Open Face Chinese Grandmaster! Jennifer Shahade wins $10k Tonybet High Roller- the Biggest OFC Poker Event in History
Philadelphia Chess Grandmaster Jennifer Shahade made history last night by winning €100K and the richest Open Face Chinese Poker event at the King’s Casino, Prague. The
€10,000 TonyBet OFC World Championship €10K High Roller attracted an impressive 23 entries generating the largest prize pool ever in a live OFC Poker event, €218,500.
Jason Mercier,
Sorel Mizzi,
Alexander Kostritsyn, two-time WSOP bracelet winner
Rafi Amit and eighteen other high rollers turned up for the first-ever live Open Face Chinese Poker World Championship €10K buy-in event. The action which was predominantly three handed, was also streamed live.
“This is a really great result for Jen, poker and the development of OFC,” a Tonybet representative said after the event. “This is our first live event, and it’s already the biggest OFC tournament held. We have to hold our hands up and say we didn’t expect the number of entries we got so we are off to fantasy land! The event was bigger than any WSOP or EPT Open Face Chinese event, and the players just loved it and there was a real buzz about the room. The viewers loved it as well, tens of thousands of OFC fans watched and interacted with the live broadcast and their responses were positive. What was more encouraging is that we saw plenty of people who were learning the game for the first time!”
The 13-hour event paid four places with the two-time American women's chess champion Jennifer Shahade, the only female in the field, the popular winner of the €100,000 first-place prize and an impressive winner‘s championship belt. This amounts to the biggest score Jennifer has had from any poker event.
The three-handed final table featured Shahade and two Russian players,
Ilya Bulychev and
Iakov Onuchin, "It was the biggest buy-in event I ever played and I'm really happy I won," said Shahade.
“I loved it and had a great time. I almost busted several times, and I wasn’t so happy with how I played in the beginning, but then as I got more tired, I got to play better. I have played regular Open Face Chinese in a live tournament before, but never Pineapple. It was fun, I thought it was great and hope there will be more tournaments like this,” Shahade said.
“I was definitely slower than other players in fantasy land, because I realize that even though it’s fantasy land, it’s very easy to make a mistake. I think people have this false sense of security because they’re in fantasy, and they think they’re not going to make any errors and I think it’s very wrong.”
During the tournament Shahade frequently tussled with 2013 EPT Grand Final OFC event winner Jason Mercier. When asked about his game, she said that playing against Mercier was not easy, “Jason Mercier is really good. I played a lot against him during the event. I think he got tired at one or two instances where he might have made an error, but he’s obviously very strong.”
Here are the final
Tonybet OFC World Championship High Roller payouts:
1st Jennifer Shahade
€100,000
2nd place Ilya Bulychev
€58,250
3rd place - Iakov Onuchin
€33,500
4th place Maxim Panyak -
€20,195
The Tonybet Open Face Chinese Poker World Championship continues today at the King’s Casino in Prague with Day 1 of the €1,000 buy-in Main Event. There will also be a live stream of Day 2 of the Main Event at the
Tonybet Poker Live blog.