Post by Ryan Knuppel on -

The fifth event of the 2018 Poker Master named $25,000 No-Limit Hold’em has come to an end, and Ali Imsirovic emerged a winner. This event had the largest prize pool, and Ali took only three hours of play before he managed to beat all of the entrants and win the whole thing. The heads-up with Ben Yu was particularly interesting as Imsirovic managed to beat him in just a couple of hands.

The interesting thing about both of the players is that they are quite new to the high-roller events. In fact, both of them were mid-stakes grinders for a really long time before they decide it was time to move up in this Poker ladder, and start playing more seriously. Yu is a bit better when it comes to the previous events as he managed to already win three World Series of Poker gold bracelets. However, Imsirovic is doing quite well also and it seems that his time is yet to come. Imsirovic is a Canadian-born player from Vancouver and he just managed to earn a total of $460,000 to his poker wins. He already had the total of 1.1 million earnings before this victory.

Yu’s Total Win

On the other hand, Yu won a total of $330,000 and just got up in the Purple Jacket race, currently only 60 points behind the race leader Brandon Adams. Yu is on the third place at the moment, and if he manages to win another event in the Poker Master series, he will potentially be the one to win the Purple Jacket. The final table consisted of some really big players in the poker world, and the first to hit the rail was Daniel Negreanu with $99,000. Not long after him, Jason Koon was the next to go and he earned a total of $132,000. The fourth place was taken by Jake Schindler with $165,00 and the third was reserved for Brian Rast who won $214,500.

Everything moved pretty quickly in the tournament, and Imsirovic came to the heads up pretty fast. It was only three hands when he managed to make Yu go all in. Yu had ace-six and face the mighty pocket fives that Imsirovic had. The current state on the Purple Jacket Rankings for Poker Masters 2018 is really interesting. Brandon Adams still leads with 510 points, and the second is Isaac Haxton with 480. The third place is shared by both Imsirovic and Yu who both have 360 points each. David Peters and Keith Lehr have 300 points each, and Jake Schindler and Jonathan Depa have 270 points each.

The Event #6: $50,000 No-Limit Hold’em is currently underway and it will definitely make the rankings more interesting. So far, everyone has equal chances and nothing can be stated with certainty when it comes to wearing the Purple Jacket in 2018.