Steve O'Dwyer won his eighth tournament with a buy-in of at least $50,000 when he shipped the €50,000 Single-Day High Roller at 2018 PokerStars and Monte-Carlo©Casino EPT.

O'Dwyer got €676,300 for topping the 41-entry field, continuing his amazing run in high roller events. It's his second PokerStars $50K title this year already as he also won the one at PokerStars Caribbean Adventure for $769,500.

"That was one of the most absurd final tables I've ever played," O'Dwyer said afterward as he wound down. "Luckily, I ran really hot all in. Made some good reads... and probably some bad plays. That's poker."

€50,000 EPT Single-Day High Roller Final Result

One such read secured him the tournament. On a completed ace-high board featuring four to a wheel and a couple of clubs, O'Dwyer faced a bet of all but Nick Petrangelo's last few crumbs. Petrangelo had barreled every street, and O'Dwyer used a couple of time extensions.

"Why do I think you're full of shit?" he asked.

The American transplant found the call button with queen-five and it was good as Petrangelo could only offer a verbal surrender and a muck before sending over the last of it for the tournament the very next hand.

What made the final table so absurd, though, was the table dynamic.

While O'Dwyer has had a lengthy, successful career that's spanned thousands of tournaments and dozens of final tables, he's likely never participated in one quite like this one. The structure — featuring single reentry and 30-minute levels — often results in shorter stacks, but the 2018 edition of this event took things to the extreme. Final table average stacks consistently hovered around 15 big blinds and it was largely a preflop shovefest.

Considering the money jumps of tens of thousands of dollars, that makes for some white-knuckle poker.

An extended money bubble that took about an hour and basically consisted of short-stack all-in Russian roulette saw Sam Greenwood take the fateful pull. He lost a flip to Petrangelo with ace-king suited against sevens and will have to console himself with his €1.5 million from winning the €100K Super High Roller.

At that point, with blinds at 10,000/25,000/25,000, only Petrangelo had a somewhat comfortable stack with 1.4 million while everyone else was nursing an average of under 20 bigs. What followed was a test of patience and quick mental math as everyone constantly asked one or more opponents for a stack estimate.

Not only was it critical to know the stacks of players who had entered the pot, but everyone needed a rough idea of everyone else's stack as well to figure ICM implications. It wasn't uncommon for a player to get ask for three counts before or during a single hand, and that was paired with a 30-second timer adding to the pressure.

It took about two hours before Rainer Kempe finally went bust, during which time the average stack sank to about 13 big blinds. Justin Bonomo and Daniel Dvoress each got down under five big blinds but avoided their graves as shorties kept doubling up.

"Of course [it's frustrating]," O'Dwyer said of the situation. "You're just rooting for everyone all in to bust."

Finally, the deadlock broke when Kempe got caught shoving jack-nine into Steffen Sontheimer's king-queen suited.

Dvoress went out next at the hands of Bonomo, who ran his stack of less than two big blinds all the way into the chip lead. Unfortunately for him it was short-lived, he jammed on the button and Petrangelo woke up with sixes, which absolutely crushed six-five suited.

"Well, it was fun being chip leader," he said.

The American couldn't recover and went out fourth. Sontheimer followed in third when ace-three couldn't hold against Petrangelo's king-four. That left O'Dwyer and Petrangelo, and postflop poker became the norm once again with stacks of 25 big blinds, which must have seemed like double or triple that to the players.

Petrangelo put the pressure on and O'Dwyer made his fateful call to all but sew things up.

O'Dwyer said the stacks at the final table forced him to make his focus absolute.

"You just have to be on your toes," he said. "Dynamics change so fast. If you have the chips, you get to be the bully, and if you don't you have to figure who else is the bully and adjust."

In the end, O'Dwyer made enough adjustments and got lucky enough times to pocket another huge score, and he made it to the registration desk to sign up for Day 2 of the Main Event before calling it a night at Le Sporting.

Tags: Steve O'Dwyer