The sharp money was not on Seth Davies when he entered the final day of the $100,000 Super High Roller Bowl: Pot-Limit Omaha in fourth of five on the leaderboard while defending champion Jared Bleznick had what seemed like an insurmountable lead.
But Davies, who has already won a Super High Roller Bowl in Cyprus for $3.2 million earlier this year, caught a tailwind of luck and circumstance to turn a super-short stack into a victory for $1.5 million over the field of 42 players.
“I had two big blinds,” Davies said after the win. “Not so much skill. I just got really lucky over and over again. Incredible result obviously. It’s a PLO tournament. Craziness happens. We all saw it. I just won every hand for two hours.”
That may be an oversimplification, but it is what happened. Davies was down for the count in four-handed play just two hours prior and Sean Winter was the chip leader with 100 big blinds. Bleznick was in striking distance of Winter in second place and Artem Maksimov occupied the middle ground between the top two players and the short stack of Davies.
Davies doubles, Bleznick breaks
Davies quickly doubled through Bleznick and then he took a big bite out of Winter with a full house to spring back to life. A short time later, Bleznick surrendered a big double to Maksimov and the Day 3 leader found himself on the short stack in a whiplash turn of events.
Bleznick had been riding high in the early part of the day after Josh Arieh made a quick exit in fifth place. The defending champion entered the finale as chip leader and he came prepared to put on a show. Before long, Bleznick had five boxes of Topps Dynasty baseball cards on the table and he was ready to break them open.
It might come off as a distraction technique, but sports cards are serious business to Bleznick. He did the same thing last year — using time extensions to open a box of basketball cards. This year he enlisted the help of Davies and Maksimov to sweat the results.
Each box contains one “relic card” with a game-used piece of memorabilia embedded within. They retail for around $1,700 and rare cards like Shohei Ohtani can fetch up to $30,000-$40,000.
“Relax, we’re opening cards,” Bleznick told the dealer when she tried to keep things moving.
Davies pulled a Ronald Acuna card from the World Baseball Classic, a pull that had Bleznick excited for more. He implored Davies to open another box and this time it was Vladimir Guerrero Jr.
Maksmiov went next and he required the use of a time bank to get a Byron Buxton card. “One of the worst ones you can get,” Bleznick said. Blez himself pulled the next one, another dud before Winter opened the final box.
The peel was slow — a dirty Mets card with a dirty patch. Bleznick’s face lit up when it was Pete Alonso, one of the team’s most popular players. He showed it around the table with pride and the cameras zoomed in for more.
Blez busts, Winter bleak
It was the high point of Bleznick’s afternoon. He couldn’t recover from the hand against Maksimov and he was out in fourth place with no title defense and no Ohtani card.
Bleznick’s bust left Maksimov with the lead and Winter was close behind. Davies was still in the distance, but a full house against Winter put him in a near-tie for second. Another big hand against Maksimov propelled Davies into a tie for the lead and suddenly Winter was the short stack.
In a pivotal hand at the 40K/80K/80K level, Davies raised to 220K with 
and Winter three-bet to 700K with 
. Davies called and the flop was 
. Winter tossed out 400K with aces and Davies called with two pair.
The turn was 
and Winter fired 575K. Davies called with three tens and the river was a jackpot 
.
Winter tossed out 2.495 million and left just 5,000 behind. Davies went all-in and Winter flicked in the last chip for a crying call. The quad tens knocked out Winter in third place and gave Davies a big lead for his heads-up confrontation with Maksimov.
Davies closes the door
The final pair traded paint and Maksimov closed the gap a bit before Davies flopped a set of sixes to put a stop to the momentum. A short time later, Maksimov three-bet to 900K with 
. Davies called with 
. The flop was 
and Maksimov got the last of it in. Davies called and the flop ran out 
to give Davies the championship with trip fours.
“I’m obviously not the best player in the room at this game,” he continued after the win. “I’ve only been playing it seriously for about a year or so.”
Omaha is a “really great poker game,” he says. “It’s very much a poker player’s game. It’s a big logic puzzle, where hold ‘em is kind of computery. Being able to have a big body of knowledge of how tournaments work and starting to learn more about the fundamentals of the actual Omaha game, I think have a decent skill set for this. Long way to go, and I’ll just keep playing and keep getting better.”
2024 Super High Roller Bowl: $100K PLO results
| Place | Player | Prize |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Seth Davies | $1,500,000 |
| 2 | Artem Maksimov | $900,000 |
| 3 | Sean Winter | $600,000 |
| 4 | Jared Bleznick | $450,000 |
| 5 | Josh Arieh | $330,000 |
| 6 | Sam Soverel | $250,000 |
| 7 | Ben Tollerene | $170,000 |
Photos courtesy of PokerGO/Antonio Abrego
