A full round-up of the live tournament action from the World Series of Poker Circuit in Rozvadov, the Irish Poker Open, the WPTDeepStacks in Johannesburg and the Super High Roller Bowl.
Some people are waking up in a factory packing crab sticks. A banker. A painter. What do you call yourself if you work in a crab stick packing factory? A crab stick packer? A factory worker? Think how shocked they would be to learn that somewhere in the world men and women sit down to play cards for a living. They call themselves professional poker players, and they don’t smell of fish, well, not all of them.
A bunch of these ‘pros’ have been mixing it up with the amateurs over at King’s Casino Rozvadov on the Czech/German border. The World Series of Poker Circuit (WSOPC) has been in town since March 1 – 19, and Amar Begovic has taken down the Main Event.
The Bosnian outlived 796 entrants in the €1,650 Main Event. For his efforts, the WSOP awarded him with €220,000, a smidgen more than his previous personal best of €10,910.
Begovic hasn’t experienced a week like this since he was riding ponies down the beach as a young’un. The Main Event was his third final table of the festival, finishing sixth in the Monster Stack and fifth in the Bounty Builder. The force is strong with this one.
Three names stood out at the final table.
The Polish star Grzegorz Wyraz finished sixth. High stakes marauder, Martin Kabrhel, finished fourth, and the former WSOP bracelet event runner-up Timur Margolin finished second.
Begovic receives a seat in the WSOP Global Casino Championships and the shot at a bracelet.
Here are the final table results.
1. Amar Begovic – €220,000
2. Timur Margolin – €135,000
3. Paris Staviridis – €97,000
4. Martin Kabrhel – €76,244
5. Ben Zech – €59,766
6. Grzegorz Wyraz – €46,960
7. Florian Sarnow – €35,050
8. Alexander Romme – €24,274
The Best of the Rozvadov Rest
Former 888Poker employee Eyal Bensimhon (and his pink rabbit hat) continues to shine on the live tour circuit after winning his third WSOPC gold ring after packing in his desk job to live the life of a pro poker player. Bensimhon took down the Deep Stack Open for €16,580, and also finished runner-up in the Mini-Event for €10,552.
Schuler Valentin had never cashed in a live event before competing in the WSOPC. Now he has two, and they are both victories. Valentin beat 33 entrants to win the King’s Daily tournament for €940 and won a ring by defeating 148 entrants to take the €14,101 first prize in the Bounty Builder.
Ryan Mandara Wins The 2018 Irish Poker Open
Ryan Mandara has won the oldest live poker tournament outside of the World Series of Poker with a brilliant performance at the 2018 Irish Poker Open.
Mandara agreed to a heads-up deal with Ferdia O’Connell that saw him bank a personal best of €210,000, at the Citywest Hotel in Dublin yesterday.
It was the first time that partypoker had sponsored the event, and so it was a neat touch that Mandara qualified for a penny playing online at the gambling behemoth.
The event easily surpassed the €1m Guarantee as 1,348 entrants turned up to enjoy the craic, a 19% increase from last year when Griffin Benger defeated 1,129 entrants to capture the €200,000 first prize.
Here are the final table results:
1. Ryan Mandara – €210,000*
2. Ferdia O’Connell – €180,000*
3. Pascal Baumgartner – €100,000
4. Dan Samson – €75,000
5. Joseph Cahill – €55,000
6. Sameer Singh – €42,500
7. Daniel Fargher – €32,000
8. Dean Clay – €23,000
*Indicates a heads-up deal
Abdool Essa Wins WPTDeepStacks Joberg
Abdool Essa likes playing in the WPTDeepStacks events, even if they don’t visit his neck of the woods very often.
Last year, the WPTDS visited Johannesburg for the first time, and Essa won a 225-entrant side event for a then career-best score of $32,161. This week he smashed that figure into space.
Essa was the last man sitting on his derriere from a field of 356 entrants in the ZAR 11,000 Main Event, beating the WSOPC gold ring winner Jason Strauss in heads-up action.
Here are the final table results:
1. Abdool Essa – $86,968
2. Jason Strauss – $47,368
3. Hennie Appel – $28,455
4. Jean Okes – $21,615
5. Leon Jordaan – $16,043
6. Uriel Levy – $12,496
7. Desmond Godfrey – $10,592
8. David Rosenthal – $8,697
Super High Roller Bowl Organisers to Live Stream Lottery
There’s more chance of an eyeball falling out than someone from the high roller fraternity still reading this, but I have to fit it in somewhere, and this seems like the best place.
Poker Central and ARIA have announced that the 2018 Super High Roller Bowl Lottery will take place at 4 pm (ET) on March 21, and PokerGO will stream the event live for non-subscribers and subscribers alike.
Poker Central will announce the full list of players once known, and then a lottery will determine the 30 who will take a pew. There is a caveat. The organisers will keep 18 seats for VIP players, meaning anyone important who fails to get a seat in the lottery will get a seat via the more nepotistic route, so everyone wins.
