SCOOP 2012 Event # 33 L $27

The lowest buy in tournament fielded nearly nine thousand players, thirteen away to be exact, and saw 5,873 rebuys as well as 3,972 add-ons. The total prize pool was nearly $500,000 nearly doubling the guarantee. After many grueling hours from this deep stacked tournament with an amazing structure for lots of play, the final table shaped up looking like this.

Seat 1: bloby (10,078,352 in chips)
Seat 2: zenonmika (2,387,790 in chips)
Seat 3: wasole (5,130,570 in chips)
Seat 4: jaco921 (4,205,594 in chips)
Seat 5: nikol1999 (7,343,489 in chips)
Seat 6: PaDiLhA SP (9,850,371 in chips)
Seat 7: Squishee_Bob (2,475,717 in chips)
Seat 8: TummerDK (5,340,406 in chips)
Seat 9: salamandryko (9,683,711 in chips)

The chips stacks were ptretty even for the top 4 and pretty close to even for the bottom 5 so it was anyone’s game to win. Unfortunately for Squishee_Bob it was not his day and he went out in 9th place when he shoved KcJs against chip leader Bloby’s pocket tens. Bloby took out another player in when his flush took out Zenonmika in 7th place. Unfortunately for bloby despite knocking out two players at the final table and coming in as chip leader, bloby went out in 3rd when he was knocked out by PaDiLhA and he collected $35k for his efforts.

In a rather short conclusion PaDiLhA ended the tournament by hitting a 9 with his A9o against nikol1999′s AJ when the money was put all in preflop. Congrats to all who made the final table.

1st PaDiLhA SP (Brazil) – $70,624.32
2nd nikol1999 (Bulgaria) – $51,788.00
3rd bloby (Switzerland) – $35,310.00
4th salamandryko (Peru) – $23,728.32
5th jaco921 (Russia) – $18,832.00
6th wasole (Norway) – $14,124.00
7th zenonmika (Belgium) – $9,416.00
8th TummerDK (Denmark) – $5,414.20
9th Squishee_Bob (Canada) – $3,648.70

SCOOP 2012 Event #33 M $215

The medium SCOOP #33 brought in many established tournament pros into the field with the top prize being $94,727, a hefty sum for any tournament player. With 1,425 entrants and over 1,000 rebuys and 852 add-ons this very tough field, combined with deep, deep stacks from the structure and the fact that it’s a rebuy tournament made for a lot of exciting play. With a 3 way all in final table bubble bursting, the final table was set and the players were as follows:

Seat 1: modogrinder (1,219,181 in chips)
Seat 2: sarnabul (522,395 in chips)
Seat 3: RinaFox (415,739 in chips)
Seat 4: Skämmes (1,344,893 in chips)
Seat 5: JBT449 (1,305,159 in chips)
Seat 6: SHIPP ITT (313,600 in chips)
Seat 7: vmp8888 (3,075,950 in chips)
Seat 9: im2tight (1,757,083 in chips)

The event ended with a three way chop between Sarnabul, vmp8888 and im2tight making a deal that left $6,500 for the winner. Sarnabul was out first in third and im2tight finished off vmp8888 heads up to claim the extra $6,500 and the SCOOP #33 M title.

1. im2tight (Sweden) $94,727.56
2. vmp8888 (Romania) $83,671.59
3. sarnabul (Israel) $74,465.63
4. Josh “JBT449″ Bergman (Canada) $45,124.80
5. Skammes (Sweden) $32,516.40
6. RinaFox (Russia) $25,880.40
7. modogrinder (Costa Rica) $19,244.40
8. Mark “SHIPP ITT” Herm (Costa Rica) $19,244.40
9. Christopher “NigDawG” Brammer (United Kingdom) $12,608.40

SCOOP 2012 Event #33 H $2,100

The highest buy in Event #33 brought in 175 players that included 120 rebuys and 109 add-ons. This made for a prize pool of $808,000 with a first place purse of $173,720. This event brought out many of Stars’ red pros and many established nose bleed players as well. Shaun Deeb was searching for his 3rd win of the year but bubbled the final table in 12th place. The final table began with the following chip counts.
Seat 1: The-Toilet 0 (106,896)
Seat 2: römpsä (224,355)
Seat 3: Mafews (68,601)
Seat 4: HITTHEPANDA (49,100)
Seat 5: HC_68 (316,810)
Seat 6: Sphinx87 (74,329)
Seat 7: zugzwang16 (85,800)
Seat 8: Maxim Lykov (238,546)
Seat 9: RandALLin (47,563)

In the end it was Faraz Jaka aka The-Toilet who won all the monies beating HC_68 in a spirited heads up battle with the final hand ending like this.

HC_68 minraises the button for 12k
The-Toilet calls in the BB

Flop
Jd 7s 2s

HC_68 bets 12k.
The-Toilet check raises all in.
HC_68 calls.

HC_68 has TcTs
The-Toilet has 6s3s for a Flush draw.

The turn brought the Js giving The-Toilet a flush and the river bricked a 8h giving The-Toilet the win and $173,720.

1. Faraz “The-Toilet 0″ Jaka (Mexico) – $173,720
2. HC_68 (Austria) – $125,240
3. zugzwang16 (Uruguay) – $94,940
4. römpsä (Finland) – $70,700
5. Team PokerStars Pro Max Lykov (Russia) – $48,480
6. Sphinx87 (Poland) – $40,400
7. HITTHEPANDA (Canada) – $32,320
8. RandALLin (Mexico) – $24,240
9. Mafews (U.K.) – $16,160

Event #20 was a two day event that featured a High ($2,100), Medium ($215) and a Low ($27) buy in that brought over $3.1 million in prize money up for grabs combined.

