Maxim Panyak Wins TonyBet OFC World Championship High Roller
After 16.5 hours of play, Maxim Panyak won the 2015 TonyBet Open-Face Chinese Poker World Championship €10,000 High Roller for €110,000.
Not only that, but the tournament set a new record for the largest-ever OFC tournament with 23 different players. Those 23 accounted for 10 reentries to bring the total field size up to 33 to generate a €304,095 prize pool.
Play was deep early on, and it took about three hours for Duc Han Tran to become the first player eliminated. From there, eliminations and reentries began to take place much more frequently.
Poland's Dzmitry Urbanovich, who is best known for his winning of four different EPT events in the same festival earlier this year in Malta, led the way in reentries with five.
The bubble broke a little after 4 a.m. local time, which was more than eight hours into the tournament, when Ukraine's Kostiantyn Tupalo was eliminated in sixth place. About 45 minutes later, Natasha Barbour finished in fifth place for €30,410, after which players began to play on a four-handed final table where one player was always sitting out since pineapple OFC only can cater to three players at one time.
Two blind levels passed — or an hour and a half — before Italy's Max Pescatori was the next player to be eliminated in fourth place for €37,000. At this point, play went back to three-handed action with no players sitting out.
Team PokerStars Pro Jason Mercier was the next player to be eliminated just 40 minutes later at a little bit before 7 a.m. CET. He took third place for €50,655. Mercier informed PokerNews that he plans on playing in the European Poker Tour €50,000 Super High Roller tomorrow.
This left us with an all-Russian heads-up battle. Both players started with about the same chip stack, as Maxim Panyak had 850,000 in chips to Evgeny Kocherov's 800,000. Both players were over 100 points deep and got a few hands in before the level increased to 8,000 chips per point.
About 25 minutes into heads-up play, Panyak took a huge lead with 1,400,000 in chips to Kocherov's 250,000 in chips Just a few hands later, Panyak was able to wrap things up to be declared the champion, while Kocherov collected a handsome runner-up prize of €76,030.
| Place | Player | Prize |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Maxim Panyak | €110,000 |
| 2 | Evgeny Kocherov | €76,030 |
| 3 | Jason Mercier | €50,655 |
| 4 | Max Pescatori | €37,000 |
| 5 | Natasha Barbour | €30,410 |
On Tuesday, the two-day TonyBet OFC €1,000 Main Event kicks off at 3 p.m.CET. Stay tuned to PokerNews as we report on the tournament and to view the live stream.