25 Days of SHRBowl: World Class World Beaters

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.

With the Super High Roller Bowl officially a week away, we’re past the point of rookies, non-professionals and players looking to make their first splash in the High Roller pool. We’re down to the heavy hitters, the players that have so much experience at the world’s highest stakes that they don’t know what to do with it. The only problem for the rest of the field, Bryn Kenney and David Peters do know what to do with it, which is why they’ve been at the top of the poker world for the last two years.

Bryn Kenney opened last year with a win in the $100,000 Super High Roller at the PokerStars Caribbean Adventure and then added another seven-figure score for a runner-up finish in the HK$500,000 Triton Super High Roller Series Main Event. Kenney’s 2016 earnings exceeded $5 million and he has already eclipsed that number just a handful of months into this year.

If his 2016 campaign was good, his first half of 2017 has been great. His run again began in the Caribbean again, with Kenney winning a $25,000 and $50,000 High Roller at the PokerStars Championship Bahamas, while also final tabling another $25,000 event and the opening $100,000 Super High Roller. All told, Kenney earned just over $1,725,000 in the span of two weeks and he has shown no signs of slowing down since. In February, Kenney returned to Manilla for another edition of the Triton Super High Roller Series and notched a 4^th place result in the HK$1,000,000 Main Event, worth $501,000, before returning stateside five ARIA High Roller cashes.

Kenney then picked up his second PokerStars Championship Super High Roller win of the year, besting a stacked €100,000 Super High Roller field in Monte Carlo to pick up a $1,946,000 score. Kenney’s mind numbing results and consistency at the highest level have pushed his career earnings over the $17 million mark and have placed him at the top of the GPI Player of the Year rankings.

The top of those rankings is where David Peters, pictured above, ended 2016. Thanks to a banner year, and some late pushes, Peters beat Fedor Holz for the Player of the Year title, after it seemed that the German High Roller had all but assured himself of that honor by the end of the summer.

By the end of December though, that wasn’t the case and while the summer was when Peters won his first WSOP bracelet, in a 1,860 player $1,500 No Limit Hold’em event, Peters filled the entire 2016 calendar with massive results. He opened the year recording a runner-up finish in the WPT National Philippines $200,000 Super High Roller, for $2,300,000, and then final tabled three events at the PCA.

Another runner-up finish, in the Aussie Millions $250,000 Challenge for $629,000, closed out the month of January and the results just kept coming. In total, Peters picked up fifteen six-figure or better scores in 2016, with one of his last earning him Player of the Year honors. Peters entered the final European Poker Tour Main Event needing a podium finish to dethrone Holz and he did just that, finishing 3^rd in the $5,000 Main Event for a $420,000 result.

Since that POY winning performance Peters has cashes in events ranging from $5,000 to $100,000, with his best finish of 2017 coming in last month’s €100,000 Super High Roller at the PSC Monte Carlo series. Peters finished 4^th for $687,000 and that result pushed his career earnings over $16 million.

The scariest part of Kenney and Peter’s recent success, they also have experience in the biggest events in the world. Kenney final tabled last year’s Super High Roller Bowl, finishing 6^th for $800,000, and Peters notched a 5^th place finish in 2015, earning $1,505,000 in the $500,000 buy-in event. They’ll both look to regain that form next week.

Tomorrow, “25 Days of SHRBowl” continues with two of the most successful World Series of Poker players of all time. Follow Poker Central for coverage of the year’s biggest event.