Addamo wins WPT High Roller Turbo, poised to win WPT $10k

Michael Addamo excels when there's serious cash on the line. High roller events are his bread and butter. Since 2015, he's won ten events. And only two of them had buy-ins under $10k. Even then, one of those sub-10k events was a WSOP bracelet event with $653k up top.

This weekend he added another high roller title to his resume when he took down the WPT Online $5,200 High Roller Turbo.

The event saw 54 players logged in and bought in for a prize pool of $270,000. A small field, but a formidable one. Looking down the list of entrants, it is almost impossible to find much in the way of dead money. Almost every fish in the tank is a The Meg. It seems that not a lot of amateur players have $5,200 to chuck away on what more or less amounts to a multi-table sit-n-go. Those players who do have the scratch are a crack team. And in a turbo event, they're playing like every single one of them is amped right up on crack.

Among the sharks Addamo had to outlast to get his $87,459 share of the prize pool were: Artur Martirosian (who min-cashed in 7th place), Andras Nemeth, Kevin MacDonald, Kristen Bicknell, and Bicknell's fiancée, Alex Foxen (who eventually took 2nd place).

"Michael Addamo had a productive Sunday grind on @partypoker!" the WPT tweeted about his victory. "He registered both High Rollers, taking down the Turbo ($87,459) and chip leader in the $10K one, looking at the $249,791 top prize!"

Speed freaks

The final table alone was an impressive roll call of poker royalty, and some of the best in the game made it to the money.

Artur Martirosian took 7th place for $12,966, just avoiding becoming the bubble boy. In 2020, Martirosian was the player of the year at the World Poker Tour World Online Championship. He followed that up by taking down the 2021 EPT Sochi Main Event just for good measure.

Steve O'Dwyer, who took third, has over $30 million in live tournament cashes. The $53k he won online yesterday probably barely registers against even the bank interest on his other wins.

Foxen (3rd) and Chris Brewer (5th) are High Roller regulars. The former trains constantly with the 2-time bracelet winner he lives with.

If anyone could beat that crew fair and square though, it was Addamo. Earlier this year, we even went so far as to speculate that he might be the best player alive.

Even so, in a Turbo, it takes luck as much as skill to come out on top. And the cards were all coming up Addamo. His finish was all the more impressive because he was playing, at a minimum, two tables that day. His other table was the WPT Online $10,300 High Roller event, in which he is also crushing.

Addamo ended Day 1 of the $10k High Roller with 1,519,333 in chips, by far the largest stack. His biggest competition on Day 2 will be Ramiro Petrone, who lags in second place with just 1,062,319 in chips.

Addamo could well be on his way to back to back first place finishes in these high rollers. If he makes it, you'll be able to read the details here tomorrow.

WPT Online $5,200 High Roller Turbo final table results

Featured image source: Twitter