While there were several other tournaments on the agenda at the 2013 World Series of Poker yesterday, there was one event that drew pretty much every railbird flocked to. It wasn’t because the other tournaments were boring, but when there is a six figure buy in for a tournament, THAT is going to be the one where most of the attention is going to go.
After last year’s triumphant “Big One For One Drop” and its million dollar buy in, this year’s Event #47, the “One Drop High Rollers” tournament, was the focus of everyone at the Rio. Last year’s field was capped at 48 players and many (this writer included) were concerned that a smallish field would turn out for the $111,111 buy in tournament this year. Those concerns were blasted out of the water as the deep-pocketed pros stepped up to take on arguably one of the toughest tests of the 2013 WSOP.
Getting off to a bit of a late start, every table at the High Roller event was packed with pros as they set off on their three day (hopefully) journey. Within a few moments of the opening bell, both Greg Mueller and David Benyamine were all in with their 300K starting stacks on a 3-8-7-4-2 board, but both would turn up 6-5 for the nuts to split the pot. That was the first significant move of the day as the players jabbed at each other with their mountainous stacks.
Mueller and Benyamine would clash again at the one hour mark, with a much different outcome this time. On a Q-5-5-3-3 board, Benyamine would check raise Mueller on the river and, after some thought, Mueller made the call. Benyamine rolled his cards one at a time, a six first and a five second, to show a rivered boat. Mueller one upped that, however, showing down his Q-5 for the flopped boat to take a big hand that saw him surge to 475K and Benyamine drop to 115K.
Benyamine would work off of that short stack for a bit as Alexey Rybin became the first departure of the tournament after Chamath Palihapitiya’s A-Q hit an Ace on the flop over Rybin’s pocket tens. Mohsin Charania, Talal Shakerchi, John Morgan, Sam Trickett and Palihapitiya would all depart before Benyamine, however, as the late registration period ended and the stunning final numbers were announced.
When the final tally was announced, 166 players had shown up for the biggest buy in tournament at the 2013 WSOP. Building a prize pool of $17.8 million, the top 24 players would take home the minimum payday of $173,723. All eyes were on the first place number, however, with the winner of the “One Drop High Rollers” taking down a $4,830,619 windfall.
Benyamine will not be one of those players, but he has plenty of company that joined him as the evening’s play proceeded. Isaac Haxton, Philipp Gruissem, Dan Smith, Michael Mizrachi, Brian Rast, Sam Farha and Erick Lindgren all ended up with nothing but a seat slip to show for their efforts, but the leaderboard is jammed with players who did have a good day.
Brandon Steven was one of those players with a chip stack that just seemed to get larger as the day progressed. By the end of the night, Steven was sitting on 1.398 million in chips, good for the lead, while Tobias Reinkemeier joined him as the only player over the one million chip mark with his 1.225 million stack.
1. Brandon Steven, 1.398 million
2. Tobias Reinkemeier, 1.225 million
3. Dan Shak, 999,000
4. Jason Mo, 975,000
5. Chris Lee, 906,000
6. Ben Lamb, 855,000
7. Matt Glantz, 854,000
8. Don Nguyen, 847,000
9. Bobby Baldwin, 839,000
10. Farshad Fardad, 833,000
Other players in the Top 25 of the 108 players remaining include Daniel Negreanu (13th, 785K), John Juanda (who had to race to make the late registration and ended the evening in 16th place with 720K), Jean-Robert Bellande (17th, 719K), Owais Ahmed (19th, 683K) and Mueller (23rd, 665K).
The “One Drop High Rollers” has already made the history books as the largest ever six-figure buy in poker tournament, eclipsing the Asia Millions Main Event from earlier this year and its 125 entries (that tournament was a rebuy event for approximately $130,000 USD, if you can believe it). There will be more eyes on the remaining players today on Day Two as they attempt to work their way to the final table in one of the marquee events of the 2013 WSOP.
