For the eighth time, a new owner of the championship ring, which symbolizes winning the prestigious Super High Roller Bowl event, was searched for in front of the eyes of spectators from all over the world. The $300,000 buy-in tournament this year featured 20 players, leaving the last six in contention for the title after two days of play. The latter made their appearance in the streamed final table, where the early play looked like this:
Bubble bursting
Even though the players had had two hard days of play, they still couldn't catch their breath. The prize money was waiting for only the top four players, which meant that two more had to go home empty-handed. The first one was world number one Bryn Kenney in sixth place, who didn't flip with 3 3 against A K under Chidwick's hand, and then Lichtenberger cracked Brewer's aces in a nasty way when he hit a flush with K T to move the tournament into the money with the help of some luck.
In the money
Brewer's cracked aces weren't all, soon a similar fate befell Jason Koon. He flopped top set on K 9 7 with K K, but the turn 8 completed the straight for Lichtenberger with J T and after the blank river Koon had to go to the cashier for his $600,000 reward.
The next one to have to leave the game was the fresh winner of the purple jacket from the Poker Masters series, Stephen Chidwick. The latter, with Q 6 was in pretty bad shape against Lichtenberger's Q 8 , and the turn 8 only underscored the original power distribution. For Chidwick, it meant a final third place finish in this tournament, for which he collected a consolation prize of $960,000.
Heads-up
After an hour and a half, the express final, with the help of two suckouts, moved into the final heads-up, where Andrew Lichtenberger walked in with a slight 128bb vs 111bb advantage. The number of blinds suggested a long climax, and we did indeed see it - the man-to-man battle lasted over 4 hours!
Ike took the lead right from the start of heads-up play and pushed it to 5:1. Lichtenberger didn't give up, however, and managed to turn the situation in his favour, and so the game continued for several hours. The hand that decided everything was Lichtenberger's K K against Haxton´s A 7 , where the board was successively 3 3 2 Q 6 .
After recounting the stacks, Lichenberger was left behind 220k, which represented 4 big blinds. These went into play the very next hand with a hand of 93o, but Ike called with T7o after hitting a seven on the flop to end the tournament for good. Andrew Lichtenberger improved on his SHRB pilgrimage, now finishing second for $1,680,000 after last year's third place finish. But the second championship ring along with the $2,760,000 reward after tonight belongs to the great Isaac Haxton, who we congratulate on this achievement!
Source: PGT, PokerGo, YouTube, HendonMob
