Scottish poker pro Niall Farrell finally scooped a gold bracelet from a WSOP tournament after two near-misses in previous years. Last night, the player emerged victorious from a field of some of the world’s top-class high rollers to capture the gold piece and a first-place prize of €745,287. Here it also important to note that Farrel actually won the WSOP Europe €25,000 No-Limit Hold’em High Roller.
With last night’s victory, the Scotsman completed the triple crown of poker. In other words, he now proudly holds WSOP, WPT, and EPT titles. As mentioned above, Farrell was close to winning a gold bracelet on two other occasions – back in 2013 and in 2016. However, he finished runner-up both times.
The title could not evade him last night, despite the tough field the Scottish player was part of, including a couple of fierce Germans. Over the past year, we have somewhat grown accustomed to see German poker pros top the fields of most high roller tournaments. It can be said that Farrell broke their lucky streak last night. The player captured the title, despite his thorny path to victory and run that was packed with ups and downs.
The €25,000 High Roller at King’s Casino Rozvadov
The high roller event attracted 113 runners who created a prize pool of €2,651,545. The top 17 finishers left with a portion of the money. German poker pros Steffan Schillhabel, Ole Schemion, Rainer Kempe, and Philipp Gruissem as well as other notables like Bryn Kenney, Sylvain Loosli, and Benjamin Pollak were among those to cash from the event.
In fact, Pollak was the player whom Farrell faced heads-up. The French player himself had quite an exciting poker year. He made it to the final table of the WSOP Main Event this summer and eventually finished third for $3,500,000.
The heads-up match began with Farrell holding massive chip advantage over his final opponent. The two players needed 13 hands to determine the winner. During that time, Pollak was simply not given the chance to improve. On the final hand of play, the player shoved after a raise from Farrell. The latter called tabling [As][Jh] to Pollak’s [Ah][7c]. Farrell received a little help from the board as the [Ks][Qh][5h][9s][8h] landed on the table to secure the player with the title. Pollak’s payout for his runner-up finish totaled €460,622.
Including last night’s in-the-money finish, which was his best accomplishment in terms of money collected, Farrel now has more than $4.4 million in live tournament earnings. The player won his EPT title back in 2015, when he bested 651 entries to take down the €5,300 Main Event at Portomaso Casino. Late last year, the Scotsman became the winner of the partypoker WPT Caribbean $4,560 Main Event for his first WPT title. With last night’s triumph, Farrell is now one of the few players to have won Main Events in the three biggest live poker series in the world.
