The "low" version of Event #15 -- the "Ante Up" no-limit hold'em event -- represented a great opportunity for players to turn a little into a lot. Many did just that, with no less than seven players turning the $7.50 buy-in into five-fi...
The "low" version of Event #15 -- the "Ante Up" no-limit hold'em event -- represented a great opportunity for players to turn a little into a lot. Many did just that, with no less than seven players turning the $7.50 buy-in into five-figure paydays and JAMIEHUNT83 of the U.K. ultimately coming away as the victor following a five-way chop.
JAMIEHUNT83 earned $7,465.80 for the win, just under the $7,583.34 that szadali of Hungary picked up for finishing third as both players ended up making roughly 1000 times their buy-in (!).
The event drew a huge field of 12,914, which made the prize pool $88,073.48 to beat yet another SCOOP guarantee (in this case for $50K). The top 1,620 finishers made the money in the two-day event. Here's the story of those two days and how JAMIEHUNT83 managed to claim the victory.
Day 1: 12,914 to 46
It took a little under five hours for the cash bubble to burst, and with 1,620 players left BruceLee880 had fought gamely enough to land the top spot in the counts. Three hours after that the field had been trimmed to just 285 players, with Super*Catch sitting in first and approaching the 1 million-chip mark.
About five hours after that they were down to 100, led by JAMIEHUNT83, BennyZhang, and szadali as the only players north of the 2 million-chip mark.
Finally after almost 11-and-a-half hours they'd reach the end of Level 40 and the scheduled stopping point for Day 1, with 46 players left and BOOMAX1964 of Slovenia the only one of them with more than 4 million. Here's a look at the overnight top 10:
1. BOOMAX1964 (Slovenia) -- 4,323,641
2. UBS2927 (Germany) -- 3,828,735
3. JAMIEHUNT83 (United Kingdom) -- 3,029,951
4. BennyZhang (China) -- 2,814,499
5. riskysoldier (Canada) -- 2,540,904
6. Raabise (Estonia) -- 2,468,682
7. Kes237 (Belarus) -- 2,406,891
8. bapc_3 (Russia) -- 2,297,553
9. aue1966 (Canada) -- 2,227,063
10. szadali (Hungary) -- 2,165,373
Day 2: 46 to 1
When play resumed on Saturday the blinds remained 5/5 as always -- just as throughout the entire tournament -- while the antes to start Level 41 had increased to 17,500. That meant players were having to contribute more than 157,000 per orbit to start the day, with that cost scheduled to increase every 15 minutes when the levels changed. And with the average stack just over 1.4 million that also meant little time for waiting around for a lot of players, most particularly the short stacks.
The first hour saw the field swiftly trimmed down to 24 players, with BOOMAX1964 slipping from the top spot to be replaced by sw_iceman who had risen up the counts to build a stack of just over 6.8 million by the first break.
It only took about 20 minutes more to play down to 18, with GuiAvilaa having pushed past all into the top spot with more than 7 million.
A little over an hour after that they were down to nine, with D_tek (18th), Raabise (17th), and aue1966 (16th) each earning $184.95, ZesLucky (15th), Hupenmann (14th), and Kes237 (13th) taking away $264.22 apiece, and riskysoldier (12th), casinoberlin (11th), and start-of-Day-2 leader BOOMAX1964 (10th) each seeing $352.29 added to their PokerStars accounts.
During the playing down GaiAvilaa continued to keep the top spot, adding chips to have more than 15 million to start the final table.
Seat 1: jiZYo (Russia) -- 4,909,572
Seat 2: GuiAvilaa (Brazil) -- 15,434,481
Seat 3: szadali (Hungary) -- 10,256,856
Seat 4: BennyZhang (China) -- 2,726,670
Seat 5: bapc_3 (Russia) -- 1,731,142
Seat 6: JAMIEHUNT83 (United Kingdom) -- 5,445,459
Seat 7: Gorleone (Netherlands) -- 3,765,766
Seat 8: UBS2927 (Germany) -- 9,052,667
Seat 9: sw_iceman (Russia) -- 11,247,387
About 10 minutes after the final table began, the antes were up to 90,000 when bapc_3 pushed all in from middle position for 611,112 and got a single caller in JAMIEHUNT83 sitting one seat over. bapc_3 had [Ad][6h] and needed help versus JAMIEHUNT83's [Qd][Qh]. But the board brought no improvement for bapc_3,
score: 1
about 11 hours ago