Sam Greenwood Steamrolls into Lead After Day 1 of the Pot-Limit Omaha High Roller in Macau
The next High Roller tournament of the 2017 PokerStars Championship Macau festival got underway at lunch time in the PokerStars Live Macau poker room at City of Dreams with Day 1 of the HK$82,400 Pot-Limit Omaha High Roller event. The registration for the tournament closed with the start of level 11 and 30 players ponied up the equivalent of $10,605 to take part.
Further six single re-entries were purchased to create a 36-entry strong field and prize pool of HK$2,793,600, which is to be shared among the top six spots. A minimum cash is worth HK$196,100 (~$25,240) while the winner can look forward to an elusive PokerStars Championship trophy and a payday of HK$950,000 (~$122,277).
After 12 levels of 45 minutes each, only 13 hopefuls remained and bagged up chips with Canadian poker pro Sam Greenwood holding a sizable lead over the rest of the field. Greenwood had to fire a second bullet after busting on the first attempt against Quan Zhou, came back even more determined and steamrolled through the tables by busting several players.
Quan Zhou was among those casualties just before the last two tables were reached, when the Chinese shoved the river of an ace-high board with a straight only for Greenwood to check and snap-call the shove with the second nutflush. That hand cemented the lead for Greenwood and he eventually claimed 438,500.
Among those to leave the tables empty-handed without anything to show for were Oliver Weis, Vladimir Troyanovskiy, Edison Nguyen, Kazuhiko Yotsushika and Sylvain Loosli. The former three all fell victim to the hot run of Greenwood, while Yotsushika put his hopes on an open-ended straight and queen-high flush draw. The set of fours of Fabian Geisel held up and the Japanese was gone.
Imad Derwiche registered after the field came back from the dinner break and fired two bullets without success while Jan Collado's bottom set failed to hold up against the top two and flush draw of Martin Kozlov. After the departure of yesterday's HK$206,000 Single-Day High Roller champion Zhou, the last two tables saw two eliminations at the same time. Hongjun Zhao's ace-king suited failed to get there after a raising war with the pocket kings of Joseph Kushner and Jussi Nevanlinna's move with middle pair against the bottom straight of Sam Greenwood also wasn't rewarded.
Shao Me Yang then ran out of chips within two hands and became the last casualty of the day. The remaining 13 players will keep their seat assignments over night and the field will be combined to one table and redraw at the last nine. Ka Kwan Lau (262,500) and Fabian Geisel (206,500) round up the top three while Daniel Geeng registered at the last minute and spun up his stack to 174,000. Other notables through include Joseph Kushner (165,000), PokerStars Team Pro Felipe Ramos (124,000) and Isaac Haxton (114,000), while World Series of Poker bracelet winner Martin Kozlov (22,500) is among the several short stacks.
Seat Assignments for Day 2
| Seat | Table 1 | Country | Chip Count | Table 2 | Country | Chip Count |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Joseph Kushner | USA | 165,000 | David Wang | Australia | 54,500 |
| 2 | empty | - | - | Daniel Geeng | USA | 174,000 |
| 3 | empty | - | - | Felipe Ramos | Brazil | 124,000 |
| 4 | Fabian Geisel | Germany | 206,500 | Hok Lee | Hong Kong | 56,500 |
| 5 | Maksim Shuts | Belarus | 14,000 | Chun Yuan Wang | China | 132,000 |
| 6 | Shuo Li | China | 27,000 | empty | - | - |
| 7 | Isaac Haxton | USA | 114,000 | Martin Kozlov | Australia | 22,500 |
| 8 | Ka Kwan Lau | Spain | 262,500 | Sam Greenwood | Canada | 438,500 |
The action will recommence at 12 p.m. local time with level 13 and blinds of 1,500-3,000. The tournament will play down to a winner, and at the same time the second edition of the HK$206,000 Single-Day High Roller kicks off as well for all those poker aficionados that are looking for high stakes action. The PokerNews live reporting team will be on the floor to provide all the updates for both events, as well as for Day 3 of the Main Event.