German poker pro Steffen Sontheimer, who has been extraordinarily successful this year, has emerged as the overall champion in the inaugural Poker Masters competition at the Aria.
Sontheimer took down the $100,000 buy-in NHLE event, the last competition in a series of five that decided the ultimate winner, and claimed the main prize of $1,512,000.
That was enough to boost his cumulative earnings from the four previous $50,000 buy-in events to $2,733,000 and award him the first Purple Jacket honour as the player with the highest earnings across all five contests.
The German pro had to best some of the best players in the game to claim victory, with a final table that included Fedor Holz, Christian Christner, Stefan Schillhabel, Justin Bonomo and Sam Davies. In doing so Sontheimer made the final table in four of the five games, and was on the money bubble in the remaining game.
The final game attracted 36 players and took three days to play out. On the final day Sontheimer reached the heads up stage at a chip disadvantage to Christian Christner following the departure at third of Fedor Holz.
Sontheimer fought his way back into the game, in Christner’s words “playing like a champion” to eventually defeat his fellow German and claim the honours.
The Poker Masters cumulative winnings boost Sontheimer’s previous careers earnings of $3,551,390 to more than $6 million, eclipsing his previous best single prize of $1,223,264 earned when he finished runner-up to Christner in May’s Aria $100,000 Super High Roller 19.
Here are the final table results for the last competition of the Poker Masters:
Steffan Sontheimer $1,512,000
Christian Christner $864,000
Fedor Holz $504,000
Seth Davies $324,000
Justin Bonomo $216,000
Stefan Schillhabel $180,000