Italian poker pro Dario Minieri leads the pack for the second straight day in the PokerStars Caribbean Adventure (PCA) $25,000 buy-in High Roller tournament. Minieri is a member of Team PokerStars Pro.
After two days of play, there are 24 players remaining out of the 84 who entered. Minieri was on top of the leaderboard after Day 1 and turned in another strong outing on Tuesday for Day 2. Minieri holds a stack of 430,700 chips entering Day 3 on Wednesday, edging out Michiel Brummelhuis’ second place tally of 403,800. Minieri and Brummelhuis are the only players to cross the 400,000-chip threshold and own a comfortable lead over former World Poker Tour (WPT) Borgata Poker Open champ Vivek “Psyduck” Rajkumar’s third place total of 301,700. Minieri won the High Roller event at the European Poker Tour’s (EPT) Warsaw stop in October.
One of the final eliminations of the evening at the Atlantis Resort and Casino on Paradise Island in the Bahamas was Mike “The Mouth” Matusow. He was all-in pre-flop with A-Q against Carter “bdybldngpkr” Phillips’ K-8. Phillips struck lightning in a bottle when the flop came K-8-4 and a running 9-J left Matusow scratching his head. William Thorson also exited at the end of the day when his 7-8 ran into pocket sevens. Thorson has made three EPT final tables.
2004 World Series of Poker (WSOP) Main Event Champion Greg Raymer sent fellow PokerStars-backed pro Andre Akkari out on Tuesday. Akkari pushed with A-9 of diamonds pre-flop and received a call from Raymer, who had A-Q of clubs. The flop contained a queen, keeping Raymer out in front for good. Meanwhile, Chad Brown hit the rails when his A-9 couldn’t draw out on former WPT Invitational winner Alex Brenes’ wired pair of eights.
Brummelhuis helped his cause by casting off Andrew “luckychewy” Lichtenberger, who appeared on several episodes of the G4 online poker reality series “2 Months, $2 Million.” Lichtenberger committed his chips pre-flop with K-Q, but Brummelhuis picked up aces. The flop came ace-high and that was all she wrote for the young American.
Here are the chip counts of the 24 players remaining in the 2010 PCA High Roller event:
1. Dario Minieri – 430,700
2. Michiel Brummelhuis – 403,800
3. Vivek “Psyduck” Rajkumar – 301,700
4. Tobias Reinkemeier – 279,900
5. Dmitry Stelmak – 264,000
6. Alex Brenes – 253,600
7. Greg Raymer – 206,600
8. Bijan Zahmat – 198,200
9. Sandra Naujoks – 180,500
10. Shawn Buchanan – 171,100
11. Lisa Hamilton – 153,900
12. Nick Schulman – 143,400
13. Carter “bdybldngpkr” Phillips – 139,400
14. Joe Cada – 135,700
15. Matt Marafioti – 121,000
16. Brett Richey – 106,400
17. Paul Berende – 104,400
18. Christian Kruel – 103,800
19. Bill Edler – 94,700
20. Adolfo Vaeza – 92,600
21. William Reynolds – 89,100
22. James Calderaro – 89,100
23. Isaac “westmenloAA” Baron – 76,200
24. Will Molson – 60,000
The winner of the $25,000 buy-in poker tournament will earn $576,000 and the top 16 players will finish in the money. Cada and Raymer are former winners of the WSOP Main Event in Las Vegas. Phillips won the EPT Barcelona stop during Season 6, while Naujoks, one of only two women ever to win an EPT tournament, took down the Dortmund event during Season 5. Schulman made the final table of the WPT Foxwoods World Poker Finals twice in a three-year span, recording a win and a runner-up showing for $3 million combined. Many consider Baron to be one of the top poker players on the planet. Needless to say, it’s anybody’s game.
The High Roller event will play down to its final table this afternoon from the Bahamas and crown a champion on Thursday. Stay tuned to Poker News Daily for the latest from paradise. Pack your bags, we’ll leave tonight.
