WSOP Event #6: $111,111 HIGH ROLLER for ONE DROP No-Limit Hold'em (Live Updates)

Day 4

Back For The Final Table

And we’re back for the big one, over $3.3 million up top and one of the most prestigious bracelets out there along with the $50,000 Players’ Championship and the Main Event. Of the 130 players who started only nine remain to battle over what is left of the $13,722,150 prize pool.

As everyone unbagged and stacked up their chips, Melissa Castello was on hand to have a quick chatette with the finalists for PokerNews. Everyone tried to sound respectful of the game and their opponents while in their hearts they harbored the cold predatory thoughts of a shark out hunting. No one is going to have it easy at this table, there’s nothing but other sharks in the water today.

The players are coming to the table with a lot more chips than is usual as well, with most of the players starting with over 30 big blinds. It won’t be a shove fest to start with, we’ll get to see some real poker played by some of the best. 

As usual internet personality and two time bracelet winner Doug Polk had his YouTube subscribers covered with a vlog about Day 3 and his pregame thoughts on the final table.

Another player to watch will be Martin Jacobson who has played just two tournaments in the WSOP this year so far including this one, and has swung back to back final tables. He and his team mate made the FT of the tag team tournament.

And of course ElkY Grospellier, the chip leader, sitting pretty behind a veritable Theodosian wall of orange and black 25,000 chips.

Blood in The Water, Kamran Gone in Ninth for $312,006

On hand 25, with blinds at 120,000-240,000 with a 40,000 chip ante. Mike Kamran shoved for 1,050,000 from the cutoff and was called by Dario Sammartino.

Kamran’s Q-8 was in trouble against Sammartino’s A-K and when a king fell on the flop, that was Goodnight, Vienna. An eight on the turn wasn’t enough and the river paired the board Kamran was off to the cashier’s desk to grab his $312,006 consolation prize.

Whittling down the Field

Hand #36: With the blinds now at 150k-300k/75k, Dario Sammartino in the cutoff raises about 3x to 700k and gets reraised from the big blind by Andrew Robl. Sammartino pauses, then calls off the additional ~3,450,000 rolling over pocket kings.

Robl turns over sixes and begins a quiet prayer for his two outs. The gods remain silent in response as the board comes out 8-2-2 rainbow on the flop. A blank turn and river ends Robl’s run. He’ll be able to dry his tears with the $387,732 he takes for 8th.

Hand #43: Another all in from the cutoff, this time from Jacobson for 4,430,000 and gets a call from Kempe with an identical stack. With both players at risk they race off Kempe’s pocket fives against Jacobson’s suited A-Q.

They both missed the flop of 7-6-2 and the 8 on the turn must have given Kempe hope. Unfortunately the river was an ace and Jacobson lived to play another hand.

Kempe takes $493,089 for seventh.

Hand #85: Two blind levels later at 250,000-500,000 with a 75,000 ante. Jacobson gets A-K on the button and folded around to, makes the natural raise to 1,100,000 and is reraised from the small blind by Sammartino – all in for 8.5million. Jacobson calls and finds himself in a classic race against Sammartino’s eights.

The board runs out 3-7-Q-Q-9 and Martin Jacobson heads to the bar to start spending his 6th Place winnings of $641,382.

Deck Trouble

Shortly after the blinds went up to 300,000-600,000 with a 100,000 ante, play was stopped after several players noted an odd mottling on the cards. They appeared to have picked up white marks during play and there was a pause while new decks were brought out and the possibility that they were marked deliberately was eliminated.

Although Doug Polk did go to Twitter to let the World know what was going on he also was clear in an interview with him that he did not suspect anyone at the table of cheating.

“I know all of these guys. Some I know pretty well, some I kind of know. They're all very respectable people in the community. I don't think anyone was cheating," he said.

Back to Play and Down to Heads Up

Hand #116: With blinds at 300,000-600,000 another race was run between Chris Moore’s pocket deuces and ElkY’s As-Ks. Once again a rivered ace decided the hand in favor of big slick and Moore was out in fifth for a not-untasty $852,885.

