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The 2018 PokerStars European Poker Tour festival has been going on at full bore. One after the other, victors emerged from the fray and multiple events that the competition offered. Today, we pay attention to Benjamin Pollak, the professional who managed to tackle the single-day high-roller event. Here’s how it all happened

Pollak and the €50,000 Single-Day High Roller

Benjamin Pollak, an established name in poker, entered the €50,000 Single-Day High Roller along with 70-odd contestants. The prize pool managed to swell up to €3,347,190 after 15 people had decided that a re-entry is due. This was good news for Pollak who couldn’t know at the time that he would be benefiting the most. And yet, EPT Barcelona’s event offered rewards to the nine top spots.

Commenting shortly after his victory, Pollak said that he saw that everything developed according to plan, as his stack continued to grow bigger. And Pollak had definitely had what to be happy about, winning €979,000, which was incidentally his second-largest lump sum to win from a cash pool in his career.

Pollak’s good fortune just didn’t seem to elude him. Prior to the EPT High-Roller victory, he went into the €100,000 Super High Roller and managed to fight back €445,300, finishing in fifth place. Even though he didn’t manage to make it all the way to the top, Pollak apparently had other plans for staging a proper comeback of his own. And he did well in the following single-day action.

At the end, the Frenchman was facing Jean-Noel Thorel, another countryman who came dangerously close to tackling Pollak and winning the big pot for himself.

The Final Results as they Are

Nine finalists managed to walk away with varying price, with Pollak toping the chart, of course. Thorel left with €703,000. He was followed by Alex Foxen and Ryan Riess, both from the United States who won €456,900 and €344,700 respectively. Riess life-long winnings have been stacking up nicely over the recent years, with the pro achieving an overall score of $9,364,126 in the space of seven years.

Further down the chart we had Mikalai Vaskaboinikau who brought home €267,800 and Seth Davies with €207,500. Jack Salter from the United Kingdom, Jan-Eric Schwippert, and Matthias Eibinger from Austria brought up the rear.

The final table shaped up to be pretty interesting, too. Pollak wasn’t immediately the primed favorite, although he certainly had the qualities to be as later events showed. With Pollak going head on against Noel, the game was finished in under an hour. A single event occasioned Noel’s rapid downfall, leaving him with barely ten big blinds. A final Ace and Nine sealed the deal for Pollak who became the next EPT Barcelona champion, in one of the high roller events in the very least.

The EPT came along with many opportunities for the high-rollers, including the victory of Michael Soyza who grabbed the €10,300 High-Roller Event and managed to distinguish himself again right after. The EPT’s success has been guaranteed by PokerStars, one of the world’s largest poker operators and champions of the game around the globe.