Since the middle of last week the inaugural Poker Masters high roller poker series has been generating big-money prizes and plenty of excitement at the Aria in Las Vegas.
The competition consists of four $50,000 buy-in tournaments, culminating in a $100,000 buy-in NLHE freeze-out finale scheduled for September 18-20, 2017 which will see the ultimate winner awarded not only a big cash prize but the newly minted Poker Master Purple Blazer.
The first of the Poker Master events was won by poker ace and commentator Nick Schulman, who collected $918,000 after a torrid final table that looked like this:
1. Nick Schulman, $918,000
2. Matt Hyman, $561,000
3. Stefan Schillhabel, $306,000
4. Steffen Sontheimer, $204,000
5. Dominik Nitsche, $178,500
6. Koray Aldemir, $153,000
7. Adrian Mateos, $127,500
That was followed by the second event in the series, which was won by Steffen Sontheimer, who claimed $900,000 after besting the formidable Fedor Holz in the heads up. This was the composition of that event’s final table:
Fedor Holz (Germany)
Adrian Mateos (Spain)
Bryn Kenney (USA)
Tom Marchese (USA)
Steffen Sontheimer (Germany)
Phil Hellmuth (USA)
Christian Christner (Germany)
American poker pro Bryn Kenney emerged victorious from the third event, besting 48 tough players and ultimately Erik Seidel in an epic heads up to claim the main prize of $960,000.
Adding that to the $125,000 he won days earlier for his seventh finish in the second of the series that boosted Kenney’s bank balance by $1.085 million over a few days.
This was the final table for event three:
Bryn Kenney USA $960,000
Erik Seidel USA $576,000
Jake Schindler USA $312,000
Dan Smith USA $192,000
Doug Polk USA $144,000
Cary Katz USA $120,000
Sergio Aido Spain $96,000
The Purple Blazer goes to the player with the highest total earnings over all five of the Poker Masters tournaments, and when InfoPowa went to press Sunday Kenney was running second behind German ace Steffen Sontheimer, who has accumulated $1.104 million from winning the second event and finishing at fourth in the first of the series.
Nick Schulman is currently at third with $918,000 in winnings from the first event.
The first day of the fourth event had just ended Sunday morning GMT when InfoPowa went to press, with Doug Polk in the lead after dominating much of the action.
Polk already has $144,000 in the bank from his fifth finish in the third event, and looked set to boost that considerably if he maintains his current pace going into the second day on Sunday Vegas-time.
Out to thwart that achievement and claim the main prize of $819,000 are high calibre pros like Steffen Sontheimer, Brandon Adams, Zach Clark, David Peters, Jake Schindler, and Justin Bonomo.
Falling by the wayside in this fourth event were big names like Daniel Negreanu, Phil Hellmuth, Fedor Holz, Nick Schulman, Bryn Kenney, and Erik Seidel.