Young German poker pro Stefan Schillhabel scored his biggest prize yet over the weekend when he emerged winner in the $7,500 buy-in World Poker Tour Bay 101 Shooting Star main event, taking home almost $1.3 million in prize money, a Hublot King Power Unico watch, a pair of gold Monster 24K headphones, and a free entry into the WPT Tournament of Champions.
Playing with skill, discipline and talent, Schillhabel forged his way through the field to start the final table as chip leader, carrying his lead right through to the heads up, where he faced the highly experienced US professional player Adam Geyer with the chip stacks almost even.
After some early sparring the duo got down to business around hand 57, when the young German grabbed a 6.5 million pot that gave him a 2 to 1 chip lead. Geyer staged a hard-fought comeback to level the count, and even went briefly into the lead before another huge pot – 9 million this time – went to Schillhabel at hand 74 and effectively decided the game; Geyer fought bravely on but he was unable to overcome such a large chip disparity and was eliminated for $752,000 at hand 102.
Adding interest to the main event at this year’s Bay 101 main event was the achievement of Maria Ho, a high profile US poker pro and television presenter, in making her first WPT final table appearance.
Although she was the first to be eliminated among the final six, Ho gave a good account of herself and endowed the event with the added anticipation of possibly its first woman champion in 14 years. And she took home $179,930 for her time and trouble.
Final table cashes looked like this:
Stefan Schillhabel – $1,298,000
Adam Geyer – $752,800
Bryan Piccioli – $493,350
Andjelko Andrejevic – $334,500
Griffin Paul – $231,310
Maria Ho – $179,930