High roller tournaments tend to attract more attention than regular poker events and this hardly surprises anyone. With enormous, sometimes even monstrous, amounts of money at stake, a player really needs to have quite a nerve to enter such tournaments. And the audacious are always the ones to be praised the most.
On Sunday, PokerStars provided world’s most renowned high rollers with an arena for a major poker clash that cost each of the entries a buy-in fee of $102,000. As part of this year’s edition of the World Championship of Online Poker, the most popular online poker room organized what has turned into the world’s largest buy-in online high roller tournament to have ever taken place since the term “online poker” evaded the everyday life of everyone interested.
As it was expected, Day 1 of the event went by as a pure spectacle. Big poker names entered it, re-entered it, and got busted by fellow big poker names. A total of 28 entries paid the $102,000 buy-in fee to become part of this year’s biggest online poker event. As a result, a prize pool of $2.8 million was accumulated and will be divided among the final three players.
The third-place finisher is set to collect $560,000; the runner-up will scoop a $840,000 share, and the winner will take home $1.4 million in prize money for topping the best of the best in the two-day titanic clash.
Day 1 of the WCOOP Super High Roller was concluded after 17 levels of play with six remaining players, with all of them known to be PokerStars regulars, and some of them being well-recognized on the live tournament scene, as well.
The six remaining participants are led by Salman “salfshb” Behbehani with 175,359 in chips. Here are are all survivors after the event’s opening day:
Salman “salfshb” Behbehani – 175,359
Isaac “philivey2694” Haxton – 168,345
Fedor “CrownUpGuy” Holz – 163,382
Mikita “fish2013” Badziakouski – 130,175
“bencb789” – 117,681
Igor “lechuckpoker” Kurganov – 85,058
Day 1 of the WCOOP Super High Roller did not lack in highlights and listing them all would take quite a long time. However, it could be said without doubt that Jason Mercier’s appearance and performance was widely anticipated within the poker community as the US poker pro announced last week that he would be broadcasting the event on Twitch.
Mercier showed his hole cards on the popular video streaming platform, understandably with a 15-minute delay. Twitch star Jason Somerville also took part in the broadcast, providing viewers with professional comments and entertaining them in the way only Somerville can do. However, Mercier could not make it to the final table as he was eliminated by Kurganov late on Sunday.
Play will resume today at 6:30 pm CET with the six remaining players who are to play down to a champion.
