In 2013 William Hill helped make the inaugural Caribbean Poker Tour series a rousing success. The tournament series featured a good mix of tournaments and drew both amateur and professional players to the island paradise of St. Maarten.
William Hill sponsored the tour’s seven-tournament poker festival in Punta Cana, St. Maarten this past November, where the Caribbean Poker Tour with William Hill sent dozens of online qualifiers to one of the Caribbean’s top destinations to compete alongside some of poker’s top pros and enjoy some serious fun in the sun.
William Hill’s online qualifiers
William Hill gave players the chance to win one of two prize-packages to the CPT Punta Cana.
The first prize-package was worth $7,500 and included not just a buy-in to several events, including the Main Event, but also airfare, 10-days of accommodations, and even some spending money and “adventure” vouchers. The second prize-package was just as enticing, and was valued at $5,000.
CPT Punta Cana Highlights
The CPT Punta Cana tournament series featured seven separate tournaments, highlighted by the William Hill Poker Open Main Event, a $1,500 buy-in No Limit Holdem tournament.
A total of 111 players entered the tournament, pushing the prize-pool to almost $150,000, and handing out a first place prize of $41,000 to Latvian Arturs Barkevics, which was Arturs first live tournament cash –not a bad way to start your live tournament career Arturs.
Arturs may have been the biggest winner, but there were some top caliber poker players who also made some hay down in St. Maartens, including Slovenia’s most accomplished tournament poker player, Casey Kastle, who took down the $200 PLO tournament, and Austrian poker pro Erich Kollmann, who finished 3rd in the $300 NLHE event.
Michael Huber; a rising star
As good as these players were, nobody performed better than Austria’s Michael Huber who won not one, but two side events in Punta Cana. Huber won the $300 and $400 No Limit Holdem tournaments at the CPT Punta Cana, walking away from the poker tables with nearly $9,000 in winnings.
Huber is definitely a player to keep an eye on moving forward, considering he has seven career cashes according to thehendonmob.com (all coming in 2013), and amazingly four of those cashes have been wins!
His biggest live tournament win came at the CAPT Innsbruck Main Event, where he booked a $33,741 win.