The Poker Masters is a tournament series that challenges the top high-stakes poker players to compete in a mix of poker variations. Every event has a buy-in of $10K or higher. And in the end, there is a Main Event but also an overall series leaderboard that determines the ultimate Poker Master. That player wins the coveted purple jacket.
The last iteration of the live series happened in Las Vegas – at the PokerGO Studio, of course – and Sam Soverel took down the Main Event and won the series champion title…along with the purple jacket.
When the Poker Masters was due to play out again this spring, there was a problem. The coronavirus pandemic closed all casinos and prohibited gatherings of people. Poker is inherently a gathering of people. Poker Central had just cancelled its US Poker Open because of the COVID-19 closures, and it didn’t really want to do the same for the Poker Masters.
Enter PartyPoker. The online poker site with many land-based friends and partners had already stepped in to help the World Poker Tour and the Irish Poker Open, and PartyPoker also welcomed Poker Central to its online tables with open arms.
The first-ever Poker Masters Online was born.
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Inaugural Poker Masters Online
The online version was going to be bigger than any of its live events had been. Poker Masters Online was set to run April 12-26 with 30 high-stakes online tournaments and more than $15 million in prize pool guarantees. In the end, the series winner would also win $50K in cash and the Poker Masters purple jacket.
Some of the variety of poker games disappeared from the series, replaced with NLHE and PLO, but players were excited for the opportunity to compete online.
When it was all said and done, there were 124 players who recorded at least one cash in the Poker Masters Online. And the series awarded a total of $35.4 million in prize money.
Poker Masters Online Results
The first event of the Poker Masters Online was a $25K buy-in No Limit Hold’em tournament with a $1 million guarantee. There were 55 entries – no report of how many unique players versus reentries – and the prize pool settled at $1,375,000. Elias Talvitie won that one.
The list of tournament winners throughout the series is as follows:
The leaderboard throughout the series was a bit of a roller coaster for many players. Points were awarded based on cashes and wins, and it was a tight race at the top of that leaderboard as the series hit its last few events.
Artur Martirosian had eight cashes for 957 points, and Timothy Adams had 11 cashes (including one victory) to garner 861 points. Ali Imsirovic was in a close third, followed by Alexandros Kolonias. But the Event 30 win for Kolonias on the last day of action put him into the top spot, and Linus Loeliger catapulted into second place with his Event 29 win.
The final standings were:
The rest of the leaderboard, in order, consisted of Andras Nemeth, Pascal Lefrancois, Pauli Ayras, Alex Foxen, and Steve O’Dwyer.
Winner Kolonias of Greece took home an extra $50K for the series win and will receive the purple jacket. “It feels amazing,” he said. “I really wanted to win this. It means a lot to me winning the purple jacket.”
Kolonias also said he felt that he played the best poker he ever played alongside tough competition. He likened the victory to winning the WSOP Europe Main Event last year.
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