With the second running of its Mixed Game tournament series in the rearview mirror, the PokerGO Tour set its sights on another overlooked (at least here in the States) version of poker. Pot Limit Omaha will take to the stage of the PokerGO Studios in Las Vegas as the PLO Series II begins its ten-event run this afternoon. To kick it off, the PGT held a Pot Limit Omaha version of the Super High Roller Bowl, with the $100,000 buy-in tournament won on Wednesday night by Jared Bleznick after a tough battle against a strong final table.
Inaugural PLO Super High Roller Proves to Be Popular
To help kick off the PLO Series, PokerGO came up with a rather novel reason to gather the best the discipline has to offer – throw a $100,000 Super High Roller tournament that would draw the best Pot Limit Omaha players in the game together for action. The tournament began on Tuesday night and, by all appearances, was a rousing success, with 29 players on the tables from the start of action. After a day of battle, it all came to a close on Tuesday night with seventeen players left and a wild Wednesday of action on tap.
Those seventeen men came back with Bleznick holding nearly a 500K chip lead over Ben Tollerene, but there was too far left to go to be celebrating who was on the top of the standings after Day One. The 38 entries from the Day One Festivities had generated a prize pool of $3.8 million, of which the final seven men would be the only recipients. The first-place prize of $1.292 million would be sweet for some player – but who would that be?
It would take nine hours to work down to the seven-handed final table that would receive the prize pool and, in the end, Daniel Negreanu was not to be one of them. On a Q-J-6 flop, Negreanu’s chips would get to the center against Bleznick and, after the hands were turned up, Bleznick had flopped a middle set of Jacks against Negreanu’s bottom set of sixes. A five on the turn would give Negreanu some hope for an open-ended straight draw, but the seven wasn’t the card to complete that straight, ending Negreanu’s tournament in eighth place ($0).
The leader at the start of the final table, Isaac Haxton, was unable to keep a hold of that edge as the field gradually inched closer to him after the eliminations of David ‘Chino’ Rheem, Frank Civello, and Aaron Katz in seventh through fifth places, respectively. Only 1.2 million chips separated the final four contenders – Haxton (3.225 million), Bleznick (3.075 million), Isaac Kempton (3.05 million), and Stephen Chidwick (2.055 million) – so the battle was just beginning. The four men would swap the lead around between each other, with nobody able to sustain a lead. Kempton was first to go after watching Bleznick flop a full house, while Chidwick would take a bit more time before he succumbed to Haxton.
Haxton went to the heads-up play against Bleznick with more than a two million chip lead, but it didn’t last long. Bleznick found a double-up after he committed his chips to the center with a 10-9-8-7 against Haxton’s A-A-10-8 on a 9-4-2-8-5 board. That double catapulted him into the lead, one that he would not give up. On the final hand, Haxton would pot the action and Bleznick called to see a 9-4-7 rainbow flop. Out of position, Bleznick potted for over a million chips and Haxton didn’t back down, potting again for his remaining chips, and Bleznick called and turned up these cards:
Bleznick: 9-5-3-2
Haxton: Q-Q-10-6
Haxton’s Queens were leading after the flop over Bleznick’s pair of nines, but another nine on the turn changed the story in giving Bleznick trips. Needing a Queen to make a better three-of-a-kind, the river Ace failed to deliver for Haxton and earned the championship for Jared Bleznick.
1. Jared Bleznick, $1,292,000
2. Isaac Haxton, $836,000
3. Stephen Chidwick, $570,000
4. Isaac Kempton, $418,000
5. Aaron Katz, $304,000
6. Frank Civello, $228,000
7. David ‘Chino’ Rheem, $152,000
PLO Series Spans Next Ten Days
The PGT PLO Series II delivers on a format that often goes overlooked in our Texas Hold’em centric tournament poker world. Over the next ten days, there will be nothing but Pot Limit Omaha events on the agenda for the streaming channel, starting on Thursday with a $5,000 PLO tournament. From there, a couple of bounty tournaments and a PLO “Dealer’s Choice” (featuring PLO, Five-Card PLO, PLO Hi/Lo, and Big O) will be on the calendar. The finale will be a $25,000 PLO Championship Event beginning on October 29.
Here’s a list of the tournament schedule for the PLO Series II on the PGT calendar:
October 19 – $5000 Pot Limit Omaha
October 20 – $7500 PLO Bounty (each player has $2500 bounty)
October 21 – $10,000 PLO
October 22 – $15,000 PLO Progressive Bounty (bounties start at $3000)
October 23 – $10,000 PLO
October 24 – $10,000 PLO Dealer’s Choice
October 27 – $10,000 PLO
October 28 – $10,000 PLO Hi/Lo
October 29 – $25,000 PLO Championship Event
October 30 – $2000 Five-Card PLO
As always, the tournaments will be streaming on PokerGO, so if you are an aficionado of the non-Texas Hold’em world, this may be the type of tournament action you’ll watch. It all starts today and will run until Halloween.
(Photo courtesy of PokerGO.com)