The Chinese businessman defeated Anatoly Gurtovoy in heads-up to claim the third biggest poker prize in history. The €1 million buy-in tournament drew a total of 28 entries, check out the details below!
The One Drop organization was started by Cirque du Soleil owner Guy Laliberté and aims to bring clean water to underdeveloped areas. Laliberté has previously organized the $1 million buy-in Big One for One Drop tournament twice, with $111,111 from every buy-in going to the charity.
This year, Laliberté has announced that in order to make the tournament more fun for amateur players, no professionals would be allowed to play. While this resulted in a pretty steep drop in the number of entrants, most recreational players stated that they had a better playing experience so in the long term this could prove beneficial to the organization.
There were a total of 26 entries and two re-entries bringing the prize pool to almost €25 million.
On Day 1 businessman Alfred De Carolis managed to build the biggest stack but on Day 2 he wasn’t so lucky, he ended up being the last player to be eliminated before players took a break.
The final eight players returned on Day 3 under the lead of Matchbook CEO Andrew Pantling, but Rick Salomon, NBA sportsbetting legend Haralabos Voulgaris and Cary Katz were also amongst those who advanced.
Pantling and Elton Tsang clashed in the first few hands of the final table which resulted in Pantling losing a huge chunk of his stack to the Canadian-Chinese businessman.
After the elimination of Haralabos Voulgaris there was a €1,500,000 bubble and it was Brandon Steven who earned the unfortunate title of bubble boy after his K-Q failed to improve against Katz’s A-K.
The first player to walk away with money in his pocket was Andrew Pantling, he couldn’t get lucky against Tsang and was eliminated just minutes after Steven.
Elton Tsang built a huge chip lead and the other three remaining players were all shorstacked. After an Ace-high flop James Bord got his stack in the middle against Gurtovoy, unfortunately for him Gurtovoy held the better kicker and Bord had to settle for third place.
Rick Salomon was short stacked for much of the finale and jammed his final 15 big blinds with Q-J after Gurtovoy’s raise, but the Russian businessman held A-Q and Salomon failed to improve.
The heads-up started on the 600/1,200,000/200,000 ante blind level with Tsang having 93,700,000 chips against Gurtovoy’s 46,300,000.
Tsang grinded Gurtovoy down but he managed to double up once to climb back. In the final hand of the tournament the two players got their stacks in on the Q-3-4-2 board.
Gurtovoy showed A-5 for a straight but Tsang had 6-5 for the nut straight. Gurtovoy couldn’t find any of his chop outs and was eliminated in second place, receiving €5,427,781.
With his huge, €11,111,111 score Elton Tsang jumped into 21st place on the all-time money list and more than €3.1 million total was raised for the One Drop foundation.
Final table results
1. Elton Tsang – €11,111,111
2. Anatoly Gurtovoy – €5,427,781
3. Rick Salomon – €3,000,000
4. James Bord – €2,100,000
5. Cary Katz – €1,750,000
6. Andrew Pantling – €1,500,000
