Just a week after making the final table of the inaugural North American Poker Tour Venetian $25,000 High Roller Shootout and collecting $215,000 in bounties and prize money, Scott Seiver strikes lightning yet again, winning the $25k High Roller Championship event at the L.A. Poker Classic.
Besting a six-handed final table with notable poker phenoms Jason Mercier (recently mentioned World Series of Poker (WSOP) Europe final tablist/WSOP bracelet winner) and Daniel Alaei (World Poker Tour champion/WSOP bracelet winner), Seiver (WSOP bracelet winner himself) climbed to the top of the heap, staking his claim in the $425,334 first-place prize and trophy.
Heads-up play concluded when Seiver’s AsJs held against the pre-flop all-in of Alaei’s QdJd. Seiver faded Alaei’s flopped straight and diamond flush draw to become the champion. With his win, he moves just under $2 million in lifetime tourney winnings.
Now I use the term “champion” loosely because he is really just a “winner”. While these events bring out some of the biggest names in the game, with all due respect, it’s tough for me to call a 41-man event a “tourney” and the person coming out the other side a “champion”. Truth be told, it’s really just a rich man’s sit-and-go, which with the inflated buy-in, replaces the need for an additional 3000+ players in the field to have a huge payout for the top prizes. Don’t get me wrong–these are some of the greatest players in the world and combating their skill probably negates having to wade through a sea of no-names in your way to the top, but is that truly an accomplishment? I won a 45-man sit-and-go once. When is my trophy arriving in the mail?
Being up with the birds, bingo, dinner at 4:30, death—it’s all you have to look forward once you’ve lost the breaks going over the hill. As if that wasn’t enough, the man in Idaho is out to crush your smiles and memories like the afternoon snack in the Wednesday compartment of your pill organizer.
New Promo time at CarbonPoker!
The best evening in televised poker has just gotten better, and you won’t have to choose between two shows like the mother at the end of Good Son.
Ashton Griffin has won the inaugural North American Poker Tour (NAPT) High-Roller Bounty Shootout at the Venetian, taking home a first prize of $455,000. If his name doesn’t ring any of those proverbial bells, you may better recognize him by his poker handle, Ashman103, a frequent regular across the nosebleeds of some of the finest no-limit hold’em cash games online.
This April, the International Federation of Poker will be accepted as an esteemed member of the International Mind Sports Association. This means the game of poker will be recognized as a “sport” by the International Olympic Committee, included amongst other games of skill such as chess or Go. Other mind sports nominees this year include Go Fish, Fifty-Two Pickup, War, and Up the River, Down the River.
It seems as though the lands of Norway are being pillaged and plundered again, and not by the Vikings that founded them.
It seems as though Iowa is the latest state to be joining the bandwagon, and it’s not one made by John Deere.
