With the 2012 PCA Main Event playing down to the final table, the numerous poker superstars who failed to reach the penultimate day of the Main Event found another tournament in the Bahamas where the final table participants would all receive at least a six-figure payday, the $25k buy-in High-Roller event.

The format for the tournament allowed for re-entries, and seven players did in fact decide to enter twice: Bertrand Grospellier, Chris Moorman, Chance Kornuth, Joe Elpayaa, Michael Mizrachi, Eui Woong Kim, and Nick Yunis (who won two satellite seats to the tournament and finished as the chip-leader). These seven re-entries brought the total number of entries up to 148, a slight decrease from last year’s 158.

By the end of the night the field had been whittled down to just 56 players, among them the red-hot Jonathan Duhamel. Duhamel has already cashed in the $100k Super-High-Roller tournament, won a $5k side event, and is now in the top 10 on the leader-board for the High-Roller tournament – if his streak continues other poker players may start wishing for their own home invasion!

Joining Yunis and Duhamel in the Top 10 is “The Businessman” Bill Perkins, online superstar Taylor “amiguiosity” Paur, Kevin Stammen, Mike “Timex” McDonald, Andrew “luckychewy” Lichtenberger, and 2011 WSOP Europe Champion Elio Fox.

Other big names still in the hunt include Chino Rheem, November Niner Anton Makiievsky, Amit Makhija, Jen Harman, Bertrand “ElkY” Grospellier, Matt Marifioti, Barry Greenstein, Shaun Deeb, 2009 WSOP Champ Joe Cada (fresh off a side event win of his own), Sam Stein, Kevin MacPhee, 2011 BLUFF POY Eugene Katchalov, Mike Sowers, Dan Shak, 2011 PCA Champ Galen Hall, William Reynolds, Ike Haxton, 2010 PCA Champ Harrison Gimbel, and Jonathan Little.

This year the winner of the PCA High-Roller tournament will pocket a cool $1.1 million, with 16 players making the money.

Here is a look at the Top 10 chip counts heading in to Day 2 of the 3-day tournament:

1. Nick Yunis — 407,100

2. Bill Perkins — 345,700

3. Taylor Paur — 317,100

4. Keven Stammen — 301,500

5. Chris Hunichen — 271,000

6. Terje Augdal — 270,000

7. Mike McDonald — 267,500

8. Andrew Lichtenberger — 248,000

9. Jonathan Duhamel — 226,300

10. Elio Fox — 216,800

Other 2012 PCA side events scheduled for Friday include the following tournaments:

* Invitation-only World Cup of Poker tournament

* $1,000 + $1,000 = $100 No Limit Holdem TURBO BOUNTY tournament

* $5,000 + $250 No Limit Holdem Heads-Up Championship (64 player cap) tournament

* $1,000 + $100 NLHE Women’s tournament

* $550 + $50 TwoplusTwo Players Choice tournament

* $1,000 + $100 No Limit Holdem “Rivers” tournament

* $270 + $30 Daily No Limit Holdem TURBO tournament

* Invitation-only PokerStars VIP freeroll tournament

Related posts:

1. Gruissem wins second straight EPT High-Roller tournament With Phillip Gruissem winning his second straight EPT High-Roller tournament (Gruissem won the EPT Barcelona High-Roller in August) as well as a 28th place finish...
2. Déjà vu at the WPT Paris High-Roller tournament At the World Poker Tour’s stop in Paris last year the €15,000 buy-in High-Roller tournament came down to a heads-up battle between 2010 BLUFF Magazine...
3. WCOOP High-Roller tournament blasts through guarantee The PokerStars World Championship of Online Poker (WCOOP) kicked off this week with a two-day $200 NLHE tournament, as well as the much anticipated $10k...

Tags: Barry Greenstein, Bertrand Grospellier, Bill Perkins, Chris Moorman, Dan Shak, ElkY, Galen Hall, Gimbel, Haxton, High Roller, Home Invasion, Jonathan Little, Makhija, Michael Mizrachi, Paur, poker players, Poker Superstars, Shaun Deeb, William Reynolds, Yunis

This entry was posted on Friday, January 13th, 2012 at 10:34 am and is filed under EPT News, Tournament News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.