A big congrats to Mike "Timex" McDonald who won the EPT Malta High Roller (his first-ever High Roller title) yesterday! According to PokerStars Blog, McDonald, Juha Helppi and Nick Petrangelo started discussing a potential deal when they were the last remaining three players of 63 entrants.
Petrangelo was happy with splitting the remaining prize money, while McDonald and Helppi were more interested in putting some money aside to fight for. Helppi suggested that all three of them paid €5k each for ad additional €15k to the winner, but Petrangelo and McDonald didn't think that was fair as Helppi had much more chips and a far bigger chance of winning the tournament.
Play eventually continued without any deal. Petrangelo was sent packing in third place after finding ace-jack and running into McDonald's ace-king. Helppi was the chip leader, but McDonald played well and quickly overtook the lead. In the final hand McDonald limped in with king-jack and called when Helppi went all in with king-eight suited. Helppi had four outs for a chop on the turn, but the river card was no good and McDonlad was crowned the winner!
€25,000 High Roller
Players: 52
Re-entries: 11
Prize pool: €1,813,000
1 - Mike McDonald, Canada, €498,575
2 - Juha Helppi, Finland, €354,440
3 - Nick Petrangelo, United States, €232,065
4 - Jason Wheeler, United States, €178,580
5 - Byron Kaverman, United States, €141,415
6 - Sam Greenwood, Canada, €110,590
7 - Benjamin Pollak, France, €87,025
8 - Sylvain Loosli, France, €67,990
9 - Christopher Frank, Germany, €51,670
10 - Dietrich Fast, Germany, €45,325
11 - Andrew Chen, Canada, €45,325
