25 Days of SHBowl: Complete and Competitive Crushers

The countdown to the year’s biggest event has begun and over the next 25 days, Poker Central will introduce the entire 2017 Super High Roller Bowl field. From the world’s best high-stakes players, to online crushers and successful businessmen, poker’s most exclusive event has it all. Follow Poker Central’s “25 Days of SHRBowl” to know who will be competing when cards get in the air on May 28th.

There are plenty of ways to classify the Super High Roller Bowl field but for most, differences can be ignored and “crusher” can be used as an umbrella term. We have featured a few different types of players leading up to the year’s biggest event and while Connor Drinan and Byron Kaverman may fit some other classifications, it’s probably best to just file them as stone-cold crushers

The young Americans combine for over $20 million in earnings and have major tournament titles from around the world but Connor Drinan is the only one with Super High Roller Bowl success on his resume. Drinan final tabled the inaugural $500,000 buy-in Super High Roller Bowl in 2015 and notched a 3rd place finish for a career-best $3,225,000 score.

That podium finish was the start of a white-hot run for Drinan, as that run set the stage for three more massive results. The first came in the 2016 PokerStars Caribbean Adventure $50,000 High Roller, where Drinan finished 2^nd for a $870,000 score. A month later, Drinan was back on the podium in the Aussie Millions $250,000 Challenge. A 3^rd place finish earned Drinan another huge six-figure score worth $732,000.

Prior to last summer’s EPT 13 Barcelona series, Drinan had six runner-up or 3^rd place finishes in big buy-in major tournaments. Barcelona was where the breakthrough came, as Drinan won the €10,000 High Roller for $957,000 and since, Drinan has continued to churn out results.

He final tabled the PokerStars Championship Bahamas $100,000 Super High Roller in January and made his first official World Poker Tour final table at Thunder Valley in March. Those results push his career earnings over $10 million and when you combine those with Drinan’s nearly $5 million in online results, he may have one of the most complete resumes in the world.

A player that could compete with that resume, is Byron Kaverman. The 2015 GPI Player of the Year has over 100 live career cashes, which equate to over $9.5 million in earnings. Amazingly though, Kaverman, pictured above, has only cashed for over $500,000 twice, meaning he has a resume full of quantity, as well as quality.

Kaverman has churned out six-figure results on a year-by-year basis though, with a total of 27 such cashes on his resume dating back to 2011. While a majority of those results have come in High Roller events, including nine ARIA High Roller scores, his top-three career scores have come in smaller buy-in events.

The Ohio-native finished 2^nd in the 2014 WPT World Championship, for a $727,000 score and a year later, he won his first World Series of Poker bracelet in the $10,000 No Limit Hold’em Six-Handed Championship for $657,000. That six-max event generally boasts one of the toughest fields of the summer, confirmed by the fact that below Kaverman on the podium were Super High Roller Bowl participants Doug Polk and Fedor Holz.

While Kaverman has yet to find his way to another WSOP winner’s circle, he has started the year with some big results. Kaverman opened the year cashing in all three PokerStars Championship Bahamas High Rollers, from $25,000 to $100,000 buy-in events, before he final tabled the PokerStars Championship Panama Main Event. Those runs have Kaverman sitting in the Top 10 of the 2017 GPI Player of the Year rankings, while five other Super High Roller Bowl hopefuls sit in the Top 20

Clearly, the Super High Roller Bowl field is going to be stacked but as regulars in the high-stakes world, Connor Drinan and Byron Kaverman have never backed down from an opportunity to compete against the world’s best. This summer will be no different, as both will return for their third Super High Roller Bowl appearance.

Tomorrow, “25 Days of SHRBowl” features two more non-pros who have been staples in the High Roller world for the last few years. Follow all of Poker Central’s coverage of the year’s biggest event here.