Despite being scheduled right in the middle of WSOP, nothing could keep the game’s biggest players away from PokerStars’ GuangDong Ltd Asia Millions in Macau. The $130,000 re-buy event was presented as one of the biggest tournaments ever to take place in the history of poker and it lived up to the hype. In the end it was German pro Niklas Heinecker who walked away with the glory and a winner’s cheque worth a mouth-watering $4.4 million.
71 players bought in to the Main Event and there were some 54 rebuys creating a total prizepool of $15.4 million, which was the 2nd biggest prizepool ever outside of the US. The promise of these sorts of riches was enough to tempt pros of the calibre of Jonathan Duhamel, Issac Haxton and Sorel Mizzi away from Vegas.
Once the final table was set the action got lively very quickly. With the average starting stack only 15 big blinds, players were in push/fold mode from the very start.
After online and live tournament specialist Sorel Mizzi busted in 3rd, it was left to Niklas Heinecker and Australian Jeff Rossiter to battle it out for the title. Heinecker, a high stakes pro who predominantly plays on the internet, began with a 3-to-1 chip lead and with the blinds such a large part of each player’s stack, the match-up was never going to last too long.
Rossiter was far from dead though and one double up would put him right back in the match. Unfortunately only a few hands in the Aussie found himself all-in with Q-T only for Heinecker to turn over A-9. The board missed both players completely and the German’s Ace high was enough to secure the incredible win.
It’s hard to feel too sorry for Rossiter though who still collected a runners-up cheque worth $3,161,290!
We imagine that by now both players along with much of the rest of the field are already back in Vegas vying to turn those winnings into a WSOP bracelet.
Here is how the final table finished up:
- Niklas Heinecker HKD$34,600,000 (USD$4,464,516)
- Jeff Rossiter HKD$24,500,000 (USD$3,161,290)
- Sorel Mizzi HKD$16,100,000 (USD$2,077,419)
- Zheng Tang HKD$12,525,000 (USD$1,616,129)
- Isaac Haxton HKD$10,200,000 (USD$1,316,129)
- Igor Kurganov HKD$8,300,000 (USD$1,070,967)
- Anson Tsang HKD$7,150,000 (USD$922,580)
- Pratyush Budigga HKD$6,000,000 (USD$774,193)
