High Roller of the Year: Back-To-Back Bonomo

The High Roller of the Year race is off and running. Each week, Poker Central is your home for the results, moves, and stories from the world’s biggest events. From the first ARIA High Roller Series to the 2019 Super High Roller Bowl, Poker Central is High Roller of the Year headquarters. 

The best week of Justin Bonomo’s career got even better. Three days after winning the Super High Roller Bowl, Bonomo won back-to-back $25K ARIA High Roller Series events. Those two victories give Bonomo an early advantage in the High Roller of the Year race. The top-five is below:

Going Up

Justin Bonomo shot to the top of the High Roller of the Year leaderboard and has stayed there ever since. While that sentence gets a little more powerful if we aren’t four events into the season, Bonomo’s dream 2018 has continued through the first week of the ARIA High Roller Series summer slate.

Germans are expected to populate a decent percentage of this leaderboard when it is all said and done, but through the first four events they’ve failed to make much headway. Austria on the other hand has. Thomas Muhlocker and Matthias Eibinger both have two cashes and Muhlocker is currently second on the leaderboard.

We’ll get to another player with two cashes in a bit.

Going Down

“My name is Jake and it has been 22 days and nine hours since my last ARIA High Roller win.” – not a real quote from Jake Schindler

That was Jake Schindler this afternoon at High Rollers Anonymous, the completely made up place where High Rollers go to complain about their poker and fantasy sports beats.

The reason the Going Down section is being filled with made up quotes is because we are working off results from four events. This section isn’t really even a thing yet. Deeper into the High Roller of the Year season it will be relevant. Until then, we’ll keep this Jake Schindler bit going.

Bowl Breakdown

In this section, I’ll breakdown the Super High Roller Bowl prospects of one player and we open with Adrian Mateos.

The Spaniard deposited for the 2017 Super High Roller Bowl, but was not selected in the lottery. Mateos was not selected by ARIA either, meaning he missed out on the $300,000 buy-in event. This year, Mateos was selected in the lottery and made his Bowl debut. In the time since Mateos was passed over in 2017, The Conquistador has done nothing but crush. Mateos won GPI Player of the Year honors, final tabled this year’s PokerStars Caribbean Adventure Main Event, and won his third WSOP bracelet.

The problem is, that doesn’t get Adrian Mateos into the Super High Roller Bowl.

A top-five spot in the High Roller of the Year race does though and I think Mateos likes his chances across the entire season a little more than with dozens of other ping pong balls next spring. To avoid such fate, Mateos will have to increase his ARIA High Roller Series volume and perform well throughout the majors. He already has two cashes under his belt and if Mateos can continue to accumulate High Roller of the Year points, he should earn Super High Roller Bowl safety.