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Michael Soyza wins EPT Barcelona €10k Highroller title

The 2018 EPT Barcelona kicked off at Casino Barcelona in Spain with a €10,300 High Roller. Malaysia’s Michael Soyza navigated a tough table and 124 total entrants to take down the title and €302,500 (~INR 2.45 Crores) in cash.

2018 has been a good one for players from the Asian region especially Malaysia and it seems that trend continues in Barcelona as well. The recently concluded Triton Super High Roller series saw many Malaysian do extremely well earlier this summer. Michael Soyza too has also been on quite the roll in the past few months. April saw him capturing the Main Event at the Asia Pacific Poker Tour (APPT) Korea edition’s Main Event and he followed that up with a highroller title win earlier this month in Manila, Philippines and also scored a win at the DeepStack tournament in the Venetian, Las Vegas in the summer.

This €10,300 buy-in Highroller kicked off this year’s festival at the swanky Casino Barcelona, located steps away from the beach and 124 runners (inclusive of 31 re-entries) took the prizepool to over a million i.e. €1,202,800. The top 17 spots would share this prizepool with the biggest chunk going the way of the eventual winner.

The final table for the 10K High Roller included Liv Boeree, Luc Greenwood, Dario Sammartino, Orpen Kisacikoglu, Goran Mandic, Bahram Chobineh, Kai Lehto and Mike Soyza. Luc Greenwood, one of Canada’s nicest guys and a regular on the high roller scene, final tabled the opening event but he couldn’t muster up better than an eighth-place finish. Croatia’s Goran Mandic was the next out in seventh place. Liv Boeree, who donates portions of her winnings to charity, locked up 70K for sixth place and got some more karma coming her way. Italy’s Dario Sammartino tried to pull off a remarkable victory in the High Roller, but his run came to an abrupt halt when he was dunzo in fifth place. Bahram Chobineh from Iran locked up a six-figure score with a fourth-place finish. Turkey’s Orpen Kisacikoglu bounced in third place, which paid out €133K.

It was Malaysia vs. Finland in the finals with Soyza outlasting Kai Lehtoto to win the event. Lehto earned €204,500 for a runner-up finish. His winning finish has taken Soyza’s career winnings past the $2.2 million mark. During the summer in Vegas, Soyza shipped a DeepStacks event at the Venetian for $588K, his biggest cash to date. Soyza took down an event in Macau last fall at the Macau Poker Cup for HK$2,000,000 (or $260K USD). Soyza is currently in the top 5 for all-time money list for Malaysia, but he still has a long way to go to catch Richard Yong’s $11 million mark.

Final Table Results:
1. Michael Soyza (Malaysia) €302,500
2. Kai Lehto (Finland) €204,500
3. Orpen Kisacikoglu (Turkey) €133,000
4. Bahram Chobineh (Iran) €110,100
5. Dario Sammartino (Italy) €88,800
6. Liv Boeree (U.K.) €70,000
7. Goran Mandic (Croatia) €53,500
8. Luc Greenwood (Canada) €40,300

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