Thomas Muehloecker Leads High Roller After Three-Hour Bubble

Day 2 of the €25,750 High Roller in the PokerStars Championship Monte Carlo picked up an additional 44 entries, pushing the total field to 187 and juicing the prize pool to €4.5 million. Ten levels of action trimmed the field to 27 players – all in the money – with Thomas Muehloecker bagging up the chip lead.

Play stretched over 11 hours due to the huge money bubble, hand-for-hand play took three hours and the field was one off the money for over an hour until Steffen Sontheimer was eliminated. He shoved from the big blind with ace king suited, Muehloecker called holding pocket queens and the board ran jack-high to end play for the day.

Only two PokerStars Team Pros remain – Igor Kurganov and Felipe Ramos and the both finished middle of the pack. Daniel Negreanu, Jason Mercier and Liv Boeree all fell short of making Day 3.

Ryan Riess finished the highest among American players two spots off the money. Riess lost all but one big blind in a showdown holding ace eight against Murad Akhundov’s jack ten suited. Riess waited a couple hands, found pocket queens but fell to Julian Thomas’ flush.

John Juanda could join the $20 million club should he win or finish runner-up with $19.4 million in his career. While Juanda boasts one of the best resumes in poker, he’s never won and PokerStars High Roller event.

Daniel Dvoress has the second-shortest stack but has been on fire this week with three other High Roller cashes. Timothy Adams, Martin Jacobson and Philipp Gruissem each return with short stacks.

Every player has €45,820 locked up for the min-cash, the final nine players all make six-figures and the winner earns €1,015,00 – beating the guarantee. There were 139 unique players with 48 re-entries.

Top Ten Chip Counts

1. Thomas Muehloecker – 887,000
2. Ekrem Sanioglu – 795,000
3. Charlie Carrel – 747,000
4. Dario Sammartino – 690,000
5. Julian Thomas – 672,000
6. Julian Stuer – 600,000
7. Adrian Mateos – 562,000
8. John Juanda – 510,000
9. Josip Simunic – 377,000
10. Emil Patel – 325,000