This week’s poker headlines deliver on the news of a couple of big wins. After that, we’ll touch base with a big poker festival in Macau, which is going to produce a number of huge wins when it gets underway on March 15th.
Kiriopoulos Wins WPT’s Fallsview Stop
The World Poker Tour made a stop in Canada this past week for the Fallsview Poker Classic at Fallsview Casino Resort in Niagara Falls, Ontario. To no one’s surprise, the field was loaded with Canadians and one even managed to win it all. Demo Kiriopoulos picked up the win, navigating his way through a field of 602 entries.
Kiriopoulos collected $517,424 (CAD) for his efforts, which marked the biggest win of his career. He’s had a number of six-figure paydays, though, including a sixth-place result at the partypoker MILLIONS Canada event just about a year ago.
The final table was loaded with Canadians as Jake Schwartz (United States) was the only non-Canadian in the top six finishers. 1 Million One Drop event participant Andrew Pantling actually held the chip lead going into the final table and he’s a known name. However, the tide would later turn when Kiriopoulos connected on a flush after Pantling was holding – and raising – with a straight.
Overall, there was a $2 million prize pool.
Prager Conquers Los Angeles Poker Classic One Million
A sizable field of 1,770 entries crowded the tables at the Los Angeles Poker Classic One Million, but it was Josh Prager who emerged as the winner last week. Four starting flights led to a prize pool of just over $1.7 million and 183 places being paid out.
Prager took home $227,775, which is a very nice payday, but keep in mind that the top six finishers decided to split. He was in the chip lead at the time at the final table but wanted to be done with the tournament. Each of them earned at least $95,000 apiece.
While the purse was a generous one for Prager, it’s not the biggest of his career. That came when he collected half a million at a European Poker Tour event in 2007. He’s picked up $1.8 million in earnings.
Events Announced For Macau’s 2019 Poker King Cup Festival
The 2019 Poker King Cup is right around the corner as it is set to take place from March 15th-21st. We now know the events, buy-ins and entry fees for the tournaments across seven days as they were released this past week.
The festivities will be highlighted by the HKD$5,000,000 guaranteed Poker King Cup Macau Main Event. However, there are all sorts of events for players of every caliber. We’ll see events with buy-ins for as long as $230 USD all the way through to PKC Super High Roller Day 1, which has a whopping buy-in of just over $25,000 USD.
Last year’s main event saw 518 players in the fold, which resulted in a prize pool of $960,238.74. Wei Ran Pu of China took home the biggest prize and will be the defending champion.