The second Elite Trophy has been captured and to none more deserving than Romania’s Bogdan Munteanu at the High Roller Championship!
“I am very happy, and the trophy is really beautiful. It’s my first time in Asia, first time at USOP, the atmosphere is great, I love it. My friends were coming and told me it’s a great spot so I decided to come along. I am from Romania but I was actually in Greece vacationing and I decided to fly over just for this event. It has been a very good year so far for me.”
It wasn’t an easy ride though for Munteanu who admitted,
“This tournament was very tough, the toughest final table lineup that could have been for me. All players were professional. In the end, I got some good chances and I played well so here we are!”
Watch the race to victory via the livestream:
High Roller Championship – LIVESTREAM
Buy in: VN₫ 150,000,000 (~US$ 6,000)
Guarantee: VN₫ 2,500,000,000 (~US$ 101,850)
Entries: 34 (28 unique)
Prize pool: VN₫ 4,474,400,000 (~US$ 182,295)
ITM: 5 places
1st Bogdan Munteanu – VN₫ 1,700,000,000 (~US$ 69,260)
2nd William Jia – VN₫ 1,100,000,000 (~US$ 44,815)
3rd Konstantin Held – VN₫ 745,000,000 (~US$ 30,350)
4th Le Ngoc Minh – VN₫ 529,000,000 (~US$ 21,550)
5th Max Buschmann – VN₫ 400,400,000 (~US$ 16,315)
Entering Day 2 with the final 9 returning out of 34 entries, it wasn’t until 7-handed did Munteanu begin his ascent, rising from 16 bb to 61 bb. Two of the winning hands were up against the leader Le Ngoc Minh. The larger of which was when he tank-called the river bet on a board 
. Le had 
to play the board, Munteanu outkicked with 
. The other hand was a double up through recent Superstar Challenge champion Ryan Plant with 
dominating 
.
Plant went on to fall in 7th place, was followed out by short stacked Tommy Kemter on the bubble. and soon after, short stacked Max Buschmann also exited to collect the first payout of the tournament.
At four-handed, Munteanu pressured Le with shoves on the small blind, Le finally took a stand and called 
. Though ahead of Munteanu’s 
, the board came 
for Le to end in 4th place.
Now backed by a massive stack, Munteanu continued the grind, amassing over 70% of the chips in play. On the flipside, Konstantin Held dropped on two big pots against the leader and eventually lost the rest of it to him as well with 
unable to get past 
. At heads up, Munteanu dominated William Jia 3:1, and despite both players still deep, the final hand arrived as a flip. Jia three-bet all in holding 
, Munteanu called with , the board came 
.
