The Aria Casino in Las Vegas, NV announced last month that this year’s Super High Roller Bowl will be held May 28st-31st. The third installment’s buy-in is $300,000.
Originally, the casino planned to have a 50-player field: 35 professionals with 15 seats reserved for wealthy guests. The 35 seats for the pros filled up within a day, in fact 54 people registered so a lottery was held to decide who gets in.
After the draw, due to the high interest for the event Aria chose to open up six more seats for professionals. They announced the names of those six pro players on February 21st along with the guests.
The 20 new players joining the field, pros and guests: Bobby Baldwin, Zach Hyman, Giuseppe Iadisernia, Cary Katz, Bill Klein, John Morgan, Dan Perper, Lauren Roberts, Leon Tsoukernik, Bill Perkins, Dan Shak, Talal Shakerchi, Antanas Guoga (aka Tony G), Justin Bonomo, Daniel Colman, Phil Hellmuth, Jason Koon, Jason Mercier, Daniel Negreanu and Dan Smith.
The 35 players announced previously: Koray Aldemir, Matt Berkey, Pratyush Buddiga, Christian Christner, Connor Drinan, David Einhorn, Antonio Esfandiari, Isaac Haxton, Fedor Holz, John Juanda, Byron Kaverman, Rainer Kempe, Bryn Kenney, Igor Kurganov, Jason Les, Andrew Lichtenberger, Ankush Mandavia, Tom Marchese, Dominik Nitsche, David Peters, Nick Petrangelo, Doug Polk, Brian Rast, Andrew Robl, Stefan Schillhabel, Jake Schindler, Erik Seidel, Scott Seiver, Steffen Sontheimer, Sam Soverel, Ben Sulsky, Ben Tollerene, Christoph Vogelsang, Haralabos Voulgaris and Sean Winter.
There is still one more seat left to be filled. It’s reserved for a special guest whose name will be revealed later. 15 additional players are on the waiting list: if any of the players confirmed can’t make it they can take their place.
The announcement of the new players has provoked some controversy. Fedor Holz expressed his misgivings on Twitter, tweeting: “What a joke that lottery at @PokerCentral was if you take the famous players anyways. Pretty unfair for the less known players…”
Holz is criticizing Aria’s decision to invite famous pros like Daniel Negreanu and Phil Helmuth, who were not picked in the lottery, yet were among the six players additionally invited. Aria’s intention was clearly to make the event more marketable, but Holz thinks that in the spirit of fair play those extra seats should have been picked by lottery as well.