My, My, My Such a High Roller

So that $51K World Championship of Online Poker on PokerStars finished a little while ago. Not just a high roller, but a “super high roller.” Or so the official name went. Saw it also referred to here and there as an “ultra high roller,” which I guess it was, relatively speaking.

It ended up drawing 46 entrants, making for a $2.3 million prize pool. Decent-sized turnout, it seemed to me, although it sounded like some thought there would be even more taking part.

Ben “Ben86” Tollerene took it down, earning over $616K after a three-way chop at the end. Tollerene has won a high roller ‘COOP before (a $21K heads-up SCOOP event), and is a regular in all of these high buy-in events on Stars.

José Ángel “Cejakas14” Latorre finished runner-up. As I mentioned on Friday, PokerStars offered betting on players in the event, and looking back at a list of odds from yesterday, Latorre was on there (at 16-to-1), as was the third-place finisher Nikita “fish2013” Bodyakovskiy (at 20-to-1).

Nopaleva who finished fourth -- and who won his way into the event with FPPs -- was on there, too (at 50-to-1). Meanwhile Mike “Tîmex” McDonald (who finished fifth) and 2014 WCOOP Main Event champ Fedor “CrownUpGuy” Holz (who finished sixth) registered late (like Tollerene) and thus aren’t on the list. They had final table betting, too, I believe. (All of that is a little fuzzy for those of us here in the U.S., of course.)

Will be curious going forward to see whether or not the $51K thing is tried again, or even bigger buy-in events, as well as whether betting on online events will become more common. In any case, the WCOOP continues to rage on, doing well as usual without the Americans.

Meanwhile, every time I see another one of these high rollers come around lately, can’t help but think of a certain Cheap Trick track: