Mikita Badziakowski leads WPT High Roller Championship final table

Mikita Badziakouski leads the WPT World Online Championships High Roller Championship with just six players sitting between him and a $1 million top prize as well as the title.

With 28 players returning to the action on Day 2, the $25,500-entry High Roller Championship, the day kicked off with a Russian losing all his chips first, Mikhail Vilkov being the first player to bust. He was swiftly joined by plenty of others, however, as Stephen Chidwick, Wiktor Malinowski and Andras Nemeth all found themselves on the rail.

Ludovic Geilich has had some great results recently but his tournament ended in 19th place, the Scotsman busting for a $68,000 payday. Two more big names at opposite ends of their poker careers would join him soon afterwards, with Late Night Poker legend Simon Trumper and Ole Schemion both leaving the party on partypoker.

It had been Pascal Hartmann who started the day as chip leader, but his race was run when he busted in 14th place and he wasn’t the only big name to get close to the final table without reaching it. Australian player Kahle Burns busted in 11th place for $102,500, and he was followed by Jake Schindler, Timothy Adams, and Brock Wilson, all of whom missed out of the final day.

With just seven players left, it is the impressive Badziakowski who heads the list of hopefuls chasing the top prize of $1,094,460.

Play resumes with seven players guaranteed at least $155,060 but there’s a top prize of $1,094,460 awaiting the champion. With 4,750,685 chips, Badziakowski will be hoping for better luck than a memorable hand from another high roller event he enjoyed last year against Justin Bonomo.

With over $28.5 million in live tournament earnings already, Badziakowski will have every chance of adding to his total career profits when he takes to the virtual felt but he’ll have six challengers who will be tough to beat standing in his way, too.

Russian player Aleksei Barkov is closets in chips to the leader, with 3.7 million chips to his name. Barkov won his way into the event from a $265 satellite, so he’s already showing a phenomenal ROI, but winning a million from an entry worth less than a well-know brand of digital tablet? That would be some swipe.

With others such as 2019 WSOP Europe Main Event champion Alexandros Kolonias (3,673,742), Jason Koon (3,420,295), Mark Demirjian (1,997,915) and Daniel Rezaei (1,630,432) all hunting down Badziakowski, perhaps only the short-stacked Ali Imsirovic (723,198) has too much to do, although in no limit hold’em, you can never rule out the smallest stack flipping the script. We’ll know who the champion is tomorrow.

WPT World Online Championships High Roller Championship Final Table Chipcounts: