23 Mar
32-year-old American poker pro Justin Bonomo took down the $270K buy-in 2018 Super High Roller Bowl China after defeating a star-studded field.
One of the biggest high rollers of the year was concluded at the Babylon Casino in Macau yesterday – the $270K Macau championship is up there with the annual $300K Aria Super High Roller Bowl, although perhaps not quite on the level of the $1 million buy-in returning WSOP Big One for One Drop.
Justin Bonomo is hardly concerned with that at the moment, however – he scored the biggest cash of his career by far with this $4.8 million. What makes his achievement even more impressive if we look at some of the names among the total 75 entries.
The invite-only tourney featured Phil Ivey, Bryn Kenney, Ike Haxton, Daniel ‘Jungleman’ Cates and many more from poker’s all-time greats. They battled for the biggest piece of the $18,539,610 prize pool.
With this result, Bonomo overtook – among others – Sam Trickett, John Juanda, Phil Ivey and Phil Hellmuth in total live tournament earnings – he jumped from the 14th position all the way up to the 6th on the all-time money list with $25.19 million.
Bonomo fought his way through a final table as tough as can be, finally getting down to heads-up against Patrik Antonius, having the chip lead.
In the last hand, Bonomo opened 57 of diamonds on the button, Antonious 3-bet with KT of hearts to almost 4 times his opponent’s initial raise, Bonomo called. The flop fell 8TJ, all diamonds- Although both players connected – especially Bonomo with his flopped flush – they both checked. On the 9h turn, Antonius checked again, Bonomo bet 40% pot (4.5 million into the 11 million chip pot), Antonius called. To the Finnish player’s demise, the Qs river gave him a straight. He led for 17 million, Bonomo shoved all-in after a little tanking, then Antonius called and saw the bad news.
With that Bonomo took home the $4.8 million first prize while Antonius got $3.15 million for his second-place finish.
The new champion reacted on Twitter as crisply as he could.
Super High Roller Bowl China Final Results:
| 1 | Justin Bonomo |
$4,820,299 |
| 2 | Patrik Antonius |
$3,151,734 |
| 3 | Rainer Kempe |
$2,039,357 |
| 4 | Dominik Nitsche |
$1,668,565 |
| 5 | Bryn Kenney |
$1,483,169 |
| 6 | Stephen Chidwick |
$1,297,773 |
| 7 | David Peters |
$1,112,377 |
| 8 | Isaac Haxton |
$927,344 |
| 9 | Jason Koon |
$741,875 |
| 10 | Daniel Cates |
$741,875 |
| 11 | Dan Smith |
$556,407 |
