Three big blinds with six players left were enough for the Portuguese to turn the table around.
The $5,300 Main Event at Partypoker‘s Caribbean Poker Party has ended with a miraculous comeback on the final table. The event generated a total of 1,815, and thanks to the $10,000,000 GTD it offered excellent value for the players with a slight overlay.
The tournament rewarded 223 players, and many of the high-profile players managed to reach the money. Some of them only "min-cashed" with the likes of Jeremy Ausmus (181st; $10,300), Peter Jetten (176th; $10,300). Other then them, plenty of well-known pros made a small profit: Sylvain Loosli (167th), Partypoker ambassador Dzmitry Urbanovich (165th), Chris Moorman (164th), WSOPE Main Event champ, Jack Sinclair (151st), living legend, Johnny Chan (144th) or high-roller crusher Stephen Chidwick (126th) all added $12,500 to their bankrolls.
None of the stars reached the final table, despite some promise deep runs from Marcel Luske (29th; $25,000) and Eric Baldwin (28th; $25,000), but there were some long-time pros at the table nonetheless.
Only 11 players returned for the final day, with three of them missing the final table, but still walking away with a nice paycheck Niek van der Sluijs (11th, $85,000), Anton Wigg (10th, $110,000), and Alex Lynskey (9th, $155,000).
The final table
With Lynskey’s elimination, short stack Joe Kuether managed to get to the final table but eventually fell in 8th place for $218,500, while Alex Turyansky exited in 7th place for $300,000.
In the meantime, Oliveira lost the majority of his stack and pushed his last 35 million (on the 5M/10M/10M blind level) with K-6 off. He’s got called by two players, one of them holding a dominating K-J, but managed to spike a six to stay alive. He scored a double up after this with K-Q suited against the A-T suited of Konstantin Maslak’s and was back in the party with a reasonable stack.
Fellow Portuguese grinder Diogo "phounderAA" Veiga busted in 6th place for $400,000 after losing a flip. Start of the day leader Maslak would follow in 5th for $600,000. Pascal Hartmann failed to hit anything with K-J against the pocket nines of Oliveira’s and left in 4th place for $800,000 – which was a bit disappointing for him, considering he held the lead not too long ago.
About an hour after his K-6 shove, Filipe was suddenly the leader in the three-handed period. At this point, the remaining three – Oliveira, Mason and Marc MacDonnell – discussed a potential deal but eventually decided to keep on playing.
Irishman, MacDonnell went full hero mode, when he made a call with jack high, but those usually turn out to be a bad idea and his stack got crippled this time as well since Filipe had the flush. He busted shortly after in 3rd place for a career-high of $1 million.
Calling with jack high is rarely a good idea
The heads-up started with around even stacks, and it took some time for this to change. Oliveira was eventually able to build a lead and was able to close out the whole thing for – by far – the best score of his life in form of a $1,500,000 payday. Runner-up Craig Mason received $1,200,000 for his excellent performance.
Final table results
| Position | Player | Country | Prize |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Filipe Oliveira | Portugal | $1,500,000 |
| 2 | Craig Mason | United States | $1,200,000 |
| 3 | Marc MacDonnell | Ireland | $1,000,000 |
| 4 | Pascal Hartmann | Germany | $800,000 |
| 5 | Konstantin Maslak | Russia | $600,000 |
| 6 | Diogo Veiga | Portugal | $400,000 |
| 7 | Alex Turyansky | United States | $300,000 |
| 8 | Joe Kuether | United States | $218,500 |
