Friday, 29th March 2024 05:08
Home / News / Neymar heads final nine in Winter Series High Roller

We caught up yesterday with the goings on from the first half of Winter Series, and made reference to a “near miss” in a tournament over the festive period for Neymar Jr., the superstar Brazilian soccer player.

Neymar out in front

We’re not certain whether Neymar reads PokerStars Blog, so can’t be certain whether our words had any inspirational effect on him. But today we can tell you this: Neymar had arguably the best day of his fledgling poker career yesterday and is chip leader in the $10K Winter Series High Roller, heading into final table play tonight.

Yep, that’s right. Not only is Neymar making himself at home at the PokerStars tables, he’s making himself at home at the toughest tournament tables around. The 83-entry field in this $10K event was the usual who’s who of elite poker: Niklas “Lena900” Astedt was the first to be knocked out; Sam “Str8$$$Homey” Greenwood and Tim “Tim0thee” Adams fired four bullets each and missed the cash; even Michael “imluckbox” Addamo couldn’t make the money despite four buy-ins.

Click for Winter Series results so far and schedule to come

But Neymar, who had one re-entry, now sits pretty at the top of the overnight counts, with a stack of 5.8 million (or 116 big blinds, going into 25K/50K blind level). Neymar’s closest challenger at this stage is Christoph “26071985” Vogelsang, who has 5.1 million. Nobody else at the final table has more than 2.3 million.

The prize pool for the event is $830,000 and the winner is slated to get $224,025. It’s not chump change, even for players whose bank balance is likely fairly healthy already.

Of course, the tournament is far from over yet and even the distant chasing pack will feel far from out of it. It includes, among others, perennial challengers Talal “raidalot” Shakerchi and Christian “WATnlos” Rudolph, as well as Ole “wizowizo” Schemion, who last night won the $2K Turbo PKO in Winter Series. (Schemion won the Main Event last year.)

OTHER WINTER SERIES TIDBITS

  • Sebastian “p0cket00” Sikorski won his second title of Winter Series last night, taking top spot in the $530 buy-in Bounty Builder High Roller, for $57,557, including bounties. There were 900 entries. Sikorski previously won a $1K 7-Max hyper.
  • Lex Veldhuis is placed 16th of 29 remaining in the $530 buy-in Winter Series 67-H, which also resumes today. Now based in Belgium, Veldhuis will be streaming on Twitch as he aims for the $43K top prize.WINTER SERIES 2021-22 STAT TRACKERTournaments completed: 168
    Entries: 817,813 (inc. 257,014 re-entries)
    Prize pools: $31,760,102
    First-place prizes: $4,497,372 (inc. $1,083,565 in bounties)

    COUNTRIES LEADER BOARD

    26 titles – Brazil
    21 – Russia
    12 – Canada, Sweden
    10 – Germany
    9 – Romania, UK, Ukraine
    6 – Ireland
    5 – Hungary, Poland
    4 – Lithuania
    3 – Argentina, Austria, Belgium, Czech Republic, Mexico
    2 – Bulgaria, Croatia, Estonia, Finland, Georgia, Greece, Malta, Norway, Slovenia
    1 – Armenia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Mongolia, Uruguay, Vietnam.

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