Pratyush Buddiga won the €25,500 Single-Day High Roller of the 2016 EPT Season Barcelona and got home an award of €690,275 after he made a three-way deal with his last two opponents standing. He was not granted with the largest chunk of the prize pool, but he got the spade trophy for himself.
Since one day turned out to be not enough for last year’s tournament with a total player field of 152 entries, the 2016 edition of the €25,500 Single-Day High Roller started early in the morning. All participants started the game with 100,000 in chips, and levels were 30 minutes long.
A large number of new players and re-entrants was registered until the registration closing time. This year’s one-day event set a new record, as a total of 165 entries made. The unique players who registered were 131, while 34 of the participants used their single re-entry option. The players managed to accumulate a total prize pool amounting to more than €4 million.
Considering the fact that the one-day event was especially oriented towards high rollers, there were some pretty popular faces among the players. Football player Gerard Pique took part in the event, as well as other big names such as Jason Mercier, Anthony Zinno, Shaun Deeb, Timothy Adams, Adrian Mateos and Martin Finger, who won the event in 2015.
Young German player Fedor Holz also took part in the tournament and played exceptionally well, but eventually busted out in 23rd place.
Buddiga got on the champion’s position after a tough day of fast-paced poker action after a three-way deal was stroke between him and the two other players left at the final table. The last three players standing agreed on the deal and signed the papers. Under the agreement, David Yan was awarded with a prize of €704,755. Pratyush Buddiga got €690,275, and Russian poker player Andrey Shatilov was granted with €606,020.
The deal also included a condition to go all in blind until one of the three players had all the chips and could be announced as a victor. It took only two hands to Pratyush Buddiga to first eliminate Shatilov and then cope with Yan.
The fourth position was occupied by Tobias Reinkemeier, while Steve O’Dwyer from Ireland finished fifth. The sixth place in the ranking was occupied by Alex Komaromi. Canadian Parker Talbot got seventh. Another Russian got to the final eight with Sergey Lebedev being granted with a prize chunk of €117,640.
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