Kitai earns $726,839 as GGPoker High Rollers Week comes to a close
The High Rollers Week series certainly lived up to its name, as the past eight days have seen massive payouts and star-studded fields come to GGPoker for high-stakes tournament action.
The $22 million guaranteed series came to a close Tuesday, with Davidi Kitai coming away with the win in the $10,300 Super MILLION$ Main Event. The Belgian superstar poker player topped a field of 581 entries, taking home the first-place prize of $726,839 in the process.
The 581 entries ballooned the prize pool to $5,810,000, surpassing the $5 million guarantee for the pinnacle event on the High Rollers Week schedule. Kitai outdueled Finland's Eelis Parssinen (2nd - $602,266) in heads-up play.
Parssinen finished second in the Super MILLION$ for the second week in a row, as the High Roller Week Main Event took the place of the weekly $10k tournament on the GGPoker schedule. The past week of poker results for Parssinen include that finish (for $472,222) and a win in the 2020 EPT Online $25k High Roller event ($539,819).
Final table recap
Other top finishers in the High Rollers Week Main Event included Mike Watson (3rd - $498,713), Andrii 'Brahman33' Novak (4th - $413,101), and David Yan (5th - $342,187). Yan stands to earn a pair of six-figure cashes in back-to-back days, as he's also still in the mix at the EPT Online $5,200 Main Event final table on PokerStars.
Yan came into the final table as the chip leader, with Kitai and Niklas Astedt (6th - $283,445) also among the top stacks heading into final day action. Yan fell victim to a final table heater put on by Watson, who doubled up five times on the way to eliminating Yan in fifth place.
Watson (28 big blinds) moved up to second in chips after knocking out Yan, with Kitai (15 big blinds) and Novak (13 big blinds) as the short stacks. All of those players were looking up at Parssinen (39 big blinds) as four-handed play began.
Watson's big final table run continued with a knockout of Novak, and the Canadian tournament star went into the final three with more than half of the chips in play. Kitai was down to his last ten big blinds at that point, but his run to the championship was about to begin.
Kitai cruises in late stages
Kitai got right back into the fray with a double-up through Watson early in three-handed action. That hand leveled the three remaining chip stacks to relatively even.
The final three remained neck-and-neck until the elimination of Watson in the third place, at the hands of Parssinen. Watson's 15 big blind stack went in the middle preflop with 7♠7❤️, against Parssinen's A♠J♠. The board ran out K♣4♣T♣A♣T❤️ , sending Watson home with just under a half-million dollars in third place.
Kitai faced a 2.5-to-1 chip deficit going into heads-up play, with Parssinen extending that advantage to nearly five-to-1 at one point. Within ten minutes of that mark, however, Kitai evened the score.
Parsinen's stack trimmed down to 15 big blinds by the final hand, with the Finnish crusher shoving with A♣2♠ and getting looked up by Kitai's A❤️8♣. The board ran out Q♠A♠3♦️5❤️T♦️, sealing the win for Kitai.
Featured image source: YouTube
