Selouan Shines In Another $25,000 SHR; Adds SCOOP to EPT Title

Brazil's Rodrigo "SELOUAN1991" Selouan seems to be developing a penchant for $25,000 buy-in tournaments. Selouan helped himself to the €25,000 Single-Day High Roller IV title at the recent European Poker Tour (EPT) Prague festival, denying Team PokerStars' Sam Grafton heads-up. Now Selouan has added a $25,000 Super High Roller Spring Championship Of Online Poker (SCOOP) title to his ever-expanding list of poker titles.

Selouan was one of 47 entrants (36 unique players plus 11 re-entries) in the SCOOP 44-H: $25,00 NLHE 8-Max Super High Roller. Day 1 took place on May 17 and saw the list of stellar reduced to only six. Spare a thought for Sergi "srxkgirona" Reixach and Vyacheslav "VbV1990" Buldygin who reached the final table but still went home empty-handed. Here is how the six-handed finale went down.

SCOOP 44-H: $25,000 NHLE 8-Max Super High Roller Final Table Results

Thomas "WushuTM" Muehloecker was the first in-the-money player to bust. Muehloecker had early lost a chunk of his stack to "Nacho124441", and it was the same player who got their hands on the rest of Muehlocker's chips.

Nacho124441 min-raised to 140,000 on the button and called when Muehloecker three-bet all-in from the small blind for 799,066. It was pocket queens for Nacho124441 and king-jack for Muehlocker. A queen on the turn left Muehlocker drawing dead, and he collected $49,362 for his sixth place finish.

Fifth place and $76,472 went to Nacho124441 despite the Mexican being far the biggest stack when five-handed play began. They lost a handful of relatively small pots before getting their stack in with ace-king and running into the pocket aces of Juan "Malaka$tyle" Pardo, which left him with a 20 big blind stack. Nacho124441 open-shoved for 1,625,706 from the cutoff with king-queen, and Pardo again woke up with a dominating hand in ace-king. Pardo re-shoved, and his ace-king held to reduce the player count by one.

Pascal "Pass_72" Lefrancois was the next casualty, the Canadian collecting $118,472 after his exit in fourth place and it was Pardo who struck the killer blow once again. Lefrancois had only just doubled through Pardo when his ace-trey came from behind to beat the Spaniard's ace-king. Pardo then raised to 280,000 from the small blind with the blinds at 40,000/80,000/10,000a. Lefrancois three-bet all-in for 1,685,618 with what turned out to be ace-four of clubs, and Pardo called the shove with pocket sixes. The sixes held, which left only three players in the hunt for the $440,493 top prize.

Pardo held 8.9 million chips at this point with Selouan on 1.3 million and Daniil "NVoskob1986" Kiselev on 1.4 million. However, Pardo was somehow the third-place finisher. Pardo lost a chunk when he doubled Kiselev up with sixes against tens, then Selouan doubled through Pardo with ace-four versus pocket jacks!

The Pardo slide continued although he lasted until the 50,000/100,000/12,500a level. That is when Selouan looked down at king-queen in the small blind and decided to call Pardo's 861,839 shove, which he made with ace-ten. A king on the river resigned Pardo to the $183,537 third-place prize.

Selouan held a 7,349,101 to 4,400,899 chip advantage over Kiselev going into heads-up but the Latvia manged to draw level. Neither player managed to forge head in the one-on-one battle but something finally gave when Kiselev lost a large percentage of his stack when he flopped a queen but Selouan had made trip aces. That gave Selouan a near two-to-one chip lead that he never relinquished.

The final hand saw Kiselev limp in for 120,000 with ace-six, and Selouan rip it in with pocket threes. Kiselev called off the 2,090,599 chips he had behind, and it was off to the races in this huge flip. A king-jack-jack flop kept Selouan ahead, as did the deuce on the turn. A third jack completed the board and confirmed Kiselev's demise in second-place, a finish worth $284,336. Selouan got his hands on the title in addition to the $440,493 top prize.

Darie Wins As $25K Stars Go Deep

There was a $2,100 buy-in tournament running alongside the $25,000 Super High Roller and several of those who reached the final table of the latter went deep in it.

$25,000 champion Rodrigo Selouan navigated his way through the majority of the 247-strong field but fell in 14th place for a $7,141 payout. Amazingly, two of the $25,00 finalists found themselves at the $2,100 final table, too.

Thomas "WushTM" Muehloecker bowed out in seventh for $18,909 with Pascal "Pass_72" Lefrancois busting in fourth place for a $42,638 addition to his bankroll. Sandwiched between those bust-outs were the eliminations of Ronan "Sw33ney" Sweeney ($24,796) and Patrick "pads1161" Leonard ($32,516).

Portuguese sensation Rui "RuiNF" Ferreira was the third place finisher; he collected $55,912. Ferreira's untimely demise left Costa Rica-based British grinder Elliott "elliottpet" Peterman heads-up against Vlad "dariepoker" Darie in what was essentially a $23,000 heads-up sit & go. Neither players was interested in striking a deal, which left the payouts as they were. This meant Peterman got his hands on $73,318 when he fell at the final hurdle, leaving Darie to scoop a $96,143 payday, giving himself plenty of ammunition for the remaining SCOOP events.

SCOOP 44-M: $2,100 NLHE 8-Max Final Table Results

Vega Victorious in the Latest SCOOP Edition Sunday Million; Ketzer Crashes in Fourth

PokerStars slapped a $1 million guarantee on the latest Sunday Million but 2,912 entrants meant the tournament dished out $1,456,000, doing so to the top 399 players. The chunky prize pool meant nobody who reached the final table walked away with less than $14,000 while the top three finishers reeled in a six-figure haul.

Felipe "ketzerfelipe" Ketzer was the last of the finalists not to win more than $100,000, although he cannot be too disappointed having turned his $530 investment into $76,625. Ketzer's elimination locked in six-figure prizes for the surviving trio of players. Canada's "bonnebaise" saw their tournament end abruptly in third, a finish good for $107,494, and the massive Sunday Million was now at the heads-up stage.

Andreas "Nuthshell" Vega, a Chilean national who has won a $22 buy-in tournament a few days ago, battled with "Korn2005" or the title and the lion's share of the prize pool. The difference in payouts of more than $60,000 seemingly did not affect the heads-up players because they neglected to strike any sort of deal. The lack of negotiations meant Vega secured a $211,549 prize when he defeated his Canadian opponent. Korn2005 helped themselves to a $150,798 prize, which should go someway to numbing the pain of not becoming a 2022 SCOOP champion.

SCOOP 35-M: $530 NLHE 8-Max Sunday Million