The GG Spotlight – GGPoker World Festival Finale
May 1st marked the start of the $200 Million Guaranteed GGPoker World Festival and June 6th marked its completion. The five weeks of the series saw some of the most incredible results and stories as we hosted 1,022 tournaments that hosted an incredible 3,042,228 entrants to the various events – an average of nearly 3,000 players per tournament – and an insane $239,143,262 won by you, the players! We always knew that bigger is better, but this was over the top awesome!
Before we look at the results from some of the biggest tournaments – 2 from each tier plus the 3 BIG events – over the final 2 weeks of the series, the four $100,000 leaderboards deserve some attention and praise given to the winners.
The final 2 weeks did not change anything on the Super High Leaderboard, other than the lead of GGPoker Team Champion Niklas Astedt. He finished more than 700 points over 2nd place – greater than the difference between 2nd and 10th! Astedt earned a C$30K bonus for his efforts while Matthew Stumpf, who finished 2nd, earned C$20K. Third and fourth stayed the same with R Romanovskyi earning C$15K while Nicholas Maimone and Simon Mattsson earned C$10K for finishing 4th and 5th respectively. Bruno Volkmann, Rodrigo Selouan, and A Derzhpilskyi round out the top 8 spots and each earned an extra C$5K.
The High Stakes Leaderboard remained a tight race right through the end. When it was all done, ‘WhoBeatsMe’ managed to maintain his lead at the top and earned the C$25K bonus. ‘JESUISYAAZY’ climbed his way to 2nd, earning the C$15K bonus and ‘TempoRuim’ finished 3rd for C$10K. Nicholas Maimone, who finished 4th on the Super High Leaderboard also finished 4th on the High Stakes Leaderboard, earning a extra C$8K while Niklas Astedt finished 8th for C$4K in addition to his Super High earnings.
The Medium Stakes Leaderboard ended by completing a full circle. Early in the series had ‘mochalov13’ and ‘JESUISYAAZY’ sitting 1st and 2nd only to fall to 3rd and 7th at the halfway mark. With the tournament series now at an end, the two of them climbed up and ended with ‘JESUISYAAZY’ in first and ‘mochalov13’ in second. The mid-point leaders, ‘Bashka340’ and ‘WaterRabbit’ finished 3rd and 4th respectively.
The final leaderboard, the Low Stakes has seen new people sitting in the number 1 spot almost with the completion of each tournament. With the tournament series now completed, the leaderboard champion is yet again a new name, ‘KingOfAllins’ who earns C$10K. The original leaderboard leader, ‘UFC@Poker’ finished 4th and the mid-point leader, ‘duketoper’ finished 6th.
The first Super High event was event 164, the $10,300 Thursday Throwdown, with a $700K guarantee, which ran on May 25th. The tournament saw 92 players join the fray, creating a prize pool of $920,000. The tournament took nearly 9 hours to complete as the tournament ended with ‘Gavin Cochrane’ taking first and $85,272.82 plus an additional $136,406 in bounty.
The other Super High event we are looking at was the 194-S $10,300 Monday Super HR, which ran on May 29th. This version of the tournament attracted 81 players creating a prize pool of $810,000. This tournament took 7.75 hours to complete as ‘SmileThHero’ took home the victory and earned $168,938 after a deal with ‘Barak Wisbrod’ where the 2nd place finisher earned $169,038.
Of the High tier events, the first was Event 230: $525 Bounty Hunters HR Main Event with a $1,000,000 guarantee. This event, which ran on June 4th, had a field of 2,685 players creating a prize pool of $1,342,500. It took just under 10 hours of play for the tournament to conclude with ‘LALIBERTE’ taking down the event for $64,327.47 and an additional $66.952.89 in bounties.
The previous week, on May 28th, the High Tier ran a $1,500,000 guaranteed event. Event 183-H: $525 Bounty Hunters HR Main Event attracted 3,911 players, creating a total prize pool of $1,955,500, well over the guarantee. At the end of the tournament, 11 hours 25 minutes later, ‘Gabriel Moura’ beat ‘kings35’ for the top spot and $92,110.12 and $89,452.28 in bounties.
May 21st also brought us Event 183-M: $54 Bounty Hunters Sunday Main Event. This Medium tier tournament offered a $700,000 guarantee which was smashed as 16,838 players registered for the event, creating a total prize pool of $841,900. Taking just over 10.25 hours to complete, when the dust finally settled it was ‘Quanto eh’ taking top spot and the biggest share of the prize pool, earning $30,887.65 plus $22,961.92 in bounties.
The following week, on June 4th, the Event 230-M: $54 Bounty Hunters Sunday Main Event ran. A total of 14,543 players came out for the event, trying to capture the top prize. At the end of the event, it was ‘MewBeerBro’ who won the event, earning $27,251.44 plus an additional $24,283.95 in bounties.
Finally, for the Low tier tournaments, the biggest event was the Saturday Secret KO [Mystery Bounty]. The tournament which ran on May 27th, was event 176-L and attracted 12,286 players to the $250,000 guaranteed tournament. When the event ended, it was ‘hufflepuff’ winning the event, earning $13,098.60 plus $212.10 in bounties. The biggest winner of the event was ‘MariaShovaTodas’ who, although she only earned $39.01 for the 785th overall finish, did draw the big mystery bounty of $25,000.
The final big Low tier event we are looking at is event 223-L: $25 Saturday Secret KO [Mystery Bounty] which offered a $175,000 guarantee. This was enough to attract 10,114 players to sign up for the tournament. It ran for just under 9.25 hours and ended with ‘Jomba’ taking down the event, earning $11,208.05 plus $517 in bounties. While ‘Jomba’ did well in taking down the event, it was the 595th place finisher ‘Sh0uTTT’ that earned the most from this tournament when they found the $18,000 mystery bounty.in addition to $38.59 for the finish.
And that is all for the inaugural GGPoker World Festival. We hope you enjoyed all of it and are looking forward to seeing you next year when it will be even bigger and better. But for now, lets sit back and enjoy all of the poker available from the micro Festival and, for those of you lucky enough to go, in Las Vegas for the World Series of Poker!
From the Desk of the Wordsmith