Corentin Ropert Wins �25,000 Single-Day High Roller for �277,560
One day Frenchman Corentin Ropert was thinking about watching a movie, and the next he's won �277,560 in the second �25,000 Single-Day High Roller of the PokerStars European Poker Tour Prague festival.
Ropert told PokerNews that with things not going his way so far this festival, last night he contemplated putting on a movie, but instead opted to satellite into the �25,000 Single-Day High Roller the following day.
"I saw that the winner of the other �25k [Thomas Boivin] had qualified through a satellite, so I thought why not? And here I am!"
This is the biggest cash of Ropert's career to date by far. In 2014 he finished fourth in the FPS Deauville Main Event for �60,100. Now he's cashed for almost five times that amount here in the Czech capital!
Here are the results from the final table:
| Place | Name | Country | Payout in EUR | Payout in USD |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Corentin Ropert | France | � 277,560 | $313,852 |
| 2 | Tsugunari Toma | Japan | � 191,840 | $216,924 |
| 3 | Michael Addamo | Australia | � 122,450 | $138,460 |
| 4 | Dietrich Fast | Germany | � 93,880 | $106,155 |
| 5 | Norbert Szecsi | Hungary | � 73,470 | $83,076 |
| 6 | Pavel Plesuv | Moldova | � 57,140 | $64,611 |
Going into heads-up with a large chip lead of Japanese player Tsugunari Toma, he called the check-raise all in from Toma with trip fives and have his opponent drawing dead.
"The first twenty minutes of heads-up just didn't go my way. I didn't win a hand! "When I saw the hand, I couldn't believe it."
Runner-up Toma also recorded the biggest cash of his career, beating the sixth place at the Taipa APPT Main Event final table for HK$952,000 ($122,830). Last year he finished 11th in the PSC Prague �10,300 High Roller for �43,400. We will have to see if he has a deep run in that event this year, which starts tomorrow.
Recap of the Day's Action
The second �25,000 Single-Day High Roller got underway at 12:30 pm, with first and second place from the first Single-Day High Roller Thomas Boivin and Steve O��Dwyer in action early on.
Jean-Noel Thorel became the first of many to fall from the 29 unique entries this event gathered. With five re-entries that created a total field of 34 players of which five would be guaranteed a min-cash of �57,140.
Shortly after registration closed, both Boivin and O��Dwyer had been eliminated, with Dietrich Fast and Charlie Carrel battling for the chip lead.
With two tables remaining, the likes of Thorel and Timothy Adams �C who had swapped Main Event for High Roller at the very last minute �C before Carrel scored a big double through Michael Soyza to jump into the outright chip lead ahead of Fast.
Carrel turned top pair and rivered a flush and called to pick off the Malaysian's bluff with bottom pair. A short while later Carrel sent Soyza to the rail in a classic race �C tens versus ace-king. The pair held and the final table of nine was confirmed.
The early stages were remarkable, in that besides the elimination of Juan Pardo, there was a spate of doubles and even triples. Pavel Plesuv doubled twice and Dietrich Fast doubled and then tripled up as the chip counts swung back and forth.
Corentin Ropert fought back from being the short stack at the start of the final table to chip leader at the dinner break by tripling and then doubling up in quick succession.
When they returned it wasn��t long until the next elimination. The final table hadn��t been kind to Carrel who came in as chip leader, but he was sent to the rail when his ace was out-kicked by that of Tsugunari Toma.
Not long after that the bubble burst. Both Sergi Reixach and Ropert flopped pairs, but Reixach was outkicked and he would fall in seventh, the remaining six players all guaranteeing themselves �57,140.
Plesuv finished fifth in the earlier Single-Day High Roller, but he would fail to improve on that finish here as he was eliminated in sixth before Norbert Szecsi bust in fifth at the hands of Fast.
That gave Fast a boost, but after bluffing off to Ropert with just king-high - and getting called down by ace-high - Addamo finished off the German and they were down to three.
With an average of over 40 big blinds, the pace was expected to slow somewhat. However, when Addamo shoved ace-nine from the small blind, Ropert woke up with pocket nines to send the Australian out in third, one spot better than he managed in the other Single-Day High Roller. Plesuv and Addamo were the only two players to cash in both events.
That elimination meant that Ropert held an almost 4:1 chip lead heads-up against Toma, but the Japanese player battled back to get the stacks almost to even. However, a mistimed jam from Toma into the trips of Ropert meant that he was drawing dead and the Frenchman was left to celebrate wildly on the rail with his jubilant compatriots.
"Having the support on my rail was incredible," said Ropert. "The tournament was very tough but luckily I had quite a lot of good situations and I was very happy with how I played. It was exhausting, but it's a crazy feeling."
Stay tuned to PokerNews for continued coverage of the PokerStars European Poker Tour festival here in Prague, with the �10,300 High Roller starting tomorrow. You can catch all the action as it happens right here.
