blonde poker forum

The "Big One" Invitational took place in Monte Carlo last week.

28 entries (including 2 re-entries) @ €1,000,000 a pop produced a €25,000,000 prize pool.

The winner was Mr Elton Tsang, with James Bord in 4th for €2,100,000.


6th place: Andrew Pantling, 33, Canada – €1,500,000
5th place: Cary Katz, 46, United States -- €1,750,000
4th place: James Bord, 35, United Kingdom -- €2,100,000
3rd place: Rick Salomon, 47, United States -- €3,000,000
2nd place: Anatoly Gurtovoy, 43, Russia -- €5,427,781
1st place: Elton Tsang, 35, Canadian-born, now living in China -- €11,111,111




 

James Bord helping keeping the UK ringer quotient uncomfortably high.

Seems like the least interest in a huge competition ever. Banning pros seems silly

Guy's ball, he'll take it where he likes, I guess.

Was Pantling not one of the original HSNL crushers on Stars/Tilt?

Like you say it's his ball. Criteria seemed loose.

Maybe a tag event would work rather than coaches. They share a stack- tag every level so pros play pros and recs play recs

yep was clockwyze on stars. Wonder how he got in.....

 So they took 3 milly in fees for a 28 entry tourney? Nice :o

Fee's / for charity

Well it's not for pro players and he's not a pro player...same worth haralabous. 

It's fashionable to knock the WSOP (& Jack Effel) but that's not really fair Mr Greek Bloke.

This is from the official Press Release.....

"Twenty-six players took to the felt in the largest buy-in poker tournament ever held – 1,000,000 euros, and at the end of it all, more than €3,000,000 was raised for One Drop"

"The WSOP began working with ONE DROP in 2012, creating the Big One for ONE DROP event, the first-ever $1 million buy-in poker tournament, which included an 11.11% charitable component.  Since the WSOP-ONE DROP alliance was formed, more than $17,000,000 in proceeds has been raised for ONE DROP via the CIE/WSOP platform."


I'm sure some will point out that the WSOP made a few bob, too. Well fair play to them, at least they helped raise a few bob for a really good charity. Which is a sight more than many Poker Businesses have done.

It may surprise you to hear but I don't usually follow many poker related stories and as such I didn't know this was a charity donation. I take the comment back and well played.

No surprise there, I've yet to meet a Greek sort who knew much about poker.

 ;scarymoment; 

Think the whole idea was just to raise some dough, and let the rich boys have some fun.

Don't think the hsmtt regs thought much of it, though :D

Bilzerian must be waiting for the €10m buyin :D

That's it, knew it was something like that.

Oi! true though

I was lucky enough to be there covering this event. Some thoughts...

I think they dropped the ball by not allowing the pros into the side events. Some didn't run, some had low numbers (two for the HU event for example) and by the final day they allowed pros into the €100,000 side event, the largest buy-in of the lot. The festival started on Thursday and by the Saturday they'd allowed pros into cash games if there were no objections. It should be said that I only saw four pros (five if JRB is a pro?) in the cash games and there were four to five games running. The pros in the cash games were all drinking, conversing, having fun etc and had been attending the event primarily as coaches to a player in the Big One. There were some serious games, stakes from 25/50 to 1,000/2,000 but man you could feel the general bonhomie of a group of men and woman who weren't going to be affected if they lost a six of seven-figure pot, it was remarkable how relaxed it was.

The Main Event was exactly what it was meant to be and so different to covering normal poker events. Two pairs of headphones total, one of which belonged to Voulgaris, who's the most chatty, entertaining, funny guy at most tables he finds himself at. The other to Shak who only ever wore them if he needed to shut out noise from other players. There was zero stalling on a €1,500,000 bubble and no slow play. This despite three players having less than starting stack on the bubble <5bigs. Was a beautiful thing.

There's been some criticism of numbers, and I think 35 was the expected field size, so that's fair. While there was a TV crew there filming for a later release I was surprised there was no video crew there doing daily videos like PN do at EPT events.

Geek point, on a final table that lasted for 273 hands and began eight handed, the eventual winner (who was not the chip leader when the final table began) had amassed more chips by hand #3 of the final table than anyone else ever would. Bonkers. I've covered many a final table and have seen wire to wire winners, zero to hero winners but never anything like this.

Lastly, the venue itself was incredible and fitting for such an event and the organisation etc was top rate.

P.S. I think 'closed' events are generally a bad idea for poker as one of the greatest thing about this game is how democratic it is and that no matter who you are, as long as you have the buy-in you're welcome. But, this was an exception that felt right and was very much down to Guy's decision, which I can't imagine why anyone would be upset with. I'm sure the next Big One will be open to all.

Oops, quoted instead of modifying.

Very few pro gamblers earn more money than JRB at gambling per/year!

Great Report & Observations .

Thank you