It was one of those weekends when Aria Resort & Casino in Las Vegas hosted a handful of high roller tournaments that, just as usual, attracted representatives of poker’s elite. There were three such events to take place at the venue between February 2-4 – two of them featured a $25,000 buy-in and the third was a $50,000 Super High Roller one.
Brian Rast, a player who has proved his high roller mastery on numerous occasions, emerged as the biggest winner this weekend. He won namely the Super High Roller tournament for a first-place prize of $772,800.
Aria’s latest $50,000 buy-in tournament drew a field of 35 entries. Thus, by the time registration officially closed (at the beginning of Level 10 of play), there was a prize pool of $1.68 million up for grabs. And the top 5 finishers were to grab a portion of it.
Byron Kaverman, Timothy Adams, and Isaac Haxton eventually went out in sixth, fifth, and fourth places, respectively. They collected $100,800, $151,200, and $235,200 in that order for their efforts. Here it is important to note that all three have been regular participants in Aria’s High Roller tournaments and have won some of them in the past.
Justin Bonomo, another Aria frequenter, finished runner-up to Rast in the Super High Roller. His share of the prize pool amounted to $420,000.
Rast’s most recent victory was not his best live poker accomplishment; it was actually very far from being his best. In the summer of 2015, the player entered the casino’s history as the winner of the first-ever Super High Roller Bowl. Emerging as the victor in one of the largest buy-in events to have ever taken place, he scooped a massive first-place prize of $7.525 million. Over the years, Rast has also won three WSOP gold bracelets, two of which for taking down the $50,000 Poker Players Championship.
The player’s live tournament winnings currently amount to a little less than $19.9 million, including his most recent in-the-money finish.
As mentioned above, two other High Roller events took place at Aria late last week – both $25,000 buy-in ones. Cary Katz won the first one after chopping with Dan Smith. The former took a $322,640 and the latter collected $295,120. The second event was, too, concluded with a two-way deal between the last two men standing. Smith split what had remained of the prize pool with Scott Seiver. The former received $337,608 for his efforts and the later cashed $232,632.
