This Week in Poker: Sontheimer Dominates the Poker Masters

This Week in Poker wrapped up a momentous week at Poker Central with the conclusion of the 2017 Poker Masters at the ARIA Resort & Casino, the World Poker Tour’s Borgata Poker Open streamed on PokerGO and the broadcast schedule was announced for the World Series of Poker Main Event on ESPN.

Steffen Sontheimer Wins Inaugural Poker Masters Purple Jacket™

Steffen Sontheimer’s been playing the high roller circuit for less than a year and arrived at the ARIA with a talented contingent of German players for the Poker Masters. Sontheimer won the $100,000 Championship event, won Event #2 and final tabled two other prelims for $2.73 million in earnings in eight days.

Sontheimer, Christian Christner and Fedor Holz finished first, second and third in the Championship event and when Holz busted in third place, Sontheimer locked up the Purple Jacket. He also bubbled Event #3 – almost cashing in every event of the Series.

Nick Shulman, Bryn Kenney and Brandon Adams all picked up wins in the prelims for Schulman and Kenney to finish the highest among American players in the overall standings.

2 ????s enter, the one with the Purple Jacket comes out on top. @RunGo0seRun caps amazing #PokerMasters series with a $100K Championship win. pic.twitter.com/3QAohziefj

— PokerGO (@PokerGO) September 21, 2017

Subscribers can relive all of the action of the Poker Masters exclusively on PokerGO. Each of the final tables are available in their entirety in as well.

Guo Liang Chen Wins World Poker Tour Borgata Poker Open

Photo: World Poker Tour

The first World Poker Tour event to stream on PokerGO was the WPT Legends of Poker from the Bicycle Casino in Los Angeles a couple weeks ago and on Friday night the Borgata Poker Open Championship returned six players to the final table and Guo Liang Chen took down the table for $789,058.

Chen picked up his first title in an event that drew 1,132 entries and built a $3.6 million prize pool. Gregory Weber finished runner-up, Borgata regular Jia Liu finished in third and Matthew Parry, Cliff Josephy and Thomas Paul filled out the final table.

A big heads up comeback, then big slick wins it! Guo Liang Chen takes down the @WPT @BorgataPoker Open Championship for $789K. #BPO2017 pic.twitter.com/b2Bw27IqXJ

— PokerGO (@PokerGO) September 23, 2017

All the televised WPT final tables on the North American Main Tour are scheduled to stream live on PokerGO. Next on the schedule are WPT Montreal in November and the WPT Five Diamond World Poker Classic in December.

The World Series of Poker Main Event on ESPN

Poker Nights return to ESPN this Sunday, September 24 with the first two, 60-minute episodes of the World Series of Poker Main Event at 9 pm ET – 11 pm ET. Two new episodes air each Sunday night, with a replay on Tuesday nights, and the action starts with Day 1A running all the way through until Scott Blumstein spiked his deuce on the river to win $8.15 million.

This is first year in many that filming began with the Day 1 flights and each episode is culled from the hours of footage aired on PokerGO. The TV episodes will show the progress of Blumstein and the rest of the players at the Final Table, including fan-favorite John Hesp. His dramatic run against some poker’s top pros, including Benjamin Pollak, Antoine Saout and Ben Lamb glued viewers to their screens as they played for millions.

Poker Central acquired the global television and digital media rights to the WSOP earlier this year. Poker Central and ESPN also partnered to bring live and televised coverage of the WSOP – which premiered on PokerGO in June.

Daniel Negreanu Issues Challenge to Phil Hellmuth

Both Daniel Negreanu and Phil Hellmuth played in the Poker Masters and each picked up a cash in the preliminary events. Hellmuth got particularly salty on Day 2 of the $100,000 Championship event when he berated the play of others, but Steffen Sontheimer and Fedor Holz didn’t back down needled him right back.

Hellmuth fell short of cashing but did claim at the table he has the best lifetime ROI in No Limit Hold’em. Negreanu missed cashing in the finale but he took the results as inspiration to study and improve his game. He challenged Hellmuth to rematch with the Germans in a couple months and seemingly the entire poker world weighed in on the challenge.

PAD CHALLENGE @phil_hellmuth:

Cash game and tourney 6 handed

Me@CrownUpGuy @RunGo0seRun @becksundsoda @GatsbyKempinho
You

Let’s go

— Daniel Negreanu (@RealKidPoker) September 21, 2017