Today at the Poker Masters: Starting Off Strong, Looking Ahead to Saturday

The 2018 Poker Masters is officially underway. Over the next week, the world’s best will compete across seven High Roller events for the title of Poker Masters champion. The Poker Masters Purple Jacket awaits and “Today at the Poker Masters” will take you through the highest stakes week of the year with daily updates from the PokerGO Studio. 

The first day of a seven-event series won’t decide much, but a positive result in Event 1 will go a long way for players with serious Poker Masters aspirations. In 2017, eventual champion Steffen Sontheimer booked a modest 4th place finish in the opening event. His final numbers were anything but.

The German pro used that opening score as a base and by the end of the series he had built a near perfect resume. Across five events Sontheimer cashed four times and won twice, while recording over $2 million and a runaway Purple Jacket victory.

While it is impossible to predict who will be this year’s Goose, players that make the Event 1 final table will be on course to contend for this year’s Purple Jacket.

That course will likely include multiple players near the top of the High Roller of the Year leaderboard. Six players from the current top-ten, including overall leader Cary Katz, Super High Roller Bowl champion Justin Bonomo, and Dominik Nitsche, are here early for the opening event. With tons of points up for grabs during Poker Masters, a good series by any of those players could go a long way to locking up a 2019 Super High Roller Bowl seat before the end of 2018.

Poker Central will follow those High Roller of the Year leaders through the entire Poker Masters series and PokerNews will follow Event 1 as they play down to the final table tonight. Follow the live updates here and subscribe to watch the action live on PokerGO starting September 8. The final table of the opening $10,000 No Limit Hold’em event will hit PokerGO on Saturday, with coverage beginning at 4 PM ET.