After a 13-hour day at the felt, Byron Kaverman conquered the PokerStars European Poker Tour London £25,000 Single-Day High Roller I at the Hilton Park Lane. Kaverman defeated a field of 30 entries to record a six-figure score of £273,710 after defeating Orpen Kisacikoglu in a grinding heads-up match.
Kaverman added another big score and a trophy to his already illustrious resume, totalling over $17,000,000 at the poker table. The American poker player has become a regular on the European circuit, mainly focusing on the high-rollers. “See you guys tomorrow,” Kaverman touted, indicating that he’ll be back for the £50,000 Super High Roller.
£25,000 Single-Day High Roller I Final Payouts
| Place | Player | Country | Prize (GBP) |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Byron Kaverman | United States | £273,710 |
| 2 | Orpen Kisacikoglu | Turkey | £176,470 |
| 3 | Steve O’Dwyer | Ireland | £117,050 |
| 4 | Espen Jorstad | Norway | £84,640 |
| 5 | Ben Heath | United Kingdom | £68,430 |
Two platinum passes up for grabs at EPT London
Summary of the Day
The action started early in the day with 12 players initially taking their seats. Late registration remained open for the first 10 levels of the day, and when the dust settled a total of 30 entries were recorded to create a prize pool of over £720,000. With only five places paid, it was a mad dash to reach the final table of eight players.
However, once they closed in on the money bubble, the action started to grind to a halt. Kisacikoglu held a clear chip lead over his fellow opponents who were all battling it out to stay alive. Sam Greenwood, who was unable to get any momentum in the latter stages, became the bubble boy.
Five-handed play lasted surprisingly longer than most expected with a few players preserving their short stacks. After many blind versus blind encounters, Ben Heath finally succumbed to the pressure from Kaverman. Heath’s king-high was no good when Kaverman flopped a pair of jacks, bringing the field down to just four.
The reigning WSOP Main Event champion Espen Jorstad had a healthy chip stack for the majority of the day but was unlucky in a couple of late flips that left him with crumbs. Jorstad was forced to go with queen-high in the big blind but ran into Kisacikoglu’s king-high. No help on the runout for Jorstad meant he was eliminated in fourth place.
Not far behind the exit line was Steve O’Dwyer who saw his ten big blinds go up in flames against a red-hot Kisacikoglu. In another blind vs blind confrontation, Kisacikoglu managed to spike a pair of nines on the flop and O’Dwyer was unable to recover.
That left Kisacikoglu with a two-to-one lead over Kaverman going into heads-up action but that advantage was short-lived. In one of the first pots of the duel, Kisacikoglu opted to run a triple-barrel bluff but ran right into Kaverman’s top pair, sending the chip lead to the American. From there, Kaverman slowly chipped away at Kisacikoglu over the next hour until it finally came to a head when Kisacikoglu was down to just seven big blinds.
The two players finally got all of the chips in the middle and Kaverman managed to spike a pair on the flop to take the lead. Kisacikoglu had a single over card and a flush draw as outs but was unable to come from behind, ending the tournament in the wee hours of the morning.