The first event of the 2025 Poker Masters, the $1,000,000 Showcase, has been battling over three days now. After two opening days saw the guarantee smashed, Sunday’s action began to hand out some of the prize pool that had been generated. By the end of the action tonight, Andrew Ostapchenko and David Coleman were the dominant forces, as the only two players to surpass the five million chip mark.
Coleman Takes Overall Lead After Dazzling Day 1B
Day 1B on Saturday, as is typical for multi-Day One tournaments, saw a larger field come to the tables than Day 1A. After 109 entries were received on Friday, Saturday’s 130 entries ensured that the million-dollar guarantee would be topped. Between the two-Day Ones, 239 entries were generated, building a $1.195 million prize pool that would be shared by the sixteen survivors of Friday’s play and the nineteen players who made it through Saturday.
Coleman dominated Saturday’s action, but he was remarkably close to not being a part of the play after a slight miscalculation. With a flop and turn reading J♣ Q♥ K♣ 4♥ and holding pocket Queens, Coleman would plop his final chips in the center on the very wet board. Daniel Maor called for more than Coleman’s stack in the small blind, then Kai Nicholls went over the top of both with the call. With Coleman and Maor at risk, the cards lined up like this:
Maor (small blind): 10♣ 9♣ (straight to the King, redraw to flush)
Nicholls (big blind): A♥ K♥ (pair of Kings, draws to straight and flush)
Coleman (hijack): Q♠ Q♣ (flopped set of Queens, redraws to full house)
With Maor holding the straight, Coleman needed some help to stay alive in the tournament, and he would get that when a Jack hit the river. After the chips were counted, Coleman tripled up to 1.38 million in chips, Nicholls dropped to under a million, and Maor went to the rail; Coleman would work that stack up to 2.44 million in chips to move to Day Two as the only player over the two-million-chip mark.
Ostapchenko Joins Coleman in Race to Title
The thirty-five players who came back to the felt on Sunday were all guaranteed a payday. The players who would be eliminated in the initial action would walk away with the minimum payout of $8,600, but nobody wanted to settle for that. The final table was the goal, where the minimum prize was $40,000, and the eventual champion would receive $270,000.
Coleman was riding high at this point, as was Day 1A chip leader David ‘ODB’ Baker, who held 1.815 million in his stack. Some of the other players who were in the “Million Chip Club” included Chris Hunichen, Stephen Song, Sam Soverel, Doug Lee (in on a satellite entry), Aram Zobian, Andrew Lichtenberger, Qin Zhao, and Jeremy Eyer. The shorter stacks in the game, such as Aaron Massey and Nick Seward, had to start their run early if they were going to survive.
One of the players who failed in his attempt to “double up or go home” was Justin Saliba. Saliba moved all in for his final chips with Q-10, while Hunichen was not going to let that go unchallenged out of the big blind. He made the call with a leading K-8 and, after the board ran out nine-high, Saliba was on the rail and out of the event.
Massey wouldn’t last much longer than that, going out in 33rd place, and he and Saliba were joined by various “High Rollers” on the rail. Hunichen was cruelly knocked out in a race with Michael Rossitto, his pocket Jacks being mauled by Rossitto’s A-9 after the flop came A-9-6, and no Jack would come to the rescue. Lee would knock off Justin Zaki, his pocket sixes dodging Zaki’s A-Q on a K-K-5-2-9 runout.
As the battles raged around the PokerGO Studios, Coleman slowly kept chipping up. He took a healthy chunk of chips from Mitchell Halverson, his pocket Jacks standing on an eight-high board. Ostapchenko was able to eke out the lead by the end of the evening, after the elimination of Peter Mugar in eighth place, to set up the PGT-standard seven-handed final table for action on Monday:
1. Andrew Ostapchenko, 7.125 million
2. David Coleman, 6.95 million
3. Doug Lee, 3.9 million
4. Stephen Song, 3.425 million
5. Mitchell Halverson, 2.875 million
6. Jim Agate, 2.8 million
(tie) Spencer Champlin, 2.8 million
The final table of the $1,000,000 Showcase will resume Monday morning at 11:45 PDT (2:45 PM EDT). PokerGO, as they will do throughout the 2025 Poker Masters, will feature the final table action beginning at 1 PM (PDT), when the champion will be determined, and the opening salvos of the 2025 Poker Masters will award their first trophy and $270,000.
(Photo courtesy of PokerGO)
