German professional poker player Rainer Kempe is probably still celebrating his epic $5 million win in the just-completed $300,000 buy-in Super High Roller Bowl competition after besting a formidable field that included some of the planet’s top professional players.
49 players anted up the massive buy-in to compete in the event, which played down to a final table that included players with a combined total of 23 World Series of Poker winners’ bracelets to their credit.
Starting the final table action with the chip lead, Rainer powered his way through players like Erik Seidel and Phil Hellmuth to face fellow German pro Fedor Holz in an evenly matched heads up that went on for several hours as two very talented players relentlessly pressured each other, with the lead changing several times.
In the end Kempe managed to gain the upper hand and build his chip advantage to around 2 to 1, enabling him to finally leverage the advantage into a win and sending Holz to the cashier desk for a still impressive second placing prize of $3.5 million.
Other final table pay-outs looked like this:
Erik Seidel $2,4 million
Phil Hellmuth $1,6 million
Matt Berkey $1,1 million
Bryn Kenney $800,000
Dan Shak $600,000