Raoul Kanme Leads Onyx Main Event Into Final Table
The $25,500 event is down to nine players from 255 entries, with $1.25 million waiting for the winner.
Raoul Kanme will take the chip lead into the final table of the Onyx High Roller Series $25,500 Main Event after a fast-moving penultimate day in Northern Cyprus. The tournament is down to nine players from a 255-entry field, with $6.12 million in the prize pool and $1.25 million reserved for the winner.
As covered earlier in the series, Kanme had already bagged 1,325,000 chips from Day 1b before his push on Day 2, according to PokerNews. The penultimate day started with 38 players and lasted just about four hours before the field was whittled down to the final nine.
The pace was relentless from the start. By the first break, roughly 90 minutes in, only 20 players were left, and several familiar names had already exited, including David Coleman, Matthew Wantman, Sondre Stormyr, Nicholas Seward and Mikalai Vaskaboinikau.
Aleksejs Ponakovs, Boris Kolev, Sergio Aido, Eelis Parssinen and Weiran Pu all fell in a short burst that left the field two eliminations short of the official final table, before Danilo Velasevic went out in 11th.
The bubble then became a Ravi Sheth story. Sheth doubled through Anze Smajd once, survived an hour of hand-for-hand play, and then ran into Kanme again. Kanme first won a preflop five-bet pot without seeing a board, taking a little over a million chips, and then sealed the final-table lineup by busting Sheth just short of the nine-handed stage.
In the 10th-place hand, Italo Modena opened, Sheth three-bet, and Kanme cold four-bet from the small blind. Sheth shoved with A-K, Kanme called with pocket jacks, and the board ran out safely for Kanme to send Sheth out with $120,000.
Kanme was one of only two players to finish the day with more than 100 big blinds. Daniel Rezaei ended on 10,210,000 chips, close enough to keep the pressure on, while Manuel Fritz bagged 6,880,000 for third place on the leaderboard.
Jordan Woodall, who had started the day as chip leader, finished with 4,785,000 and landed in the middle of the pack for the final day. Italo Modena bagged 2,750,000, which was good for 28 big blinds, and Fahredin Mustafov came back with just 2.5 big blinds after winning this same event 12 months earlier.
The nine finalists are all guaranteed $143,000, with eight eliminations left before someone turns that into the $1.25 million top prize. The final day is set for 1 p.m. local time on Aug. 14.
