There's Always a Bigger Fish: Amateur Beats The Pros in Monte Carlo PLO High Roller

(Photo: Pokerstars.com)

In true Omaha fashion there were only four Americans who opted to throw down the €10,300 to trade chips and thrills across the baize in the Monte Carlo Pot-Limit Omaha High Roller Event. So instead it was left largely to the European contingent to fill up the sixty strong field and fight it out for the first place payout of €174,600 and four-card bragging rights for the rest of the week. 

Play closed on day one with eleven players left meaning that at least three poor bastards had to get up the next day to play for sweet Fanny Adams. Still with €582,000 in the pot to split between them, one imagines they all came to the tables with their engines in the red.

After George Wolff bubbled in 9th everyone breathed a sigh of relief, doing away with another two players before the 5k-10k blind level was over. Then it was a slow war of attrition as pro after pro dropped out leaving Imad Derwiche, self professed “fish”, heads-up with Sampo Ryynanen and fellow Frenchman Sylvain Loosli.

No one was far behind in three handed play, with between 30-50 big blinds per player. Nothing was a done deal and they traded small pots back and forth for hours until, finally, Loosli went broke doubling up Derwiche and bring the game into heads up play.

Imad Derwiche: Heads up, my friend. 
Sampo Ryynanen: My favorite.
ID: Mine too.
SR: You can play every hand.

And they did… Sampo Ryynanen is a triple threat – young, aggressive and Scandinavian – and should have been the favorite going in, a fact that Derwiche was more than happy to cop to… once he’d won:

"I'm here just for having fun with my friends and I won. I'm not a professional poker player like the most who are here,” Derwiche said in his post game interview. “And this means that everybody can win. It is a good moment for poker."

This may be a somewhat optimistic statement – a €180k win in a field of tens is not quite the same as Chris Moneymaker’s WSOP title; but, for whatever reason, we love to root for the underdog. Even when that underdog is an independently wealthy amateur whose record includes a couple of final tables at this exact casino last year and around $1.6million dollars in lifetime winnings.

Here’s to the fish.

(Photo: Pokerstars.com)