Chen Leads Final Four in Event #15: $10,000 High Roller 6-Handed
After 13 grueling hours, the action has reached a conclusion in Event #15: $10,000 High Roller 6-Handed at the 2023 World Series of Poker Paradise here at Atlantis Resort. Although the event was scheduled to finish on the second day, the tournament staff and players have agreed to extend it to a third and final day given that play went on into the early hours of the morning with no sign of ending soon.
Leading the way is China's Dong Chen, who finished the night with 4,550,000, worth 57 big blinds and nearly half the total chips in play. Chen is most closely followed by France's Thomas Santerne (3,245,000) while Jean-Noel Thorel (1,260,000) and Mike Watson (1,155,000) remain in contention.
Event #15: $10,000 High Roller 6-Handed Final Table
| Seat | Player | Country | Chips | Big Blinds |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2 | Dong Chen | China | 4,550,000 | 57 |
| 3 | Thomas Santerne | France | 3,245,000 | 41 |
| 5 | Jean-Noel Thorel | France | 1,260,000 | 16 |
| 6 | Mike Watson | Canada | 1,155,000 | 14 |
Day 2 Action
The high roller tournament attracted a field of 169 total entrants to create a prize pool of $1,690,000. The penultimate day began with 94 players, with 59 players bagging chips at the end of yesterday’s Day 1 and 35 players exercising their option to register as late as possible, just before the start of Day 2. Those players would begin with a stack worth 20 big blinds to start the day.
The field rapidly dwindled in the early parts of the day, with notable players such as Fedor Holz, Joao Vieira, Bryn Kenney, Isaac Haxton, Ren Lin, Alex Keating, Daniel Dvoress, Masashi Oya, Chris Brewer, Martin Kabrhel, Shaun Deeb and Daniel Negreanu all hitting the rail within the first three levels of the day.
Thorel began the day as the chip leader and continued to accumulate chips throughout the day. In one early highlight, the French businessman turned a set to crack Maxime Dube’s top two pair and soar up the chip counts. Meanwhile, notables Jesse Lonis, Stephen Song and Alexandra Botez couldn’t gain much momentum and were eliminated midway through the day as the money bubble drew near.
Hand-for-hand play began when players were two eliminations away from reaching the money and would last nearly 90 minutes. Armin Rezaei began building a monster stack around this time, exerting pressure on smaller stacks to win many pots without showdown. Yuri Dzivielevski and Philipp Gruissem would ultimately become the unfortunate souls to burst the money bubble, with the former losing a flip against Sergi Reixach and the latter running into the ace-king of Brandon Wilson and failing to improve.
Once the money bubble burst, eliminations came fast and furious taking less than an hour for the field to dwindle from 26 players to the final three tables. Rui Ferreira and Jessica Teusl were among the notables to hit the rail shortly after making the money. Rezaei and Thorel held a firm lead over the rest of the field at this time but Santerne would start closing the gap quickly after eliminating Luis Faria and Renan Bruschi in quick succession to surge up the counts.
Chen began to establish himself when there were ten players left, particularly after getting a five-bet shove through against Rezaei to make a serious dent in the latter's stack. Rezaei would double up a short-stacked Reixach shortly afterwards before ultimately falling to Reixach in ninth-Place. Reixach himself would hit the rail in eight-place soon afterwards to set up the unofficial seven-handed final table.
Watson would come into the final table third in chips but face an early setback after running into the pocket kings of Jin Hoon Lee. Despite losing nearly a third of his stack in that hand, Watson did an excellent job navigating the final table, outlasting the likes of Roman Hrabec, Zhewen Hu and Lee himself to finish the day as one of the final four players in the tournament. All four players are guaranteed at least $132,800 but will undeniably have their sights set on the top prize of $411,659 and a prestigious WSOP gold bracelet.
This concludes the PokerNews coverage for Day 2 but make sure to stay tuned for the final day taking place tomorrow, December 14, as we bring you all the action from the moment cards are in the air until a winner is crowned.