Hand #132: Voulgaris shoves his stack and gets called by Doug Polk who says:

"Well, I'm unfortunately going to have to call you with the aces," as he adds his chips to the pot.

Sure enough he flips up the bullet and Voulgaris’ A-5 looks in bad shape. The aces hold without much of a threat at all from the 8-4-J-7-8 board.

He is the first millionaire of the table dragging in a payout of $1,158,883 for his fourth place position and Doug Polk is sitting behind a dangerous looking stack.

Hand #135: With the blinds about to go up to 400,000-800,000 and 100,000 ante, Dario Sammartino was getting desperate and put himself all in on the button for 3.8million with Qc-5c. Polk snap called with a suited K-T and the board ran out a blank until Polk paired his ten on the river.

Sammartino got $1,608,295 for third and Polk got a few more chips (38,000,000 in total) going into heads up with ElkY (27,150,000).

Elky and Polk Bet Their Rugs

With blinds now up to 400,000-800,000 with a 100,000 ante, Polk and ElkY decide to raise the stakes even higher. Both have hairstyles which cut a recognizable silhouette – the bleached blonde spikes of ElkY and Polk’s short back and sides fauxhawked up in the centre.

They agree that whoever suffers the injury of losing will also accept the insult of having to wear the other’s hairstyle for the rest of the series. 

Things just got tense.

Heads Up With Elky and Polk

In the end heads up play was just seventeen hands before the hammer fell, in hand 142 of the final table Polk raised preflop putting Elky to a decision for his 6.7m stack. Grospellier must have been thrilled to look down at A-8 and called. 

He must have been even happier when Polk turned over Q-5. But the first card out on the flop was a deadly queen and ElkY was looking for an ace which never came and Polk collected his third bracelet. As he put it, his first “real one.” Going on to say:

"It does feel much better. To win that much money against tough people in a world-class event, it's way different.”

His previous two bracelets were in a $1,500 hold’em event and last year’s tag team.

Grospellier took $2,278,657, while Polk got to keep $3,686,865, the bracelet and his signature hairstyle.

Event #6 Final Table Results

Day 3

Polk Starts Day 3 With his Day 2 Vlog

Negreanu was up late editing together his WSOP vlog where he talked some day two hands. Now that he’s out of the tourney he’ll be off chasing another bracelet in the $2500 Mixed Triple Draw Lowball tourney.

Meanwhile Doug Polk must have been doing the same all night, despite still being in the biggest buy in tournament of the series. You’d expect him to be head down, dreaming about the 3.5million chip stack he bagged up on day two. 

Instead he made us this, to start Day 3 off with a bang vlog-style:

Shuffle Up and Deal for Day 3 of the One Drop

23 players came back on day three of the High Roller for One Drop. They will be starting of with blinds at 30,000-60,000, with an ante of 10,000 and play will continue until a final table of nine players is reached.

Before the action got underway there were a few questions put to Phil Hellmuth about the mysterious smoke signals going up in the Rio car park the night before. It turns out it was just an impromptu trash fire he’d set as a way of turning his signature gold shoes into a burnt offering to the poker gods. Daniel Negreanu, Antonio Esfandiari and Jim Walsh – Hellmuth’s spiritual guru – were in attendance at the solemn ceremony.

The game started off fast with the first elimination coming quick on the heels of the call to shuffle up and deal. Moritz Deitrich was the first out of the day, the first of three casualties that needed to fall before the money bubble breaks. 20 people will be getting paid paid in this tournament so there are just a two more disappointed faces to go.

Into The Money

Just before the blinds were raise to 50,000-100,000 with a 15,000 ante the money was passed through. With just 140,000 in chips Dan Shak was the obvious candidate for bubble-boy and he did not disappoint.

Shak was folded to in the cutoff and had little choice but to shove with his AJos. There was a discussion with the floor as to what the ruling would be if two players busted in the same hand and once that was settled – not entirely to the table’s satisfaction – Scott Seiver was priced in to call in the big blind with just J5os, leaving Shak was looking hopeful. 

