Miraculous comeback at the CPP $5,300 Main Event for $1,500,000

Three big blinds with six players left were enough for the Portuguese to turn the table around.

The $5,300 Main Event at Partypoker's Caribbean Poker Party has ended with a miraculous comeback on the final table. The event generated a total of 1,815, and thanks to the $10,000,000 GTD it offered excellent value for the players with a slight overlay.

The tournament rewarded 223 players, and many of the high-profile players managed to reach the money. Some of them only "min-cashed" with the likes of Jeremy Ausmus (181st; $10,300), Peter Jetten (176th; $10,300). Other then them, plenty of well-known pros made a small profit: Sylvain Loosli (167th), Partypoker ambassador Dzmitry Urbanovich (165th), Chris Moorman (164th), WSOPE Main Event champ, Jack Sinclair (151st), living legend, Johnny Chan (144th) or high-roller crusher Stephen Chidwick (126th) all added $12,500 to their bankrolls.

None of the stars reached the final table, despite some promise deep runs from Marcel Luske (29th; $25,000) and Eric Baldwin (28th; $25,000), but there were some long-time pros at the table nonetheless.

Only 11 players returned for the final day, with three of them missing the final table, but still walking away with a nice paycheck Niek van der Sluijs (11th, $85,000), Anton Wigg (10th, $110,000), and Alex Lynskey (9th, $155,000).


The final table

With Lynskey's elimination, short stack Joe Kuether managed to get to the final table but eventually fell in 8th place for $218,500, while Alex Turyansky exited in 7th place for $300,000.

In the meantime, Oliveira lost the majority of his stack and pushed his last 35 million (on the 5M/10M/10M blind level) with K-6 off. He's got called by two players, one of them holding a dominating K-J, but managed to spike a six to stay alive. He scored a double up after this with K-Q suited against the A-T suited of Konstantin Maslak's and was back in the party with a reasonable stack.

Fellow Portuguese grinder Diogo "phounderAA" Veiga busted in 6th place for $400,000 after losing a flip. Start of the day leader Maslak would follow in 5th for $600,000. Pascal Hartmann failed to hit anything with K-J against the pocket nines of Oliveira's and left in 4th place for $800,000 - which was a bit disappointing for him, considering he held the lead not too long ago.

About an hour after his K-6 shove, Filipe was suddenly the leader in the three-handed period. At this point, the remaining three - Oliveira, Mason and Marc MacDonnell - discussed a potential deal but eventually decided to keep on playing.

Irishman, MacDonnell went full hero mode, when he made a call with jack high, but those usually turn out to be a bad idea and his stack got crippled this time as well since Filipe had the flush. He busted shortly after in 3rd place for a career-high of $1 million.


Calling with jack high is rarely a good idea

The heads-up started with around even stacks, and it took some time for this to change. Oliveira was eventually able to build a lead and was able to close out the whole thing for - by far - the best score of his life in form of a $1,500,000 payday. Runner-up Craig Mason received $1,200,000 for his excellent performance.

Final table results

Position Player Country Prize
1 Filipe Oliveira Portugal $1,500,000
2 Craig Mason United States $1,200,000
3 Marc MacDonnell Ireland $1,000,000
4 Pascal Hartmann Germany $800,000
5 Konstantin Maslak Russia $600,000
6 Diogo Veiga Portugal $400,000
7 Alex Turyansky United States $300,000
8 Joe Kuether United States $218,500