Chino Rheem comes close to becoming the first World Poker Tour Champions Club member to win a WPTDeepStacks Main Event with a fourth-place finish in Amsterdam, and Brandon Adams takes down the $25,000 Super High Roller at the Seminole Hard Rock Poker Showdown in Florida.
Here is a little-known fact for you.
A World Poker Tour (WPT) Champions Club member has never won a WPTDeepStacks Main Event title.
One recently came mightily close.
Chino Rheem is a puzzle. Unsolvable. A poker player whose game makes you feel like he’s holding a butcher’s knife to your throat. Nasty. No prisoners. Coupled with the song of a nightingale, and the naughtiness of a schoolboy who knows no better.
And there he was, fishing at the deep end of the €1,500 buy-in WPTDeepStacks Main E
vent in Amsterdam. For all of his misguided decisions, Rheem remains a friend of the WPT. Maybe it’s the one place on earth where he can play without fear of judgment?
Amsterdam.
It had to be the Dam.
Rheem joined 249 other entrants to create a €326,375 prizepool, and he was by far the most experienced player seated at the final table, his $9m in tournament earnings eating the other seven players alive.
And he even sent two of them to the rail, with all the pomp and circumstance of burned toast hitting the trashcan. And then his deuces ran into a pair of pocket tens, and we still don’t have a WPT Champions Club member with a WPTDeepStacks trophy sitting, uncollected, in a casino storeroom somewhere.
The winner of the event was Christos Economides. The Cypriot entered heads-up with a 3.76m v 2.495m lead against Paul Theobald, and it was enough to get the job done. The victory was Economides first-ever Hendon Mob cash. The Holland Casino in Amsterdam likes to produce first-timers in WPT events (Farid Yachou, anyone?)
Here are the final table results:
Final Table Results
1. Christos Economides – €74,760*
2. Paul Theobald – €52,535
3. Farukh Tach – €33,350
4. Chino Rheem – €20,285
5. Farid Chati – €15,665
6. Arnaud Peyroles – €12,980
7. Dzmitry Rabotkin – €10,900
8. Viktor Lavi – €9,110
9. Ogi Hisashi – €7,475
*Includes a €2k package into the season-ending WPTDeepStacks European Championship
Also mixing it up in the deep end of this one was Clyde Tjauw Foe (12th) and Marcel Vonk (26th).
During the Amsterdam soiree, Will Shillibier took a walk through the town with the local boy, and Natural8 Ambassador, Bryan Paris. The new Walk and Talk feature looked impressive, and I hope it’s one that will stay on the production list.
Check it out.
Brandon Adams Wins $25k Event at Seminole Hard Rock
Flying over the pond like a flat stone hurled from the hands of a slinger and Brandon Adams has taken down the $25,000 Super High Roller at the WPT Seminole Hard Rock Poker Showdown (SHRPS).
The tournament organisers guaranteed a $1m prize pool, and 40 entrants hit the nail on the head.
Adams defeated Pablo Fernandez in heads-up action to take down the $370,000 first prize.
Here are the final table results:
1. Brandon Adams – $370,000
2. Pablo Fernandez – $240,000
3. Barry Hutter – $150,000
4. Ajay Chabra – $105,000
5. Darren Elias – $75,000
6. Shaun Deeb – $60,000
Catching up on a few other results from the SHRPS Steven Bennett defeated 3,030 entrants to win the $186,308 first prize in the opening $570 buy-in event. Michael Tureniec bestest a field of 816 entrants to win the $143,324 first prize in the $1,100 WPTDeepStacks Main Event. And Justin Young banked $81,795 after beating 170 entrants to take down the $2,200 event.