Unfortunately for Dan the board ran out T-4-3 on the flop giving Seiver a runner-runner straight draw to the wheel which he hit when the deck spat out an ace followed by a deuce on the the turn and river.

Everyone else breathed a sigh of relief, and can now look forward to taking at least $166,666 home with them by either cheque, cash or transfer.

Esfandiari Railward Bound in 11th ($257,072)

Once the bubble burst the game loosened up a little with everyone looking to the bracelet. Igor Kurganov was looking for his second bracelet, back-to-backing off his fairytale win of the Tag Team event. It was not to be and he was biked in 18th when his A8os failed to improve against pocket nines.

Other big names to follow him included Daniel Coleman (16th) and Antonio Esfandiari (11th) both of whom have won previous Big Ones for One Drop. Esfandiari’s final hand came in the 80,000-160,000 level when he raised from the cutoff and was three bet by Rainer Kempe in the big blind.

The flop came down 8-4-3 all clubs and Kempe led out for about half the pot, a raise/reraise later and both players were all in for 3.5m: Esfandiari with As-Jc and Kempe with two aces one of them a club. 

The fifth club came for both of them on the river and Kempe took it down.

Then there were ten, and everyone wanted to see if Phil Hellmuth could hold on long enough to make his third One Drop final table.

Jacobson Pricks the FT Bubble, Hellmuth Busto

Unfortunately for Poker Brat fans – and the Brat himself – Phil Hellmuth’s A-4 didn’t improve against 2014 Main Event bracelet winner Martin Jacobson’s A-K. The older champ shook the younger’s hand saying, ‘Good game.’ and wandered off to Tweet about how well he’d played.

With the final nine players now decided, the tournament broke up for the day after just four and a bit blind levels worth of play. 

Coming back tomorrow Bertrand ‘Elky’ Grospellier will be sitting pretty in the chip lead with 16,825,000. That is almost double the second biggest stack: Martin Jacobson’s 8,890,000 chips. 

Doug Polk is also still in the running and will be looking for his third bracelet when the table reconvenes. Everyone else is still hoping for their first. Good luck to the lot of them.

Official End-of-Day Chip Counts

Day 2

The $111,111 High Roller for One Drop is near the money bubble, as just 23 players remain with 20 places paid. It's a star-studded field, as expected.

Two of those stars are former winners of the event, although each took it down when the buy-in was $1 million. Both 2012 champ Antonio Esfandiari and 2014 champ Dan Colman remain in the event after Day 2. Esfandiari finished the night with 2,105,000, while Colman bagged 4,100,000.

The two former champs went in opposite directions at the end of the night.

Esfandiari got Scott Seiver all in for 40 big blinds late, with "The Magician" holding pocket kings and Seiver pocket queens. The flop was clean enough for Esfandiari, but Seiver ran out a queen-high straight on the turn and river to double up.

Colman can thank a stroke of great fortune for his continued presence. He shoved with a little over 20 big blinds in the cutoff when Charlie Carrel opened on his right during Level 16 (30,000/60,000/10,000), the last of the night. Behind him, a nightmare scenario unfolded as both David Peters on the button and big blind Haralabos Voulgaris proceeded to get stacks in.

Luckily for Colman, his ace-two of clubs was actually fairly live against pocket kings (Voulgaris) and pocket queens (Peters). The flop brought a gutter for Colman and he turned a wheel to triple up and leave Peters and Voulgaris on fumes. Voulgaris proceeded to bag after doubling through Peters, though.

Leading the remaining 23 is French superstar Bertrand "ElkY" Grospellier. He bagged 7,040,000 at the close of play, good for a solid lead of about one million over second-place Dario Sammartino (6,080,000).

Grospellier chipped up on the featured table in a late stretch that was largely seen by only the PokerGo stream audience. One thing is certain: He got the best of Phil Hellmuth enough to be on the receiving end of an infamous "Poker Brat" rant. In one late hand, Grospellier got Hellmuth to fold trip queens with a turn check-raise semi-bluff on a straight draw. Hellmuth mucked and then expressed his frustration when ElkY showed.

