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Day 15 at the PokerStars World Championship of Online Poker was especially busy, with events including WCOOP 38 ($500 NLHE HU Two-Day), WCOOP 40 ($200 NLHE Two-Day), and WCOOP 42 ($1,000 NLHE Two-Day). The most exciting event of the day, however, was WCOOP 41 – an NLHE High Roller tournament with a $10k buy-in and a heads-up, one-on-one format.

PokerStars guaranteed a prize pool of $150k, but their expectations were exceeded when 32 of the biggest names in poker arrived to create a prize pool of $320k. The buy-in was actually meager in comparison to last year’s High Roller, when RaiseOnce emerged victorious after buying in for $25k. RaiseOnce did not make an appearance in this year’s event.

Some of the players that did buy-in but faced early elimination included Brian Hastings, Shawn Buchanan, Bertrand “ElkY” Grospellier, Ben Tollerene, Dan Kelly and Jonathan Jaffe.

While a number of stars made the final eight, the most recognizable by far was the legendary Daniel Negreanu. Although Negreanu’s performance was strong enough for a cash finish, it wasn’t enough to top Ankush Mandavia’s.

The top eight was paired down to a final four after Rachid Ben Cherif defeated John Duthie, akut defeated Fishenzon, Negreanu beat 26071985 and Mandavia eliminated Maxim Lykov.

The first match of the final four pitted Mandavia directly against Negreanu. In the final hand of the match-up, Negreanu pushed all in with K-Q offsuit. Mandavia managed to turn 7-6 offsuit into a straight on the turn and the same card appeared on the river, sealing Negreanu’s fate.

After akut defeated Ben Charif, heads-up play began between akut and Mandavia. The pair opted to strike a deal in which both would receive $105k, with an additional $14k on the line for the winner. After about 1.5 hours, it appeared as though akut had the upper hand when he pushed all in with A-Q offsuit against Mandavia’s K-Q offsuit. A king on the flop turned the tables and sealed Mandavia’s win. Cherif and Negreanu received $48k each for their 3rd and 4th place finishes.