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Phil Ivey to Replace Tony G at the 2018 Super High Roller Bowl

Earlier this week, Poker Central announced that Steffen Sontheimer will replace Andrew Robl in the 2018 Super High Roller Bowl. Now it’s been announced that Tony G will be dropping out of the event and one of the game’s greats will be replacing him.

Phil Ivey has been announced as the replacement for Tony G. Ivey will kick off his summer with his first appearance in the Super High Roller Bowl since 2015. He is coming off of a hot streak at the Triton Super High Roller Series Montenegro where he won over $2 million.

Phil Ivey Replaces Tony G

Phil Ivey has been on a hot streak as of late. He made two final tables at the Triton Super High Roller Series Montenegro, including a win in the HK$ 250,000 Short Deck event for his first tournament win in over three years.

Ivey then followed that up with a third-place finish in the HK$ 1 Million Short Deck event for a score of $1.6 million. He earned over $2.2 million over the course of a week and also participated in the high stakes cash game that occurred at the end of the series.

Now Ivey will be bringing his poker prowess to the 2018 Super High Roller Bowl. While he didn’t initially buy into the event, he was recently invited to play in the tournament after Tony G decided to drop out.

This is Ivey’s first appearance in the Super High Roller Bowl since 2015. Ivey was a staple in the high stakes world prior to a self-imposed break from poker to take care of legal matters from 2016 through 2017.

Ivey won back-to-back $250,000 Challenge events at the 2015 and 2016 Aussie Millions and also took down the same event in 2012. In addition, prior to Black Friday, Ivey was online poker winningest cash game player with over $20 million in online high stakes cash game earnings at Full Tilt Poker.

Of course, Ivey has since lost ground online due to massive losses on PokerStars but he is still in the top 10 all-time for online cash game earnings.

Will Ivey Have an Epic Summer?

The Super High Roller Bowl is not the only event that Ivey is planning to play this summer. He recently told PokerNews that he is planning on playing at the 2018 World Series of Poker, but did not specify which events he plans to play.

The 2018 WSOP schedule includes multiple high stakes events with buy-ins of $25,000 or more, including the $1M Big One for One Drop at the end of the series. There will also be non-bracelet $25k buy-in events every weekend at the Rio.

This year’s schedule is perfectly set up for a player like Ivey who prefers to play for large amounts of money. That desire to play for high stakes is one reason that Ivey does not have more than 10 WSOP bracelets.

There have been years where Ivey has either played a limited schedule or largely skipped the World Series of Poker because he was chasing cash games either at Bobby’s Room at the Bellagio or globally.

With multiple high roller tournaments on this year’s schedule, there is a great chance we will see him frequent the Rio. This is great for poker because we may see him finally take over second place on the All-Time Bracelets List and resume his chase of Phil Hellmuth for the #1 spot.

Ivey is presently in a three-way tie with Doyle Brunson and Johnny Chan for second all-time. Phil Hellmuth leads the way with 14 bracelets. Ivey’s last win came in 2014 when he took down the $1,500 Eight-Game Mix for his 10th bracelet win.

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