Eric Assadourian(credit: Poker Stars Blog)
A few short hours after Dinh Le won the $2,500 Main Event at the APPT Macau, the $15,000 High Roller tournament got underway. 64 people paid to play in this tournament including Poker Stars sponsored pros such as Barry Greenstein and Vanessa Rousso, both of whom didn’t make it past the first day. Rousso was clobbered by Indonesian-born John Juanda en route to the final table. Other pros who didn’t make it to the final table were Joe Hachem, Scotty Nguyen and Isabelle Mercier.
Eight players began the final table action on Day Two. Joining Juanda at the final table was the tournament’s MVP, Liz Lieu. The Poker Diva made the final table of the Main Event and was sitting pretty in seat five. Aussie poker pro Emad Tahtouh, age 25, had a commanding chip lead with 343,500 of the big ones in his stack.
Nine hands into the day, Liz Lieu called Hong Kong native Tony Ng’s all-in bet for the rest of her chips. She flipped over her A,10 which wasn’t enough to defeat the cash game specialist and father of five with his A,Q in the pocket. Lieu received $27,648 for her eighth-place finish.
Scott Numoto, a 40 year old dad of four from San Jose, CA with Japanese ancestry, went all in with his As,2s and came up against the pocket tens of the chip leader, Tahtouh. Ten hands later, on the thirtieth hand dealt, John Juanda, one of the best players in the world, would hit the rail hard. His pocket kings were cracked by young Australian professional, Eric Assadourian, who won the 2006 Melbourne Championships Main Event. Assadourian held big slick in the hole and hit a lucky ace on the river to eliminate Juanda in sixth place.
At this point, Assadourian kicked his game into high gear, taking five of the next seven pots. During this time, the other Aussie at the table, Tahtouh, who finished second at the EPT London Main Event in 2006, saw his chip stack dwindle. He went all-in with a K,J and was called by Sweden’s Bo Sehlstedt. The 31 year sit ‘n go specialist and owner of several popular online poker sites in his homeland held A,K in the pocket and hit top pair on the flop. Tahtouh took down more than $64,000 for his fifth place finish.
Assadourian, who also won two titles at the New Zealand Championships earlier this year in Christchurch, sent both Tony Ng and South Australian native David Paul Striecke home in quick succession, setting up a showdown with Bo Sehlstedt.
Sehlstedt was a significant underdog as heads-up play began. He had less than 200k in chips versus Assadourian’s 772k. The heads-up match lasted nearly forty hands before Assadourian took down the title and $368,640.
Here are the final results:
1) Eric Assadourian - $368,640
2) Bo Sehlstedt - $184,320
3) David Paul Steicke - $110,592
4) Tony Ng - $82,944
5) Emad Tahtouh - $64,512
6) John Juanda - $46,080
7) Scott Numoto - $36,864
8) Liz Lieu - $27,648