A Super High Roller “What If?”

I started the week recommending some poker podcasts. Gonna sign off here talking a little about another one, the PokerNews podcast.

Today I was listening to the most recent episode of the “PNPod,” now hosted by Sarah Herring and Matthew Parvis. Among the topics covered was that $102,000 buy-in World Championship of Online Poker event that went off earlier in the week on PokerStars, the biggest buy-in event ever for online poker.

I followed that one a bit last Sunday in between watching football, then again on Monday when it finished up with a two-way chop involving “bencb789” and Fedor “CrownUpGuy” Holz, both of whom ended up earning seven-figure paydays.

Holz had won that much online before, taking away $1.3 million for winning the WCOOP Main Event two years ago. He’s also won more than $1 million in live tournaments no less than four times in 2016 alone, and a fifth time in December 2015. Just nuts.

Frank Op de Woerd did live updates on the $102K event for PokerNews, and he appeared on the PNPod to talk a little about the tournament. He brought up an interesting point about how the event began with only five players there at the start time. That’s a screenshot up above of the five-handed action, included in Frank’s coverage.

Late registration (as well as the ability to re-enter) lasted five hours on Sunday. As I recall they were still only at a single table after three hours or so, then finally the field filled out to the 28 total entries. That made the prize pool $2.8 million altogether, comfortably over the $2 million guarantee.

Frank wondered what would have happened had the five players who began the event went all in on a hand, thus “ending” the tournament even before late registration was over. With that $2 million guarantee, the players had contributed only half a million total to that point, which (theoretically) would have meant a crazily huge overlay if all $2 million were paid out.

Frank’s wondering about that five-way all-in scenario made me think of others -- say, one where only a couple of players showed up for the start of the event, then one felted the other before anyone else signed up (a much less implausible scenario than a five-way all-in).

I’ve got to imagine there was some provision in place for the event that would have prevented it from being decided in this fashion. In fact, the very first item listed among PokerStars’ “Tournament Rules” would, I suppose, allow the site to come up with some procedure to avoid any of these imagined scenarios from affecting how the $102K Super High Roller played out:

“We will, at all times, consider the best interests of the game and fairness as the top priority in the decision-making process. Unusual circumstances can, on occasion, dictate that decisions in the interest of fairness take priority over the technical rules.”

Still kind of funny to imagine those other possibilities. I suppose when constructing them, we should by matter of course have Holz winning in all instances.

Image: courtesy PokerNews.

Watching the Super High Roller Bowl

I actually had Day 1 of the 2016 Super High Roller Bowl on from start-to-finish yesterday.

Took a little while for the live stream to work out the kinks during the first hour or so, but the PokerCentral channel finally got up to speed and I had it on the teevee via the Roku. Then starting at 7 p.m. ET I switched over to the CBS Sports Network (which I rarely watch but thankfully get) and left it running all night until 3 a.m.

That’s not to say I paid close attention every step of the way, and indeed I think that would have been hard to do even for dedicated televised poker watchers. But I watched a lot, generally enjoying the show and tolerating well enough all of those Dollar Shave Club commercials.

We’ve been listening to Ali Nejad do poker play-by-play for a decade now, and he was solid as usual. Nick Schulman was doing commentary as well. I haven’t heard him do a lot before, but he was an absolute natural (I thought), very funny and quick with Nejad while also giving good analysis, often smartly directed toward a wide audience.

Interestingly, a $300K buy-in “super” high roller doesn’t really provide all that much novelty anymore. Or excitement, even, given how common six-figure buy-in events have become since they first started cropping up in early 2011. But this free-to-play “MVMT Million Dollar Final Table Challenge” game being put on by PokerCentral and MVMT watches has added an extra incentive to follow this one, even if the challenge being presented by the contest is all but impossible to meet.

You probably heard about it. Seven players will cash in this tournament, splitting a $15 million prize pool with $5 milly going to the winner. For those who entered the contest, guessing all seven cashers correctly -- in order -- wins a $1 million prize. (No shinola.) And if no one gets that, the closest to doing so wins $10,000, with the top 25 getting fancy watches.

Sure, as Fedor Holz (one of the players who I’ve picked to make my final table) joked on Twitter yesterday, “Don't miss the 0,000006$ EV and bet the Final Table order in this 300k @PokerCentral #SuperHighRollerBowl #value.” Even so, the game added a bit of fun to watching, and the ability to change your line-up at the end of Day 1 (and jettison those who had already busted) enables that to continue into today for most who are playing along.

Just for fun, I pulled together an article on Friday for PokerNews titled “Finding a Million-Dollar Strategy for Picking the Super High Roller Bowl Winners.” I didn’t really pretend to present a sure-fire strategy for playing what is mostly a lottery-like contest, but rather went through and gave a history of sorts for all 49 players in events with buy-ins of $100K or more. That is to say, I shared how many times each had cashed in such events before (or not, as some never have), not being able to share also how many times the players had entered super high rollers.

I then picked a final table comprised of dudes who’d gotten to the money in these things many times. Two of my original picks -- Scott Seiver and Isaac Haxton -- didn’t make it to today’s second day of play, and so before the window closed to change picks I swapped them out for Timofey Kuznetsov and Daniel Negreanu (both of whom finished Day 1 with big stacks).

Looking at past super high rollers seems as good a way as any to play a game like this. I was just reading this afternoon an ESPN article by Bill Barnwell discussing tonight’s Game 7 between the Golden State Warriors and Oklahoma City Thunder (which is going to interrupt my SHRB viewing for certain). He essentially did something similar, going back through history and looking for examples of teams who like OKC blew Game 6 leads in which they’d have clinched series (both in basketball and baseball), then seeing how they did in Game 7s.

In truth I think the only people who can truly handicap something like this are the players themselves, as they know more than anyone the relative skill level and potential for success of those who are participating.

Anyhow, that’s my card up top. Wish me -- and those seven guys listed above -- luck.

My, My, My Such a High Roller

So that $51K World Championship of Online Poker on PokerStars finished a little while ago. Not just a high roller, but a “super high roller.” Or so the official name went. Saw it also referred to here and there as an “ultra high roller,” which I guess it was, relatively speaking.

It ended up drawing 46 entrants, making for a $2.3 million prize pool. Decent-sized turnout, it seemed to me, although it sounded like some thought there would be even more taking part.

Ben “Ben86” Tollerene took it down, earning over $616K after a three-way chop at the end. Tollerene has won a high roller ‘COOP before (a $21K heads-up SCOOP event), and is a regular in all of these high buy-in events on Stars.

José Ángel “Cejakas14” Latorre finished runner-up. As I mentioned on Friday, PokerStars offered betting on players in the event, and looking back at a list of odds from yesterday, Latorre was on there (at 16-to-1), as was the third-place finisher Nikita “fish2013” Bodyakovskiy (at 20-to-1).

Nopaleva who finished fourth -- and who won his way into the event with FPPs -- was on there, too (at 50-to-1). Meanwhile Mike “Tîmex” McDonald (who finished fifth) and 2014 WCOOP Main Event champ Fedor “CrownUpGuy” Holz (who finished sixth) registered late (like Tollerene) and thus aren’t on the list. They had final table betting, too, I believe. (All of that is a little fuzzy for those of us here in the U.S., of course.)

Will be curious going forward to see whether or not the $51K thing is tried again, or even bigger buy-in events, as well as whether betting on online events will become more common. In any case, the WCOOP continues to rage on, doing well as usual without the Americans.

Meanwhile, every time I see another one of these high rollers come around lately, can’t help but think of a certain Cheap Trick track: