Imsirovic Aims for Two Straight at Poker Masters
A challenger to Brandon Adams has emerged at Poker Masters.
After Adams raced out to an early lead in the battle for the Poker Masters Purple Jacket after making the first three final tables, with only Isaac Haxton rising to within easy striking distance after winning the short-deck event. However, Ali Imsirovic has now put himself in a strong position move into first place.
Early on Wednesday, Imsirovic wrapped up a big win in Event #5: $25,000 No-Limit Hold'em, banking $462,000. He followed that up with an extremely dominating performance on Day 1 of Event #6: $50,000 No-Limit Hold'em. He wound up putting more than half of the total chips in a bag with 3.63 million, over three-times the stack of nearest challenger Justin Bonomo.
| Seat | Player | Stack |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Sam Soverel | 430,000 |
| 2 | Ali Imsirovic | 3,630,000 |
| 3 | Jake Schindler | 835,000 |
| 4 | Seth Davies | 465,000 |
| 5 | Justin Bonomo | 980,000 |
| 6 | Koray Aldemir | 710,000 |
The biggest buy-in yet to take place in the series saw a strong turnout of 47 players, with a number waiting until the last minute to register or reenter after busting earlier. Some new faces like Keith Tilston and Christoph Vogelsang who hadn't participated in earlier events showed up, perhaps foreshadowing a big field for the forthcoming $100,000 Main Event.
The first moment that hinted Imsirovic might be in for another big day came in Level 13 (5,000/10,000/10,000). Imsirovic opened and saw two players shove all in behind him. Holding queens, he called, and Haxton (king-queen suited) and Dan Smith (pocket fives) were sent packing when nobody found anything on the board to overtake Imsirovic.
Imsirovic simply rolled from there, busting six more players en route to bagging his massive lead. Sometimes, like when he busted Rainer Kempe, with ace-nine against ace-queen, he just got lucky. Other times, like when he busted Matt Hyman with kings full against Broadway, he started with big hands and found dream boards.
After busting Elio Fox on the bubble, Imsirovic put a stamp on the night by winning a flip against Bryn Kenney to make him the night's only elimination in the money.
Still, with the likes of 2018 super-crusher Bonomo and four other high-roller regs awaiting Imsirovic on Thursday at noon — with a stream on PokerGO an hour later — it's not over just yet in the fight for $799,000.
After a furious few days of action at the PokerGO Studio, it will also be Main Event time on Thursday. That gets going at 2 p.m. with coverage here on PokerNews. With a $100,000 buy-in it's certainly worth paying attention to.