Jans Arends Lands 4th GGMillion$ SHR title

After last week’s GGMillion$ week extravaganza, which saw Ilya Streltsov win $1.66million, it was back to the relative normality of 5- and 6-figure cashes. 

The 183 entries at $10k a pop meant $1.83million in the kitty and a final table spot was worth a very healthy $50k. Among the 9 who made it that far were four players flying the Austrian flag, a very common sight these days in online highstakes MTT poker.

This week’s Jeff Gross-hosted livestreamed final table saw Xuan Liu as the special guest, the Chinese-Canadian pro who became the first-ever female Triton SHR winner this year.

Beckman and Vousden were early casualties, the latter running 15 bigs and big slick into Vaskaboinikau’s cowboys…

Vousden: A♥ K♦

Vaskaboinikau: K♠ K♣

Flop: 4♥ Q♠ 5♥

Turn: 2♠

The wheel draw gave Vousden outs but the river bricked…

River: 6♠

A couple of hands later and it was the Belarus pro’s turn to suffer a cooler, shoving 40 bigs in the big blind after button and small blind calls. Unfortunately, his A♣ 10♥ had been tricked by Engelien’s A♦ K♠ limp and he was out in 7^th for $85,568.

The money was getting bigger and so were the hands, Russian Dima SPR picking up 10s in the big blind but this time it was “Dafaniu” who had aces in the cut-off.

After the early barrage of action and bustouts, 5-handed play settled down for the best part of an hour. Eventually chip leader Arends found a great spot, with the GTO hand overview an interesting new feature to the livestream…

Engelien: 8♠ 8♣

Arends: A♠ 7♠

Flop: 7♣ 7♦ 3♣

When Engelien in the small blind checked, the GTO play was to check back 5% of the time and bet small 95% of the time. Arends did indeed bet small and Engelien responded with the “100% recommended” call.

Turn: 10♣

This time Arends varied from the “100% small bet” with a 2/3rds pot bet following Engelien’s check, and was met by the “unapproved” shove in response…

River: K♥

No club or 8 and Engelien had to settle for 5^th place and $139,184 and was followed to the rail by Chris Nguyen, whose otherwise great 8s against 7s showdown ran into a rivered straight.

Arends was by now a huge chip leader and when he KO’d anonymous Chinese account “PepsiFanta” in an ace-over-ace battle, he took a 4:1 lead into heads-up. With an $80k difference to play for and a “no deal making” policy in the GGMillion$ SHR, the scene was set.

“Dafaniu”, playing under the Singapore flag, was looking to add a maiden title to last week’s 6^th-place run. Arends was after title number four.

There was to be no heroic comeback and then end saw Arends nicely pick off a bluff…

…and that was that!  

Final table results

Andrew Burnett

Professional Poker Journalist

An avid poker player, he dreams of one day playing the WSOP Main Event and has promised himself he will fold aces and kings if he gets them on the first hand to avoid front-page headlines. [more]