India's Santhosh Suvarna has claimed the largest payday awarded to date at the 2023 World Series of Poker Europe by taking down the title in the highest-buy-in tourney on the WSOP Europe slate, the Event #12, €50,000 NLH Diamond High Roller. Suvarna earned €650,000 and his first career bracelet on Friday in topping a 37-entry field for the win.
Suvarna, a regular participant in the super-high-roller Triton Series events, is a relative newcomer to the WSOP scene. Friday's win marked just Suvarna's second-ever WSOP cash, joining an 11th-place finish he logged in a $50,000 high-roller tourney at the WSOP in Las Vegas last summer.
Suvarna's €650,000 (about US $695,300) win at Kings Casino in Rozvadov added to an impressive recent run in global high-roller tourneys and brought his lifetime earnings in live poker tournaments to nearly $6.5 million. His largest-ever payday remains the $1,772,000 he earned for a third-place finish in the Triton Super Series main event in Cyprus last month.
Felipe Ramos bubbles the money
Making the final table in the Diamond High Roller did not equate to making the money, as the smallish 37-entry tournament paid out only the top six spots. Suverna first eliminated two of the final nine players, Emil Bise and Quan Zhou, in a three-way, all-in hand, and then GGPoker brand ambassador Felipe Ramos became the event's official bubble player when his all-in A-2 couldn't improve against Daniel Dvoress's waiting pocket jacks.
Ramos's bustout allowed the remaining players to lock up a six-figure payday. Martin Kabhrel, Ioannis Angelo-Konstas, and Chris Brewer exited in sixth, fifth, and fourth, respectively, leaving Canada's Dvoress, China's Len Ren, and Suvarna to battle for the win.
Dvoress, who won the €25,000 NLH GGMillion$ tourney for his second career bracelet earlier in the series, busted in a hand where he ran into Lin's flopped trip sixes. That brought on the heads-up finish between Suvarna and Lin, with the two starting roughly even in chips, but Suvarna quickly took command. The final hand found Lin calling off the last of his chips with J-2, but failing to improve against Suvarna's K-6 on a 4-Q-9-7-7 runout.
Twenty-nine players contributed eight additional re-entries in Event #12, producing a €1,739,925 prize pool shared by the top six players. The in-the-money finishers in 2023 WSOP Europe Event #12, €50,000 NLH Diamond High Roller, were as follows:
- Santhosh Suvarna (India) - €650,000
- Ren Lin (China) - €400,000
- Daniel Dvoress (Canada) - €266,000
- Chris Brewer (United States) - €185,000
- Ioannis Angelou-Konstas (Greece) - €135,000
- Martin Kabrhel (Czech Republic) - €103,925
