Timothy Adams Leads WSOP $50k Diamond High Roller With 23 Remaining

The $50,000-entry WSOP Europe Diamond High Roller event is one that has attracted only the very best in the world and after an eventful Day 1, there are 23 players remaining, with Canadian player Timothy Adams chief amongst them.

With players such as Daniel Negreanu, Ole Schemion, Danny Tang and Sam Grafton all reaching the top 10 chipcounts on a busy day at the felt, there was drama at every flop, turn and river along the way as Adams built a monster stack on the open day of three.

Playing the Numbers Game

King’s Resort was a busy venue on Day 1, with a total of 39 entries took to the felt in pursuit of glory and one of the biggest winner prizes of the 2022 World Series of Poker Europe festival so far. With registration remaining open until the end of the first level of play on Day 2, the prizepool is yet to be confirmed, but the pot of gold at the end of the Rozvadov rainbow is sure to be a full one, with $2 million guaranteed in this event.

At the close of Day 1, it was the Canadian WSOP bracelet winner Timothy Adams who held the chip lead, and a big one too, with his stack of 5,265,000 chips some way clear of his closest rival. Chasing him down in the top three chipcounts are two Dutch players in Teun Mulder (3,590,000) and the 2014 WSOP Main Event final table player Jorryt Van Hoof (3,420,000).

Elsewhere in the top ten, players with big stacks include Hungarian high roller Laszlo Bujtas (3,025,000) and American Nick Petrangelo (3,000,000), who completed the top five, with others such as Sam Grafton (2,500,000), Orpen Kisacikoglu (2,135,000) and Ole Schemion (2,115,000) hot on their heels. With Danny Tang (1,788,000) and Daniel Negreanu (1,650,000) completing an all-star top 10, the battle for this bracelet is going to be intense.

Big Names Bust Early

It didn’t take long for play to bring out some large eliminations as some of the most famous poker players in the world were chasing survival at any cost. First to bust was the popular Malaysian businessman and $25k High Roller winner Paul Phua whose bracelet victory this week came at the other end of the spectrum of success to his bust-out here. Phua’s pocket kings lost to queen-eight of Laszlo Bujtas as the Hungarian had flopped middle pair and turned middle set.

While Bujtas went from strength to strength, others were falling early. The 2022 WSOP Main Event winner and world champion Espen Jørstad, Czech table-talker Martin Kabrhel and German poker powerhouse Fedor Holz all bit the dust. Thai player Punnat Punsri busted with pocket queens in unlucky fashion as Ioannis Konstas’ suited king-ten hit a Broadway straight on the turn after Punsri had flopped top set.

Daniel Negreanu may have ended the night in the top 10, but it wasn’t with his first bullet, after initially being busted by British pro and Coin Rivet Invitational winner Sam Grafton in a premium-versus-premium hand where Kid Poker’s jacks shot down by Grafton’s pocket kings.

Kid Poker on the Climb

Towards the end of the day, Daniel Negreanu shot up the leaderboard to reach the top 10 chipcounts. Doubling through Fedor Holz when pocket sevens won through against the German’s ace-queen, there was further good news for Negreanu’s millions of poker fans when he made a big bet on the river against Ole Schemion to further grow his stack, ending the day well over 1.5 million, though Schemion was even higher, ending the day in eighth place of the 23 remaining players.

Others to survive to Day 2 without initially needing to rebuy into the action included another great Canadian in the shape of Daniel Dvoress (685,000), while WSOPE High Roller runner-up Gab Yong Kim (610,000) will also be back in action at 5pm on Friday 11^th November. The shortest stack to survive was the 500,000 taken through by the redoubtable Brazilian Felipe Ramos.

Paul Phua’s multiple entries eventually yielded him a stack to take through, with the Malaysian’s claim that money is not important to him clearly self-evident. He piled up almost 1.2 million chips in pursuit of his second WSOP bracelet in the same series.