Holz Wins 1st PokerStars High Roller, Pauls Tops in Hamburg

For a retired poker player, Fedor “CrownUpGuy” Holz still wins a lot of poker tournaments.

Poker’s most famous retiree proved yet again how unstoppable he is both live and online as he triumphed over an elite field in the first event of PokerStars’ new online High Roller series.

Meanwhile, in Hamburg, another German player in Ulrich Pauls took down his first official poker tournament cash by winning the PokerStars Hamburg Festival main event.

Holz Wins First Event in High Roller Series

The first-ever PokerStars High Roller series is underway with events having an average buy-in of over $3,000 and ranging from $1,050 to $10,300. The first event of the series was a $1M guaranteed, $2,100 NLHE tournament that attracted 442 entries.

Grayson Ramage

Grayson Ramage

Surprisingly it wasn’t enough to meet the prize guarantee so the high rollers got a little treat in the form of an overlay.

Unsurprisingly, Holz scored another win to add another entry to his foot-long list of tournament cashes. The victory comes with $180k on Holz’ PokerStars account to give him just a few more reasons to continue playing poker.

Dinesh “NastyMinder” Alt made the final table as well and finished in third place for over $100k. Further notables included Grayson “gray31” Ramage in 4th for $75k, Patrick “pads1161” Leonard in 6th for $42k, Jordan “JWProdigy” Westmorland in 11th for $14k and Roman “Romeopro” Romanovsky in 22nd.

Westmorland and Alt both ran deep at the same EPT San Remo main event in 2014 when Vicky Coren became the first two-time main event winner. Alt finished in 25th place in that tournament while Westmorland came close to winning it himself and then finished 3rd.

PokerStars team members Igor Kurganov and Liv Boeree seem to have a private high-stakes duel going as they’re both playing almost every event. In the first of this series Kurganov “won” the last longer between the two as he finished 25th while Liv didn’t make the money.

PokerStars High Rollers Event 1; $2100 NLHE

Place

Name

Prize

1

Fedor “CrownUpGuy” Holz

$178,500

2

88maca88

$134,058

3

Dinesh “NastyMinder” Alt

$100,682

4

gray31

$75,615

5

calculer_

$56,789

6

pads1161

$42,651

7

ethlPaps

$32,032

8

Zhh

$24,057

9

enigma2018

$18,067

First Time’s a Charm for Pauls

Before PokerStars hosts the final big poker event of the year at the PokerStars Championship Prague, its smaller Festival series rolled into Casino Schenefeld near Hamburg, Germany.

PSF Hambu Manuel Kovsca Winner Event10 Main Event Ulrich Pauls

Ulrich Pauls (Photo: Manuel Kovsca, PokerStars)

Overall 2,609 players joined in across 10 days of poker, 567 of which were participants in the main event.

The winner of that event is Ulrich Pauls, a 36-year-old recreational player who’s never had an official tournament result before. Now he has one, and that comes with prize money of over €100k.

The runner-up finish from Michal Lubas from Poland might be even more impressive as he also finished in second place in the PokerStars Festival Rozvadov main event. That event took place last March and with almost twice as many players in the event at the King’s Casino.

Lubas also cashed at the WSOP Main Event this year and at the PSC Barcelona main event. Marcin Horecki, long-time member of the PokerStars team, also reached the final table and finished in 8th place.

The main event in Schenefeld had a total prize pool of €550k which was half of the money the festival generated overall.

PokerStars Festival Hamburg Final Table Payouts

Place

Name

Country

Prize

1

Ulrich Pauls

Germany

€105,850

2

Michal Lubas

Poland

€66,220

3

Jan Sigel

Germany

€47,410

4

Behzad Zarnegar

Germany

€36,960

5

Bo Rundström

Sweden

€28,980

6

Andrei Nodea

Romania

€22,770

7

Karolis Domarkas

Lithuania

€16,990

8

Marcin Horecki

Poland

€11,770

9

Rudol Köster

Germany

€9290

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