Pedro Neves Leads Final Six Players in the 2023 PCA Main Event
One of the tournament highlights of the 2023 PokerStars Caribbean Adventure (PCA) is just one day away from crowning a winner at the luxurious Baha Mar Resort in The Bahamas. A field of 889 entries in the 2023 PCA $10,300 Main Event has been cut down to the final six hopefuls and they will be playing for the biggest slice of the $8,623,300 prize pool on Sunday, January 29th.
With an average of more than 44 big blinds, it is still everybody's game, and Pedro Neves can be found atop the leaderboard with a stack of 6,205,000. Just two big blinds behind is PokerStars online qualifier Alexandre Raymond (5,955,000) while the 2021 EPT Sochi Main Event winner Artur Martirosian (5,855,000) is trailing by another single big blind only.
Day 4 chip leader Michel Dattani (4,000,000) and cash game player Christoph Csik (3,905,000) are separated by a single big blind as well and Jamil Wakil is the shortest stack. His 755,000 represent fewer than eight big blinds with 81:36 minutes remaining in Level 29 at blinds of 50,000/100,000 and a big blind ante of 100,000.
Seat Draw for the Final Day
| Seat | Player | Country | Chip Count | Big Blinds |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Pedro Neves | Portugal | 6,205,000 | 62 |
| 2 | Christoph Csik | United States | 3,905,000 | 39 |
| 3 | Artur Martirosian | Russia | 5,855,000 | 59 |
| 4 | Alexandre Raymond | Canada | 5,955,000 | 60 |
| 5 | Jamil Wakil | Canada | 755,000 | 8 |
| 6 | Michel Dattani | Portugal | 4,000,000 | 40 |
The final casualty on Day 5 was the 2019 World Series of Poker Europe Main Event champion Alexandros Kolonias, widely known under his PokerStars alias of "mexican222". Also featured on the final table were the American poker pros Taylor Paur and Jonathan Little, the latter of which lasted only one hand when the field combined to a single table.
A payday of $1,500,000 awaits the eventual winner, and the six finalists have locked up at least $307,500 for their efforts so far. With massive pay jumps waiting after each elimination, the conclusion of the Main Event may turn into a tense affair.
The penultimate tournament day recommenced with 16 players still in the mix, and the first casualty was Germany's Mauricio Ferreira Pais, who picked an unfortunate time to commit most of his chips preflop and ran into the flopped nut flush of Dattani. For the start-of-the-day chip leader, it was a return to winning ways after Raymond had cracked his pocket kings with ace-king suited to score a large double in the opening stages.
From there on, the eliminations kept coming at a consistent pace. Giuseppe Iadisernia also had his pocket kings cracked when Little nailed a set of sevens. The very jovial Clint Tolbert followed next after he never recovered from losing a big portion of his stack with ace-king suited against the pocket kings of Neves on the secondary feature table. Two further American poker pros were among those to depart before the unofficial final table, including Ian Matakis and Mitchell Halverson with Sergi Reixach departing from the main feature table in between.
Raymond continued his strong run of cards by knocking out Little in the very first hand thereafter before showcasing his talents with an excellent read on Neves, folding a turned full house correctly to the Portuguese.
Paur could not pull away from the bottom of the leaderboard despite one double-up. He lost a flip with ace-king to the pocket queens of Martirosian. Last but not least, Kolonias became short when paying off yet another flopped nut flush of Dattani and eventually succumbed to the short stack grind.
The final day is set to continue at 12:30 p.m. local time, and Martirosian could become the first player in history to win a Main Event title of PokerStars' flagship EPT and PCA tours. Victoria Coren-Mitchell and Mikalai Pobal are the only two players so far to have two EPT Main Event titles under their belt.
You can follow all the action of the thrilling conclusion right here on PokerNews or on the PokerStars YouTube and Twitch channels. All updates for the final day will be published following the 30-minute security delay of the live stream.
Final Table Results and Remaining Payouts
| Place | Winner | Country | Prize (in USD) |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | $1,500,000 | ||
| 2 | $1,000,000 | ||
| 3 | $677,400 | ||
| 4 | $519,600 | ||
| 5 | $399,800 | ||
| 6 | $307,500 | ||
| 7 | Alexandros Kolonias | Greece | $236,500 |
| 8 | Taylor Paur | United States | $181,900 |
| 9 | Jonathan Little | United States | $139,900 |