This week’s poker news starts off with a couple of big wins, including the first-ever female win at an Asia Poker Tour High Roller event. We’ll start our weekly recap of the poker news with that big win:
Bicknell Wins Big In Macau High Roller
Kristen Bicknell came up big at the Asia Pacific Poker Tour High Roller event in Macau, finishing in first place out of 117 entries. The prize pool was over $1.1 million and Bicknell, who plays for partypoker, took home $279,549 for her troubles. Bicknell, who hails from Canada, was followed by American David Peters, who won $188,767. Klaus Pautrot of France was next with $122,813, while Felix Daniel Schulze of Germany was fourth with $101,642 and China’s Hong Zhu rounded out the top five with $82,003.
Bicknell has been playing well, finishing in the top 20 in each of her last five poker events. She also won the World Poker Tour Five Diamond World Poker Classic in Las Vegas in December, taking home almost $200,000. This still wasn’t even Bicknell’s biggest win as she won a No-Limit Hold’em Bounty event at the World Series of Poker in 2016. At that event, she took home over $290,000. With her triumph this past week, she became the first female to win the APPT High Roller event.
Binar Wins WSOPC No-Limit Event
Pavel Binar has had himself a very good week at the Rozvadov at King’s Casino. Binar, from the Czech Republic, finished in first place in a No-Limit Hold’em event on the World Series of Poker Circuit, collecting his biggest win to date. He takes home $88,631 for his efforts. Countrymen took the next two spots as well. In second place was Van Tiep Nguyen with $61,083 while Martin Kabrhel with $51,226 was in third. Bertrand Grospellier of France was fourth with $28,146 and Oded Cohen of Israel rounded out the top five with $22,756.
The win was a long time coming for Binar as he had finished in the top six of four previous WSOPC events before closing it out with the largest payday of his career. This might be the spark to a big 2018 for Binar.
Casino Sochi Deal With partypoker
The partypoker brand continues to expand its boundaries. Their latest expansion is via a partnership with the Casino Sochi and Resort in Russia. They have signed a deal for four years to have partypoker LIVE as their partner for live poker events. The Casino Sochi and Resort has only been open for about a year but has hosted a lot of big-name tournaments in eastern Europe.
This isn’t the first time that these two have worked together as the Casino Sochi and Resort was the home of a LIVE MILLIONS event by partypoker in 2017. It went over so well that the two are locked in together for the next four years.
This partnership will kick off in May for the debut of the WSOPC Russia, an event that will have prize pools of $5 million. There is also the $10-million partypoker MILLIONS Russia from August 4 to 12. In total, partypoker will host at least eight events at the casino for each year of the contract.