Rainer Kempe Leads the Final Seven in the 2016 Super High Roller Bowl
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The 2016 Super High Roller Bowl played down to seven players remaining and into the money at the ARIA Resort & Casino in Las Vegas on Tuesday.
When play resumes at 3 p.m. local time Wednesday, German upstart Rainer Kempe will bring more than a third of the chips in play and a healthy lead in with him, after finding himself on the right end of a set-over-set situation with Dan Smith during eight-handed play.
Smith went on to bubble the money soon after.
The day began with 16 players and Matt Berkey enjoying a healthy lead. Tom Marchese had handed Berkey the chips with a big bluff on Monday, and he was the first to exit the big stage on Tuesday, losing a 60-40 flip to Jason Mercier.
Fedor Holz then busted Las Vegas high roller regular Dan Perper, and the field combined at the final two tables.
Phil Galfond, was the next to go, again a victim of Mercier, before the fun-loving Bill Perkins ran a dominated ace into Smith.
Phil Laak lost most of his chips to hedge fund manager Dan Shak when Shak cracked his queens, getting it in with an ace-high flush draw and finding an ace on the river. Laak said goodbye soon after, with Shak getting the better of him once again.
Berkey limp-called a Ben Lamb shove and outdrew him to make it ten handed and Smith took the over the chip lead when he busted Andrew Robl to leave nine players remaining.
They still played at two tables, drawing every 20 minutes to send a player from the five-handed table over to the short-handed affair, and eventually went hand for hand to avoid the players stalling on the final-table bubble.
Soon after that, Mercier found himself on the wrong end of a classic cooler, running kings into Bryn Kenney's aces to set up the final eight and put the players on the stone money bubble.
Thanks to that hand, Kenney took a slight lead over Smith into the final table, but after Smith's set-over-set debacle, he also lost a sizable pot to Kempe, allowing the German to extend his lead.
In the end, Holz busted Smith and it'll be the two Germans sitting on top of five American players when things get going in the finale with everyone guaranteed at least $600,000.
PokerNews will have coverage of the final table from start to finish on Wednesday, so tune in then to see how things end up, and who can capture the 2016 Super High Roller Bowl title and its $5 million first-place prize.