PokerStars Caribbean Adventure Breaks RecordsPCA Breaks Records; Jam Packed with Exciting Eventsby Rebecca McAdam | Published: Jan 07, 2009 | |
 
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An abundance of events are currently taking place at the Atlantis Hotel and Casino in the Bahamas for the PokerStars.com Caribbean Adventure (PCA), including side tournaments such as $1,000, $2,000, and $5,000 buy-in events, a $2,000 Battleship tournament, a $25,000 High Roller event, plus plenty of satellites to other major live tournaments.
The one any poker enthusiast has an eye on however is the $10,000 main event, which kicked off on Jan. 5, and will finish on Saturday.
Things are looking good for the world of poker in 2009 as this event has managed to attract a field of 1,347, making it the largest live poker tournament ever to be held outside of Las Vegas. 735 of the players qualified online with PokerStars.
This outstanding field has created an eye-opening prize pool of $12,674,000, with a chunky $3 million first prize. The final two days of the event will be broadcast live on PokerStars.tv.
Another exciting feature of the PCA, the World Cup of Poker, ended late last night after a battle between nine countries. This unusual tournament structure saw players having to adapt to a team mentality despite each playing as the sole representative of their team.
Five one-table tournaments made up of one member from each team/country firstly played out. Each player was then awarded points depending on where they finished at their table, and the teams were ordered and given a certain amount of chips, as per the points they had acquired. Each team’s final starting stack was then divided between its members.
Although an exciting and fun event, it was a tough challenge with a rewarding prize pool provided by PokerStars to fight for.
In the end it was Germany, led by Jan Heitmann, who took the largest slice of the $290,000 prize pool after 16 gruelling hours of play. $100,000 was divided beween Heitmann and his team: Georg Geissler, Malte Strothmann, Bastian Wulff, and Peter Schmidt.
The rest of the results were as follows:
2nd: New Zealand ($70,000)
Lee Nelson (Captain), Nicholas Webb, Richard Grace, Wayne Lo, Jordan Bryant.
3rd: Italy ($50,000)
Luca Pagano (Captain), Michele Migliore, Pennisi Omar, Valeriano Bilancetti, Fabrizio Villa.
4th: USA ($30,000)
Greg Raymer (Captain), Shaun Deeb, Benjamin Zamani, Jarred Gabin, Bruce Armstrong.
5th: Great Britain ($10,000)
Vicky Coren (Captain), Steven Devlin, Laurence Houghton, Derek Morris, Karl Mahrenholz.
6th: Poland ($10,000)
Marcin Horecki (Captain), Jerzy Slaby, Pawel Chmiel, Patryk Slusarek, Leszek Krawcynski.
7th: Latvia ($5,000)
Krisjanis Jurdzs (Captain), Vjaceslavs Ivanovs, Juris Saicans, Ance Laganovska, Dmitrijs Kurchins.
8th: Mexico ($5,000)
JC Alvarado (Captain), David Huber, José Francisco Muñoz Osuna, Antoine Barriere, Jorge Lozano.
9th: Canada ($5,000)
Daniel Negreanu (Captain), Blair Maltby, Dennis Hamlyn, Wanda Whitlock, Tammy Bailey.
Finally, the final table of the $25,000 High Roller event is due to play out, and will also be broadcast live.
Those fortunate enough to be taking their seats later today are Humberto Brenes, Scott Seiver, Nick Schulman, Liya Gerasimov, Daniel Alaei, Bertrand "ElkY" Grospellier, Will Molson, and Eli Elezra.
The Card Player live reporting team are stuck indoors while the sun shines as they bring you all the live updates, news, and interviews from the main event.