O’Dwyer Leads First Ever Super High Roller in Panama

Steve O’Dwyer holds the overnight chip lead in the first ever PokerStars Championship Panama Super High Roller with 856,000 chips. The biggest buy-in tournament ever in Panama kicked off on Saturday, and 26 unique players entered, four of which opted to re-enter. Super High Roller Bowl players Justin Bonomo (615,000), Ben Tollerene (541,000), Koray Aldemir (497,000) and David Peters (432,000) are in the top half of the chip counts. 

The pace of play was high, as PokerStars instated a 30-second clock per player action for the duration of this event, and every player was given three additional 60-second time bank chips. Players will not be given additional time chips on later days in the tournament.

The only player unfortunate enough to get knocked out twice was Igor Kurganov. The newly branded Team PokerStars Pro vaulted O’Dwyer into the aforementioned chip lead by doubling him up with an inferior two-pair combination. 

Kurganov busted to Daniel Dvoress first with nines versus tens, before losing another $50,000 with ace-king versus Isaac Haxton’s ace-queen suited. The river brought a queen and Kurganov was sent packing. 

Other players that busted out on Day 1 included Anthony Zinno, Adrian Mateos, Justin Bonomo, Stephen Chidwick and Erik Seidel. The former two names did not return, but the latter three all opted to re-enter. 

Chip Counts:

Steve O’Dwyer – Ireland – 856,000
Orpen Kisacikoglu – Turkey – 728,000
Justin Bonomo – United States – 615,000
Mike Watson – Canada – 546,000
Ben Tollerene – United States – 541,000
Koray Aldemir – Germany – 497,000
David Peters – United States – 452,000
Ben Heath – United Kingdom – 425,000
Dario Sammartino – Italy – 417,000
Daniel Dvoress – Canada – 385,000
Jason Koon – United States – 335,000
Timothy Adams – Canada – 330,000
Daniel Colman – United States – 305,000
Paul Newey – United Kingdom – 290,000
Erik Seidel – United States – 212,000
Sam Greenwood – Canada – 207,000
Isaac Haxton – United States – 197,000
Stefan Schillhabel – Germany – 84,000
Stephen Chidwick – United Kingdom – 84,000

Play resumes at 12:00 p.m. local time, at which point registration will close. This is a three-day event. 

Key dates & event info for the PokerStars Championship Panama

• PokerStars Open: March 12-14, 2017 – $220 – $50,000 guaranteed
• PokerStars Cup: March 15-19, 2017 – $440 – $150,000 guaranteed
• PokerStars National Championship: March 11-14, 2017 – $1,100 – $400,000 guaranteed
• PokerStars Championship Main Event: March 14-20, 2017 – $5,300
• PokerStars Championship High Roller: March 18-20, 2017 – $10,300
• PokerStars Championship Super High Roller: March 11-14, 2017 – $50,000