25 Days of SHRBowl: Germany's Old and New Guard

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.

Three Germans down, five to go. Koray Aldemir and Christoph Vogelsang may be polar opposites in terms of Super High Roller Bowl experience, Aldemir is another German rookie, while Vogelsang will make his third appearance this summer, but both have fantastic results in some of the world’s biggest events.

Aldemir’s fantastic results have come fast and furious over the last year, with six-figure scores seemingly coming on a monthly basis since last summer. That is when Aldemir burst onto the scene, notching a runner-up finish in the World Series of Poker’s $1,500 Summer Solstice event, good for a then-career best score of $252,000. A few weeks later, Aldemir made good on his first dive into the High Roller pool.

He navigated the $111,111 High Roller for One Drop field to finish 3^rd, falling to American Dan Smith and countryman Fedor Holz. The podium finish, in one of the year’s biggest and toughest events, earned Aldemir a $2,154,000 score and since that breakthrough, he has continued to churn out results in a wide variety of events.

From Florida, to Barcelona, to Malta and Prague, Aldemir traveled the globe and added another quarter-million to his 2016 haul. His run didn’t stop once the calendar turned though. Aldemir opened the year with a 10^th place finish in the $10,000 buy-in Aussie Millions Main Event, good for a $117,000 result, and then earned another seven-figure score in Manilla. Maybe more importantly, Aldemir picked up his first major tournament title, winning the HK$1,000,000 buy-in Triton Super High Roller Main Event for $1,292,000.

Since, Aldemir has notched another win a $5,000 WPT LA Poker Classic event and has recorded three podium finishes in PokerStars Championship events, including a 2^nd place finish in the $25,000 High Roller in Panama. Almost overnight, Aldemir has push his career earnings near $5 million and is showing no signs of slowing down.

While Aldemir’s stretch of excellence has been packed into the last 12 months, Christoph Vogelsang’s has been spread out of the last few years. After announcing himself to the poker world in 2013, with a 3^rd place finish in the EPT10 London £50,000 Super High Roller for a $620,000 result, Vogelsang and six-figure scores are never far apart. Since that breakthrough result, Vogelsang, pictured above, has nearly a dozen cashes in events with buy-ins over $25,000 but his best career finish came in the biggest one of them all.

2014 was the last year that the $1,000,000 buy-in The Big One for One Drop ran as an open event and Vogelsang made the most of that opportunity. At a final table that included Daniel Colman and Daniel Negreanu, two of the all-time winningest players in tournament poker, German High Roller Tobias Reinkemeier and Scott Seiver, who would go on to finish 2^nd in the first-ever Super High Roller Bowl in 2015, Vogelsang finished 3^rd.

The podium finish earned him $4,480,000 and while Vogelsang has yet to see similar success in the Super High Roller Bowl, the experience of those massive stakes are something that few other players can draw from. Since that One Drop run, consistent High Roller results from nearly every corner of the globe have pushed Vogelsang’s career earnings north of $7 million.

Vogelsang may be the old guard of German High Rollers and Aldemir may be the up-and-comer but regardless of how you classify them, each will bring plenty of high stakes experience and big results to the Super High Roller Bowl. 

Tomorrow, “25 Days of SHRBowl” returns to the American side of the roster and will feature two of the best heads up players on the planet. Follow all of Poker Central’s coverage of the year’s biggest event here.