Sam Greenwood Does it Again; From One Big Blind to €1,000,000 Victory
The 2018 partypoker LIVE MILLIONS Grand Final at the Casino Barcelona has crowned another champion and the top finisher scooped a seven-figure payday in the record-setting festival. Only seven players returned to their seats on the feature table out of 57 entries, and a lengthy bubble in the previous night resulted in four very short stacks for the final day of the €51,000 Super High Roller.
Among those shorties was Sam Greenwood, who led the partypoker LIVE MILLIONS Season 1 leaderboard in terms of cashes prior to Barcelona. After an amazing trip to Punta Cana, he had more than $1.3 million racked up on the newly established tour, and he almost doubled that in Barcelona after staging an impressive comeback.
In the Caribbean, the Canadian high stakes regular had been down to a few big blinds before coming back to win. In the second-most expensive event of the Barcelona festival, it was even more incredible after Greenwood came back from 600,000 chips at blinds of 250,000/500,000.
Several double ups later, he was suddenly in heads-up against Sergio Aido and that's when the action slowed down a lot. No big pots were played, but Greenwood eventually pulled away to establish a decent lead. In the final hand, he bet all three streets with ace-nine for flopped top pair, and Aido called him down with jack-ten for a double gutshot on the turn and third pair on the river.
“He is a tough player. We didn't have much to play with on 30 big blinds at heads up. I just had the best hand most of the time on the river, so that was easy.” Aido had to settle for second place and a payday of $741,000 (€600,000). He is the second Spaniard to finish runner-up in a Super High Roller during this festival. It is the third-biggest cash for Aido, who will boost his earnings on the live circuit to more than $7 million.
While Greenwood has been a regular in the High Roller tournaments and ran extremely hot at the 2017 partypoker LIVE Caribbean Poker Party at Punta Cana with a victory in the Main Event, the triumph here in similar comeback fashion feels special to the Canadian.
“I got a second in a couple 50k's before. I actually got second to Fedor (Holz) in a 50k here before, so it feels really nice to win one.”
The next high stakes event is just around the corner with the ongoing €100,000 Super High Roller, and Greenwood confirmed that he will be in the hunt for another trophy after taking a short break.
“I didn't get too much sleep, because the bubble went so long last night. I will probably get something to eat and caffeine, then jump into the 100k.”
Final Result €51,000 Super High Roller
| Place | Winner | Country | Prize (in USD) | Prize (in EUR) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Sam Greenwood | Canada | $1,235,330 | €1,000,000 |
| 2 | Sergio Aido | Spain | $741,198 | €600,000 |
| 3 | Patrik Antonius | Finland | $494,132 | €400,000 |
| 4 | Keith Tilston | United States | $351,451 | €284,500 |
| 5 | Jean-Noel Thorel | France | $259,419 | €210,000 |
| 6 | Joao Simao | Brazil | $197,653 | €160,000 |
| 7 | Matthias Eibinger | Austria | $135,886 | €110,000 |
The event attracted a field of 57 entries in total for a prize pool of €2,764,500. Seth Davies ended up as the bubble boy in the previous night, while partypoker ambassador Joao Simao continued his hot run in 2018 by adding another €160,000 score after finishing sixth. Start-of-day chip leader Patrik Antonius fell in third place for €400,000.
