Professional German players turned in another awesome high roller tournament performance Tuesday in the GBP 100,000 buy-in World Poker Tour Alpha8 tournament in London.
Only high stakes ace Scott Seiver’s finish in third disrupted another 1-2-3 finish for Germans Philipp Gruissem, Tobias Reinkemeier and Igor Kurganov who ran riot in a competitive and highly skilled field of 19 to take almost all the top cashes.
After two days of action the final table consisted of Dusk Til Dawn’s Richard Yong, Max Altergott, Tobias Reinkemeier, Tony Gioca (chip leader), Scott Seiver, online poker phenom Viktor Blom and Philipp Gruissem – at that stage the low stakes man on 311,000 chips.
With the top four spots guaranteeing individual pay-outs of at least $235,000 it was clear that the final stages of the game were going to be fiercely competitive.
Going into the heads up after Tobias Reinkemeier and Igor Kurganov were eliminated at third and fourth respectively, it was Philipp Gruissem with the lead vs. Scott Seiver, but that changed several times as the American fought back before Gruissem was able to put him away and claim the GBP 862,400 main prize and his second major High Roller win.
The other three top pay-outs looked like this:
2. Scott Seiver GBP 509,600
3. Tobias Reinkemeier GBP 352,800
4. Igor Kurganov GBP 235,200
The top German contingent collectively claimed almost GBP 1.5 million in prizes in the event, reprising German victories recently that have seen Martin Finger, Tobias Reinkemeier and Christoph Vogelsong finish 1-2-3 at the GBP 50,000 buy-in EPT London High Roller, and 1-2-4 finishes online for around $4 million in the Pokerstars World Championship of Online Poker main event.
In an interesting sidebar to this story, PokerListings noted that Sweden’s top online poker high stakes player, Viktor Blom, displayed supreme confidence in such a high-value live tournament that he divided his time at the final table between live-playing top players and multi-tabling on five $200/$400 virtual tables on his laptop!
Check out the pic that tells it all here: http://www.pokerlistings.com/daily-3-bet-blom-thrills-lederer-chills-dnegs-faced-92314