The €25,000 buy-in High-Roller tournament at the 2013 PokerStars European Poker Tour (EPT) Grand Final allowed for each player to rebuy a singled time if they so desired, and after multiple players did decide that €50,000 was a reasonable price to pay for a shot at winning the tournament the final attendance tally landed at 158 entries… 158 of the top poker players in poker at that.

So, while the EPT Grand Final Main Event produced a final table that is usually reserved for high-buy-in, low-turnout, tournaments like the High-Roller, the actual High-Roller tournament saw a pretty stacked final table in its own right, with names like Vanessa Selbst, Toby Lewis, Igor Kurganov, and Anthony Gregg weaving their way through the tough field to the final table.

The tournament itself was a three-day affair, and coming into Day 3 there were still 12 players in the hunt for the title. On the way to the final table two other well-known players saw their tournament runs come to an end with Triple Crown winner David Kitai bowing out in 12th place, while Sorel Mizzi hit the rail in 10th place.

With the elimination of Kyle Cheong in 9th place the official final table was set, and three main storylines were developing. First you had last year’s EPT Grand Final High-Roller champion Igor Kurganov looking to go back-to-back; then there is the red-hot member of Team IveyPoker.com Toby Lewis, and of course one of the best tournament players in the world in Vanessa Selbst, bringing with her the reputation as a finisher when she makes the final table.

Of the three mentioned above Selbst would make it the farthest, eliminated in 4th place, at which point the three remaining players started talking deals, but Fadar Kamar was vehement that he get more than an equity chop so play raged on, and Kamar looked like a genius when he chipped-up enough to get the match basically square, and the three then made a deal that saw each player earn €760,000, leaving just over €15,000 for the winner –it’s not too often that you’ll see a three-way equal split, outside of a home game anyway.

The eventual winner was Steve Silverman, a US poker pro with a number of good scores in live events, but lacking a win until his victory in the EPT High-Roller.

Here is a look at the final table payouts from the EPT Grand Final High-Roller event:

1. Steven Silverman – €775,400*

2. Tony Gregg – €760,000*

3. Fadar Kamar – €760,000*

4. Vanessa Selbst – €290,300

5. Toby Lewis – €232,400

6. Chris Moore – €193,500

7. Igor Kurganov – €154,700

8. Victor Sbrissa – €116,100

*denotes Three-Way deal

Resources: www.thehendonmob.com, www.europeanpokertour.com

 

This entry was posted on Sunday, May 12th, 2013 at 6:11 pm and is filed under Poker 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.