| Event 16: $10,000 Heads-up No-Limit Hold'em Championship |
| Winner | Justin Bonomo |
| Runners | 114 |
| Paid | 8 |
| Final Table | 8 |
| Player | Position | Points |
| Justin Bonomo | 1 | 25 |
| Selector | Points | | Selector | Points |
| Brian | 25 | | Luca 1 | 25 |
| Carl 1 | 25 | | Luca 2 | 25 |
| Debbie | 25 | | Nathan | 25 |
| Del | 25 | | Nic 2 | 25 |
| Derek | 25 | | Rob | 25 |
| Gareth | 25 | | Simon B | 25 |
| Glenn 1 | 25 | | Stephen 1 | 25 |
| Jon | 25 | | Stuart | 25 |
| Jordan | 25 | | Suzanne | 25 |
| Justin | 25 | | Vince 1 | 25 |
Justin Bonomo - What is going on? He has always had an amazing record but this year it has gone off the scale.
Since the beginning of December he has won 11 High-Roller tournaments, a streak that is surely unprecedented. Up til the start of May, he had clocked up an unbelievable run of results, picking up a bunch of titles and prizes, including almost $4.8m for one in Macau. Since then, it has become absurd.
He won two EPT events in three days on 1 May and 3 May in Monte Carlo for $457k and $311k. For the next couple of weeks he didn't play live much, mainly playing SCOOP without much success (just a 4th and a 5th), attending the EDC festival and moving into a new pad. He played the $25k Aria High Roller on 23 May, but was clearly rusty and only came fourth.
On 27 May he won his biggest prize ever - $5m for taking down the $300k Super High Roller Bowl. On the 31st, he won the Aria High Roller, along with $350k. On 3 June he went and won it again for yet another $310k. Now, with this result, he has won four tournaments in two weeks and six in just over a month! Where will it end? Will it ever end? He himself has tweeted that he doesn't understand what has been happening. I put it down to going back to a natural hair colour.
He has won over $14m this year already, which has shot him up the all-time winnings list into third place. In the last two weeks he has overtaken Ivey, Holz, Esfandiari and Colman. Negreanu is currently top, but I'll bet no-one can name who is the second-highest with looking it up, unless you happened to read it recently. There will almost certainly be a new leader after this Series - you won't find many betting against it being Bonomo.
The tournament saw an excellent slow-roll by Niall Farrell, holding AA, who tanked and asked for a count before calling the pre-Flop shove of his room-mate Michael Gagliano. If they can afford to pay six or seven figures in entry fees over the Series, why are these guys sharing accommodation?
Something I don't understand about the Heads-Up is how they treat the overflow entries. They had 114 entries and needed to get to 64 for the next round, so 14 went through and 100 played off for the other 50 places. So far, so normal but.........those 100 players were refunded half of their entry fee. I think this started when they had 65 entries a few years ago and hit on the idea of drawing two players who would, effectively, play a two-handed $5k satellite for the 64th spot. That seemed a clever solution but now they have ended up refunding almost half of the entry fees, and almost everyone playing a $5k event, reducing the prize-pool to just over half what it could have been. Maybe they should have a rethink.
