While the WPT Championship final table was being determined on Thursday, the WPT continued on with Day Two of their second annual $100,000 Super High Roller tournament at the Bellagio, featuring some of the biggest names – and deepest pockets – in the poker world on the felt.
The carnage from Day One was evident as the players stepped to the tables on Thursday for action. With the start of the Day Two play, registration for the tournament was officially 34 entries. Some of those entries were double shots from such players as Daniel Negreanu, Galen Hall and Jason Mercier, of which only Mercier survived to play Day Two. Those entries guaranteed that the victor would receive $1.3 million for winning and the final five players would be the only ones taking home some dough from the event.
The 21 player field was looking up at Justin Bonomo and his 1.433 million stack at the start of the day, while Jean Noel Thorel and Tom Marchese looked to chase him down. There were other threats lurking down the leaderboard, including the defending champion of this event, Erik Seidel, Phil Galfond, Isaac Haxton and Sorel Mizzi.
Mizzi would not last long, busting after the first level of Day Two, and the field began to maneuver to work their way to the six handed final table. Bonomo would lose the lead to Andrew Robl, who continued to roll onward by knocking out Thorel. After Dan Smith dispatched Dan Shak to the rail, the final eighteen players were set for action.
The remaining eighteen players were closely bunched and, as such, the eliminations began to come rapidly. Mercier would be eliminated by Brian Hastings and Seidel pushed Haxton out of the tournament in his attempt at a repeat. An unknown in the tournament, Daniel Perper, was responsible for knocking out Cary Katz (one of the double-entry players in the tournament) to get the field down to fifteen players in around four hours.
The players continued to fall like dominoes as the late afternoon wore on. Clemenceau Calixto, David “Doc” Sands, Justin Smith, Roger Sippi and Galfond brought the field to a ten handed table, with Bonomo having moved back to a sizeable million chip lead over Robl and such luminaries as John Juanda, Sam Trickett and Seidel hanging onto short stacks.
Hastings was the first to go from the unofficial final table at the hands of Trickett after Trickett’s Big Slick caught on the turn against Hastings’ pocket nines. As the clock ticked on, several players earned key double ups to remain in the tournament and it seemed as if the final table wouldn’t be determined until late in the Vegas night. After two and a half hours of play, however, a rush of action would determine the sextet of survivors.
Trickett’s chip stack would be decimated by Perper after Perper made a seven high straight against Trickett’s set of Queens and Robl would finish off the Brit in ninth place. Ten hands later, the dream of a repeat champion ended when Bonomo knocked off Seidel in eighth place. Only two hands later, the final table was determined when Bonomo increased his stack again with the elimination of Smith in the seventh place slot.
1. Daniel Perper, 3.145 million
2. Andrew Robl, 3.355 million
3. Tom Marchese, 2.235 million
4. Justin Bonomo, 2.105 million
5. John Juanda, 1.875 million
6. Bill Klein, 620,000
With the first four players bunched so closely together, there is no clear favorite for the Super High Roller championship. Perper, who has three career cashes to his credit, will have to withstand the assault by some of the most creative players in the game in Robl, Marchese and Bonomo. Lurking back in the pack is Juanda, who always seems to be good for one big tournament score a year, while Klein might need some divine intervention to take home this title.
The $100,000 Super High Roller champion will be determined at 4PM (Pacific Time) this afternoon, with the action to be streamed online with hole cards beginning at 4:30 on the WPT website. Tony Dunst, Dan O’Brien and Olivier Busquet will handle the anchoring duties as the next WPT millionaire is crowned tonight in Las Vegas.
