Last week we were telling you about the newest major poker tournament to be held under the PokerStars brand: the European Poker Tour, namely the Barcelona stage. We promised you we will bring you the latest poker news from the old continent’s largest poker tournament, and here it is: the best of the best have gathered for the High Roller event, which cost €50,000 to enter. No less than fifty-eight people were gathered at the starting line, and re-buys were open for players, so the prize pool reached more than €3 million, with a €1 million check going to the first place winner alone.
Eight people managed to reach the final table: Dan Smith, Mike McDonald, JC Alvarado, Jim McCrink, Erik Seidel, Mike Watson, Talal Shakerchi and Ilari Sahamies. However, it’s clear that the battle was supposed to take place between the top three players at the final table: Smith, McDonald and Alvarado.
With the other five players having from 500,000 to 700,000 chips, they stood little chance to reach further than the bottom five of the final table. Of the top three, Alvarado stood with the shortest stack, at 3.116 million chips, while McDonald had 4.65 million chips and the chip leader stood with 5.108 million chips.
However, even the bottom five at the final table had something to play for – while the player that managed to place 8th only got €122,000, the prizes kept on rising, with the 4th place being awarded almost €300,000.
As you can see, even though the playing field was considerably shorter than the one in the Main Event, for instance, it’s all the more intense because of the huge amounts of money at play, and that’s exactly what the fans watching in Barcelona or at home were pleased to discover.
The Main Event in Barcelona also kicked off on Sunday, marking the official beginning of the European Poker Tour’s ninth season. A huge number of players is expected and will turn up for the event, and they’ll be met by the organizers with a couple of changes from last year’s season, like an increased level time (from 60 to 75 minutes) and an increased overall number of levels.
Check back tomorrow for more news from the world of poker, and we’ll tell you who won the tournament and it’s million euro prize.
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