The hand, along with a Sammartino four-bet bluff that got Hellmuth to lay down pocket tens, left him fuming well after players had bagged — Hellmuth finished with 2,870,000.

Seiver, Martin Jacobson, Doug Polk, Phil Galfond and Byron Kaverman were some of the others making it through. Some of those falling on Day 2 included Ben Tollerene, Antanas "Tony G" Guoga, Isaac Haxton, Dan Smith, Bryn Kenney and 888poker Ambassador Dominik Nitsche.

One other major development during Day 2 was the release of the prize pool at the close of registration with 130 players entered. The winner will bank $3,686,865 this year, and a min-cash in 20th will pay $166,666.

Official End-of-Day Chip Counts

Day 1

High Roller for One Drop - $111,111 No-Limit Hold'em drew 119 entries on Day 1. After eight levels of play, 79 players remain and 2014 Main Event champion Martin Jacobson leads the way into Day 2 with 1,677,000, followed by Charlie Carrel with 1,624,000 and Doug Polk with 1,522,000.

The day saw many faces claim the top spot of the leaderboard, the first being Ari Engel. In the early to mid stages of the day, Engel won several sizable pots against Chris Johnson before making Johnson the first elimination of the day. Several more players started to fall afterward, mainly by the hands of Leon Tsoukernik who spent about two levels leading the pack. Tsoukernik soon gave way to others as Rainer Kempe, Doug Polk and Dietrich Fast each spent time as chip leader. However, it was a late surge from Jacobson that put him in pole position for Day 2.

Several past One Drop champions took to the felt and enjoyed mixed results. Big One for One Drop champions Antonio Esfandiari (905,000) and Dan Colman (377,000) survived, while past One Drop High Roller champions Fedor Holz and Anthony Gregg were among those who did not make it to Day 2.

Registration will remain open for the first two levels on Saturday and should close around 4:20 pm. Play resumes at 2:00 and the schedule for the day calls for another eight levels.

Official End-of-Day Chip Counts

Bigger may not always be better, but when it comes to poker tournaments, there is always a certain excitement generated by anything with an abnormally large buy-in. For a long time the $50,000 HORSE was the biggest and best event in poker. A mixed-game high-stakes showdown for the championship of the pro’s pros. This year there’ll still be a $50k mixed-game Player’s Championship, but it won’t be the biggest game in town by a long shot.

The $1,000,000 buy in One Drop event having been moved to Monte Carlo this year the WSOP’s pride of place in the Rio will be the $111,111 High Roller for One Drop No Limit Hold’em event with an additional re-entry allowed once per player this game is gonna play massive.

Everyone will be expecting the biggest names in poker to be turning out along with the odd wealthy amateur who wants to swim with the sharks.

Daniel Negreanu has said he’ll definitely be playing the One Drop in his recent vlog and the usual high roller crew can be expected to shell out for this one as well – players like Bryn Kenney who ran so hot in Monte Carlo earlier this year, and of course Antonio Esfandiari who won the inaugural Big One for One Drop in 2012.

We’ll also be looking forward to seeing if last year’s winner, Fedor Holz, will be able to defend his title against what is likely to be one of the toughest fields of the series.

The event is named for and in aid of One Drop: a charity founded by billionaire and owner of Cirque du Soleil, Guy Laliberte, who happens to be a poker-player himself. 

One Drop has been partnered up with the WSOP since back in 2012 through All In for One Drop, who arrange various poker events for the Charity. These tournaments are useful as publicity for One Drop’s good works, bringing sustainable drinking water to those who don’t have it in Central America, West Africa and South Asia. 

They do so by providing the infrastructure, education and capital for wells, plumbing and filtering equipment. The capital part is the other benefit the WSOP events provide – 3.5% of the One Drop events’ prize pools goes to the Charity.

Shuffle up and deal will be at 3 PM local time in Vegas (UTC-08:00) today (Friday the 2nd June) and we’ll be covering it right here on Poker Tube.