The Venetian High Roller series upped the ante yesterday, kicking off Event #3 with an increased buy-in of $15,000.
The series started on January 5, 2022, with a $10k event that went to Punnat Punsri in a chop with Erik Seidel. Event #2 (another $10k) also went to Punsri, putting him well out in front on the PokerGO Tour leaderboard.
The jump in price cut the number of entries by a fair bit, from 34 and 37 (for the two $10k events) down to 26 entries. The higher stakes evened out though. There was $390,000 in the prize pool, the largest prize pool of the series so far.
Along the way to the final table, players like Masashi Oya, Barry Hutter, and Ali Imsirovic hit the rail.
Punsri is the breakout star of the current series with his back-to-back first-place finishes in Event #1 and Event #2. The Thai poker-pro was the final table bubble boy this time.
Final table action
Punsri left behind a final nine that included high stakes legends like Cary Katz, Sam Soverel, Chris Brewer, and Erik Seidel. With four places paid, there were still several players left for fate to disappoint. Seidel took 4th adding to his already solid Winter performance.
Seidel now has a 2nd and a 4th place finish at the Venetian this week and 5 WSOP final tables.
In the end, it was Alex Foxen who took first place. A run of good luck in the endgame put Foxen ahead with 1.6 million in chips to Michael Wang's 955k.
Rather than risk playing it out and wasting his chip lead, Foxen agreed to an ICM chop with Wang. There was no heads-up play, and everyone got an early night to start again fresh in the morning.
The big $25,000 buy-in event starts this aft to finish up the series.
PokerGO News tweeted: "The latest from the @PokerGO Tour sees @WAFoxen take first place in the @VenetianPoker High Roller Event #3: $15,000 NL, winning $153,615."
Venetian Deepstack 2022 High Roller Event #3: $15,000 No Limit Hold'em complete final table results
| Position | Player Name | Payout | PokerGO Tour POY Points |
| 1st | Alex Foxen | $153,615 | 154 |
| 2nd | Michael Wang | $134,985 | 135 |
| 3rd | Steven Grady | $62,400 | 62 |
| 4th | Erik Seidel | $39,000 | 39 |
| 5th | Chris Brewer | Money Bubble | 0 |
| 6th | Andrew Lichtenberger | N/A | 0 |
| 7th | Justin Saliba | N/A | 0 |
| 8th | Sam Soverel | N/A | 0 |
| 9th | Cary Katz | N/A | 0 |
Featured image source: WPT from Flickr, used under CC license
