€10,000 Invitational Sees Arno Hanschmidt Emerge as the Chip leader – Phil Ivey in the Top 10

How it Started

The tournament was due to start at 6 p.m. local time, but as the field size grew drastically up until around 10-15 minutes before the off. The start was delayed, so the players had ample time to hit the reg desk and get seated. The tournament started at 6.30 p.m.

Aleksejs Ponakovs, Teun Mulder, Phil Ivey, and Kayhan Mokri are just a few of the 40 players at the tables as the floor staff declared “shuffle up and deal.”

Home team representative Markkos Ladev was unfortunately the first to fall within the first couple of levels. He didn’t stay down for long, and he quickly ponied up another €10,000 to reenter the star-studded field. He ended up firing a total of three bullets. 

This weeks €25,000 Main Event Champion, Kaspar Kaisel, was also in the field, looking to add to his victory just a few days ago, where he took down the title and pocketed €339,500 in the process. He fired a single bullet and busted early doors. 

Erik Bauer, Aliaksandr Shylko, and the Boss of the Bombay Club, Tim Heath, all fired two bullets, as did Andre Scerri and Ilya Nikiforov. Mulder also hit the rebuy desk, but thrice. 

Mokri fired the most, ending the day with a total of four bullets being fired.

A Star-Studded Affair

The field couldn’t be any tougher, and this event truly captured the attention of a decent portion of poker’s crème de la crème. 

With the likes of Ivey, Chess Grandmaster Ottomar Ladva, Thomas Santerne, and Mokri in the field, it was always going to be a challenging tournament to come out on top, especially as the field size continued to grow and rebuys started to accumulate. 

Ultimately, this €10k attracted a bumper field of 86 total entrants, with 41 being rebuys, which just goes to show how popular The Bombay Club is as a poker venue with poker’s elite players.

Registration remains open until the cards hit the felt this afternoon at 2 p.m. local time, so expect the field size to grow even more. Will we see the 100 total entrants mark be passed? 

Ultimately, the night ended with an Estonian 1-2 at the top of the counts, with Arno Hanschmidt bagging the biggest stack. He ascended to the top of the counts and bagged a stack of 254,000 in this €1,000,000 guaranteed event.  

Hanschmidt appears to be a relative unknown in the poker world, and even the mighty Google search engine couldn’t help me find any information about the chip leader coming into today’s play. 

In second place is his fellow countryman Taago Tamm, who bagged 170,000 chips for the start of play today. Tamm has recorded $281,520 in live tournament earnings according to thehendonmob.com, and he will be looking to add another cash in Tallinn, as he is coming in off the back of a 2nd place finish at the WSOPC in the €555 PLO 4 or 5 round of each in the same city. He banked a respectable €18,000 for his efforts. Is there another deep run in sight for Tamm? 

Additionally, Tamm is the Director of Games at Live88 and the CPO for the Bombay Club. Check out the top 10 chip counts below.

Top 10 Chip Counts

Place	Player	Country	Chips
1	Arno Hanschmidt		254,000
2	Taago Taam		170,000
3	Andre Scerri		167,000
4	Mounir Taijou		164,500
5	Bogdan Capitan		149,000
6	Morten Klein		140,000
7	Robert Heidorn		135,000
8	Jelle Moene		124,000
9	Kevin Paque		122,000
10	Phil Ivey		93,400

The Venue

Mulder mentioned to me yesterday after his second place finish in the €10,000 Fast Bounty about his fondness of the world-class Bombay Club, and it seems a few of the players feel the same way as Mulder does. 

Norwegian Terje “Teddy” Bremseth, who is the founder of the website poker.pro, had this to say:

He added: “The atmosphere is top, top, top, top, top. Everybody’s happy and smiling, even if they’re losing. The staff are great, here 24/7. Last year, I celebrated my birthday here; we had 120 people come. I really love this place, it’s become my favorite place to come and play.” 

High Stakes Cash Game Action

Outside of the tournament area, The Bombay Club hosted a heads-up high-stakes game that was streamed via YouTube and Twitch. The stream featured Ossi Ketola, “Eli”, this week’s Bombay Big €50k winner, Kayhan Mokri, and Dan “Jungleman” Cates. 

Ketola lost the first match, losing a total of €500,000 in the process. It looked like “Eli” would stay on and play, but instead, Mokri took his place, and the game got even bigger. 

Ketola showed a lot of heart, despite losing the first game to Eli. This is how their final hand played out: Eli opened to €10,000 with the blinds at €2,500/€5,000. Ketola defended the big blind. 

He then check-called a bet of €5,000 on the flop of 3 9 9 before check-raising on the K turn. Eli bet €22,000 before Ketola ripped in the rest of his stack of €142,000. Eli tanked for a moment before flicking in the call. 

Ketola was stone-dead with 7 2 and Eli had K Q to take down the first match, winning €500,000 in the process. The 7 changed nothing.
The blinds went from €2,500/€5,000 to a staggering €5,000/€10,000, with both Ketola and Mokri buying in for €1,000,000 apiece. Ketola changed his shirt at the table to his “lucky shirt” and it seemed to do the trick for him. 

He bested Mokri for €1,000,000. It ended with Mokri jamming €381,000 on the button, worth 38 big blinds, over Ketola’s open to €20,000. Ketola snap-called.  Mokri did take the lead on the 10 4 A flop but the K turn gave Ketola trips, and the K was absolute overkill as he made quads. 

Cates was next up to face Ketola, and he faired no better than Mokri, and Ketola took another €1,000,000 win, taking his profit for the evening to €1,500,000. Ketola made a straight with J 9 to crack the J J of Cates. 

Cates raised pre, Ketola defended, check-called a bet of €10,000 on the 7 A 10 flop before the turn K turn was checked around. Ketola then check-raised all in over a bet of €40,000 on the 8 river. Cates called, and it was over. 

Expect more of the same to be broadcast later on today. Who will be up for the challenge of taking on Ketola and dethroning him as the current King of Bombay? Make sure you tune in to find out.

What’s Next? 

At 2 p.m. the second day of the Invitational commences, and the field will return for the penultimate day of this prestigious and sought-after event, and will be joined by

Then at 6 p.m. local time, Day 1 of the €25,000 kicks off, which is sure to attract a similar calibre of player to the previous events. So expect a lot of familiar names and notables to be in attendance at The Bombay Club in Tallinn. 

That’s all for now, folks. Stay tuned to pokerlistings.com for continued coverage of this instalment of Bombay High Stakes Week.