Hot on the heels of the completion of their PLO Series II event over the weekend, the PokerGO Tour jumped back into the Omaha pool to start the week. After two days of battle, the Super High Roller Bowl: $100,000 Pot Limit Omaha extravaganza has worked its way down to the final five players. Leading the way this afternoon is a player who began to heat up during the PLO Series, Sam Soverel, but the stacks are close together in what is a volatile game.
Decent Field for Huge Buy-In
It may not seem like it to the casual poker fan, but Omaha – especially Pot Limit Omaha – is extremely popular among poker players. Perhaps because of the action generated by the game, it attracts excellent players who know the strategies well, alongside “action” players who like to mix it up. That was evident on Monday as the field came together for the $100,000 buy-in event.
At the end of Day One, thirty entries were in the books but, with late registration still possible until the start of action on Tuesday, the prize pool was going to grow. From those thirty entries, eleven players bagged up a stack for Day Two action, led by Finnish poker professional Joni Jouhkimainen. The Finn was able to bypass players like Jesse Lonis, Bryce Yockey, and Dylan Weisman, who all posted stacks over a million chips, while recent PGT PLO Series II champion ‘Chino’ Rheem scraped in with a short stack.
For Day Two, more batters stepped to the plate. Another seven entries would be received on Tuesday, bringing the total number up to thirty-seven entries and building a prize pool of $3.7 million. The final seven players would receive a piece of that pie, with the eventual champion taking down the $1.25 million first prize and the Super High Roller Bowl championship ring.
The news would be good for Rheem in the initial action, as he picked up a pot that brought him off life support. The news was not as good for Isaac Haxton, who shipped his stack over to Sam Soverel in an intriguing hand. Each man was in for 78K to see an A-Q-6 flop, which saw Haxton commit the remainder of his chips to the center:
Haxton: 10-9-8-7
Soverel: A-K-6-4
Soverel had flopped top and bottom two pair with the A-6 in his hand, but Haxton had outs to a runner-runner straight draw. That didn’t happen for Haxton, however, as a trey on the turn left him drawing dead and out of the tournament soon after the resumption of competition on Tuesday.
That seemed to be the catalyst to getting Soverel going. He pushed Yockey off a pot to crack the one million chip mark, then would eliminate Weisman on the money bubble after flopping a nut flush to take the chip lead with seven players to go. After dismissing Jared Bleznick in seventh place (Soverel turned a Queen high straight to Bleznick’s flopped two pair) and Yockey in sixth, Soverel will enter today’s final table of the Super High Roller Bowl: $100,000 Pot Limit Omaha extravaganza with a sizeable chip lead.
1. Sam Soverel, 4.035 million
2. Joao Simao, 3.225 million
3. John Riordan, $1.905 million
4. Joni Jouhkimainen, 1.07 million
5. Artur Martirosyan, 865,000
Although Soverel is riding high now, the volatility of Pot Limit Omaha does not eliminate any of these men from contention. The final table will begin at 1 PM (PDT) in the PokerGO Studios, with the stream starting up on a delay at 2 PM (PDT) on PokerGO.com.
(Photo courtesy of PokerGO.com)
