the event secured him with a total of €285,000 of the prize pool.
A few hands later, Kurganov was busted out in 3rd place by O’Dwyer to receive a payout of €376,400. Thus, O’Dwyer had to face Greenwood heads-up. Two-handed play started with the soon-to-be-champion holding two times more chips than his opponent. Action kicked off on Hand #138 and it took 18 more hands of play for the winner to be determined.
On Hand #156, or the last one for the evening and the event as a whole, Greenwood raised to 300,000 and O’Dwyer three-bet to 900,000. Greenwood called and [Qd][Jc][4s] appeared on the flop. The two players checked and waited for the turn. The dealer tabled [6s] and O’Dwyer decided to check. Greenwood bet a total of 830,000 and his opponent called. The [5d] came on the river and O’Dwyer checked once again to see his opponent move all in.
O’Dwyer gave it a thought before calling. When he did it eventually, Greenwood tabled [10c][9s] for a bluff. O’Dwyer, on the other hand, tabled [Js][10d] and his pair was enough to secure him with the title and the first-place prize. As for Greenwood, he took home the amount of €643,607.
It seems that 2015 was O’Dwyer’s lucky year, as he has collected more than $4.8 million since its beginning. And apart from last night’s triumph, the player has won two more high roller events over the past eleven and a half months. In January, he topped the field of the PCA $100,000 Super High Roller 8-handed for a payout of $1,872,580. In October, O’Dwyer won the EPT Season 12 Malta €10,200 High Roller 8-Handed to collect the amount of €327,030.
After his victory last night, the player’s live tournament winnings now amount to more than $12 million.
