Ottomar Ladva Wins the Super High Rollers for $446,446
Ottomar Ladva has won H-16: $25,500 Super High Rollers after a heads up deal. Ladva made it through 85 total entries to heads up play, where he and second place finisher Marius Gierse cut a deal to chop the lion's share of the $2.125 million prize pool. Ladva locked up $446,446 with the most chips, to Gierse's $435,790.
Ladva came to the world's attention through the game of chess, where he achieved Grandmaster rank after winning a round-robin tournament in Riga in 2015. Prior to that, he was the youngest Estonian Chess Champion, and dominated the Estonian junior chess circuit from 2010 through 2014.
Recently, he's been showing the poker world what he can do. In February of this year, he turned $530 into more than $500K when he beat Justin Bonomo heads up in partypoker's Super High Roller from the last MILLION$ Week. Before that, in 2019, he took down a field of 3,260 to win the €550 No Limit Hold'em - EPT Cup at EPT Barcelona for nearly $250,000.
Payouts
| Place | Player | Country | Prize |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Ottomar Ladva | Estonia | $446,446 |
| 2 | Marius Gierse | Austria | $435,790 |
| 3 | Juan Pardo Dominguez | Mexico | $301,475 |
| 4 | Sami Kelopuro | Finland | $235,114 |
| 5 | David Szep | Hungary | $183,361 |
| 6 | judd trump | China | $143,000 |
| 7 | Seth Davies | United States | $111,523 |
| 8 | David Yan | Australia | $86,975 |
| 9 | Daniel Dvoress | Canada | $67,830 |
| 10 | David Coleman | United States | $52,899 |
| 11 | Adrian Mateos | Spain | $49,961 |
The Day's Action
They got off to a bit of a slow start at 15:05 eastern time with fewer than 20 players in the game. Those numbers grew through the five hour late registration period, but with just three minutes to go until the registration closed, it looked like they might overlay with just 67 total entries.
There was a rush on the registration desk during the final break with almost 20 entries recorded. In the end, 85 entries put the prize pool just above the $2 million guarantee at $2,125,000.
Seth Davies was on a sun-run during the registration period, and when the gates came down, he had more than 1.6 million chips with his next closest competitor playing just over 650K.
Within an hour, they were down to 16 players left on the final two tables, and Davies was still running pure, with nearly twice as many chips as the next closest player. It took about another hour to play down to the money, and along the way players like Christian Rudolph and Jason Koon dropped out of the running.
Laurynas Levinskas bubbled the money when he shoved a short stack with queen-jack but ran into pocket kings for Davies. Just a couple hands later, the final table was set after Adrian Mateos and David Coleman went out in short order.
The first two eliminations on the final table were just as quick. Daniel Dvoress and David Yan went out very soon after the final table started but then they stalled a bit, playing seven handed for nearly an hour before Davies sun-run came to an end when he couldn't win a race against the eventual winner Ladva.
Ladva came into the final table as one of the shorter stacks, but after eliminating Davies, he was second in chips behind Juan Pardo Dominguez. "judd trump" quickly followed Davies to the exit in 6th place, followed by David Szep in fifth place.
Ladva and Dominguez exchanged the chip lead for a bit before Ladva powered to the front after eliminating Sami Kelopuro in a very cagey hand where he checked a flopped set of kings through to the river, letting the Finn get there with trips against Ladva's river boat.
Ladva then took a big pot off Dominguez to leave him short before calling off his shove with the best ace to send the game heads up. Immediately after the exit of Dominguez, Gierse and Ladva both hit the Deal button. They quickly agreed to near even chop with close to the same chip stacks, and heads up lasted exactly one hand after the deal.
Both players shoved with Gierse holding by far the best in 
, but it was Ladva's day as his 
flopped a deuce, turned a jack, and rivered another deuce for another river boat and the win.
Ottomar Ladva may have made his name in the chess world, but he looks to be making his fortune at the poker tables.