Malaysian poker pro Christopher Michael Soyza, known simply as Michael Soyza, pulled into the lead in the final action before the cards determined him as the new 2018 EPT High Roller champion today. The third, final day of the tournament started today with only 9 surviving players at the unofficial final table.
The opening €10,300 High Roller is just one of the 34 events scheduled for the 2018 PokerStars European Poker Tour Barcelona which started this week and runs through September 2. The festival is once again held at Casino Barcelona where poker pros from all around the world are gathering for a wide variety of tournaments, including several elite events.
One of the exclusive tournaments of the series is certainly the first €10,300 High Roller, as there are several similar events set to run throughout the following week. The event started Wednesday and saw a total of 127 entries who paid the €10,300 entry and contributed to the total prize pool of €1,202,800. Iran’s Bahram Chobineh started with the biggest stack (1,320,000) and the only other player with more than a million chips was Michael Soyza from Malaysia (1,235,000).
Ukrainian Denis Shafikov was the first to leave the final table, taking home a nice cash prize of €30,100. The next elimination came more than an hour after that when Canadian Luc Greenwood lost it all to Soyza with 5-5 against a pair of Kings. For his 8th finish, he received €40,300. Goran Mandic from Croatia busted in the 7th place (€53,500), followed by PokerStars Team Pro Liv Boeree. The “Iron Maiden” from the United Kingdom gave her best but was eliminated by Soyza in the 6th place for €70,000. Italy’s Dario Sammartino (5th, €88,000) was the next to leave, followed by Bahram Chobineh (4th, €110,100).
Turkish player Orpen Kisacikoglu finished 3rd in the ranking with a cash prize of €133,000, leaving Soyza and Finland’s Kai Lehto in the final heads-up. After dominating for most of the time, Soyza managed to defeat the Finnish player with Ace-8 against Lehto’s 2-2 (the board was Ace-Jack-10-4-Queen). The will take home the 2018 EPT High Roller title and the first-place prize of €302,500, while Lehto will receive €204,500.
More than 4,000 Entries at the €1,100 2018 EPT National
While the high-rollers were gathering at Casino Barcelona for the €10,300 High Roller in the past few days, everyone else has apparently bought into the €1,100 2018 EPT National.
The traditionally popular event attracted a massive field of 4,348 entries during the two regular and two turbo blind flights. Normally, the total prize pool ballooned to an incredible size, as well – €4,127,560, which will be split among the top 650 players (€1,650 minimum prize).
Farukh Tach started as Day 2 Chip Leader of the tournament with 808,000 in chips, followed by several other big stacks – Jeffrey Van Leeuwen (804,000), Maksim Bura (736,000), Chengbei Li (731,000), Jan Teunis (730,000), Rui Nogueira Da Silva (732,000), Youcef Benzerfa (710,000) and Camilo Hernandez Henao (700,000).
