Las Vegas cements itself as the home of live tournament High Rollers after the Bellagio successfully hosts the first-ever $25,400 Mixed Game High Roller in Bobby’s Room.
For as long as I can remember Bobby’s Room at the Bellagio Hotel & Casino in Las Vegas was the place where the real action went down. Some of the world’s craziest poker games took place in the private area named after the legend Bobby Baldwin, none more so than the iconic matches between billionaire businessman and banker Andy Beal and The Corporation.
The innards of a live cash game are more secretive than a Colonel Sanders recipe, and so poker fans were delighted when the Aria Resort & Casino began hosting a series of High Roller No-Limit Tournaments with coverage emerging from Poker Telegraph.
One of the biggest winners in those games is Brian Rast, and this week both Rast and Daniel Negreanu successfully organised the first-ever $25,400 Mixed Game High Roller at the Bellagio Hotel & Casino in Las Vegas, and it was a steaming success.
The re-entry event attracted 25-entrants, each beginning with an 80k starting stack, with levels lasting 30-minutes, growing to 40-minutes after Level 13. The rebuy period ended after Level 10.
The tournament played out seven-handed with the following games included in the ten game rotation:
• No Limit 2-7 Single Draw Lowball
• A-5 Razz
• No-Limit Hold’em
• Badugi
• 7-Card Stud Eight or Better
• Pot-Limit Omaha
• 2-7 Triple Draw Lowball
• Limit Hold’em
• Omaha Eight or Better
• 7-Card Stud
The event proved so popular Mike “Timex” McDonald and the team at PokerShares opened a book for people to buy shares of the participating players.
Luminaries that made it to Day 2 included Scott Seiver, Mike Gorodinsky, and Eric Wasserson, but neither of them made it to the final table.
The Final Table
• Daniel Negreanu – 425,000
• Keith Gipson – 360,000
• Alan Richardson – 270,000
• Ray Dehkharghani – 265,000
• Andrew Robl – 235,000
• Lamar Wilkinson – 210,000
• Ben Lamb – 185,000
• Brian Rast – 75,000
Both founders made it to the last eight, but only one of them would make money. Rast entered the final as the short stack, and as so often happens he was the first one to depart: Lamar Wilkinson eliminating the former Super High Roller Bowl (SHRB) winner in a hand of Limit Hold’em QQ>Q7.
Negreanu would make it to heads-up where he faced fellow World Series of Poker (WSOP) Player of the Year winner Ben Lamb. Negreanu was hoping to win his first event since taking down the PokerStars Shark Cage in 2015, and move a few dollars away from Erik Seidel at the top of the All Time Hendon Mob rankings.
The PokerStars Ambassador came within one card of taking it down in a hand of PLO, but Lamb outdrew him on the river and took the title shortly after that. It was Lamb’s first live tournament victory since his WSOP bracelet win in 2011, and his first cash since Jan 2015, although one doubts that means Lamb has been sat on his ass playing Candy Crush.
Here are the top four payouts:
1. Ben Lamb – $281,250
2. Daniel Negreanu – $175,000
3. Alan Richardson – $106,260
4. Lamar Wilkinson – $62,500
The Bellagio to Stream Live Cash Games on Twitch
From Day 2 onwards the team at Poker Central called the action in the written form, but could we one day watch the action live on Twitch?
That became a distinct possibility this week when The Bellagio Poker Room team opened up a Twitch stream. The action begins April 26 with the cameras focusing on a $2-$5-$10 game of No-Limit Hold’em with a min $500 and max $2,000 buy-in. The action continues for three more weeks until the stakes rise on May 24 with coverage of a $10-$20 No-Limit Hold’em game with a min $800 and max $5,000 buy-in.
What poker fans would have given for Twitch to have been invented at the time Beal was butting heads with the likes of Phil Ivey and co.