SCOOP #20 L $27

The final table action began with 9 players, each trying to reach the a win after wading through a field of 22,013 people.

Seat 1: yryryryr (34305858 in chips)
Seat 2: 0nly4value (14273340 in chips)
Seat 3: TheUrsaraie (23594016 in chips)
Seat 4: Flowkid1 (34365768 in chips)
Seat 5: Sniper_Arnie (15441072 in chips)
Seat 6: KortKongen (28876905 in chips)
Seat 7: ElRupert (14809976 in chips)
Seat 8: kai183 (11540040 in chips)
Seat 9: ArielBahia (42923025 in chips)

It ended with ArielBahia’s Ad3d beating KortKongen’s 2s2h on 2d4h5d8d7h for the title and the win. ArielBahia won over $55k while KurtKongen took home nearly $41k for his efforts.

1st: ArielBahia ($55,048.04)
2nd: KurtKongen ($40,894.65)
3rd: yryryryr ($27,516.25)
4th: ElRupert ($22,013.00)
5th: Flowkid1 ($16,509.75)
6th: kai183 ($11,006.50)
7th: 0nly4value ($7,732.06)
8th: TheUrsaraie ($4,952.92)
9th: Sniper_Arnie ($3,301.95)

SCOOP #20 M $215

The tournament began with a $500k guarantee which was quickly dunked by the tournament’s 5516 entrants for a total prize pool of over $1.1 million.

The medium SCOOP #20 saw day 2 begin with a lot of famous faces including ‘tha giggy” formerly Dr. Giggy on FTP, widely known for his BlueFire Poker videos. Daut44, winner of many major tournaments including a PCA main event win. Unfortunately for them, neither of them ended up making the final table. The final table ended up shaping off like this.

Seat 1: yugurt1961 (3,916,603 in chips)
Seat 2: PrtyPsux (5,797,151 in chips)
Seat 3: SeeYouAnte18 (7,338,600 in chips)
Seat 4: raidalot (16,738,369 in chips)
Seat 5: MD IACONI (4,430,473 in chips)
Seat 6: RonaldKosh (4,136,469 in chips)
Seat 7: INSHALA82 (2,188,345 in chips)
Seat 8: Duuglas (3,774,318 in chips)
Seat 9: venezustar (6,839,672 in chips)

It began with SeeYouAnte18′s pocket kings getting all in preflop against venezustar’s pocket aces for the one of the first hands of the final table which crippled SeeYouAnte18 early. The first player to be eleminated was INSHALA82, while shortstacked he shoved KJ and was called by AJ and bricked out. He won $8.8k for his 9th place finish. Eventually it whittled down to two yugurt1961 and raidalot. Both having nearly even starting stacks of ~27mil chips which gave them both around 55 big blinds heads up. In this 230 hand epic heads up match eventually ending with yugurt1961 shoved his K3o all in preflop, getting called by raidalot’s QJ and raidalot spiking an queen on the flop to win the tournament. He won over 172.5k for his efforts with yugurt1961 winning over 128.5k.

1st place: raidalot (United Kingdom) $172,575.88
2nd place: yugurt1961 (Russia) $128,522.80
3rd place: RonaldKosh (Mexico) $91,014
4th place: JC “PrtyPsux” Alvarado (Mexico) $62,330.80
5th place: SeeYouAnte18 (United Kingdom) $46,886
6th place: venezustar (Venezuela) $35,854
7th place: Duuglas (Sweden) $24,822
8th place: MD IACONI (Moldova) $13,790
9th place: INSHALA82 (United Kingdom) $8,825.60

SCOOP #20 H $2,100

The highest buy in SCOOP event brought out all the high stakes players. The total prize pool was over $1.5 million with 782 entrants vying for the first prize of $293,250. The bubble of this tournament was very interesting as well, seeing Ivan Demidov eliminated in 11th and the mystery high stakes player “scout326” being eliminated in 10th place. Which put the final table looking like this

Seat 1: -MortenVM- -547,389
Seat 2: nachobarbero – 708,324
Seat 3: SUNDAYKING – 493,141
Seat 4: anthonyff – 586,684
Seat 5: brianm15 – 1,813,752
Seat 6: mig.com – 1,492,657
Seat 7: jonyctt – 986,884
Seat 8: BrynKenney – 570,187
Seat 9: kenny05 – 620,982

This final table was comprised of many nosebleed cash pros as well as many accomplished tournament pros. The first player eliminated would be anthonyff shoving AJ against mig.com’s TT. Anthonyff lost the flip as mig.com flopped a T and then turned another T for quads and anthonyff was elimnated in 9th place for $22k. BrynKenney would be the 2nd eliminated when he got it all in preflop with KQ against kenny05′s AT and bricked out. Bryn took home $35.1k for his 8th place finish.

Eventually the final table boiled down to SUNDAYKING a relatively unknown tournament pro against nosebleed cash specialist brianm15. The match went on for a fair bit before SUNDAYKING and brianm15 decided to look at numbers. Numbers couldn’t be decided upon, despite brianm15 being sure that he was dominating SUNDAYKING and play resumed. However it was SUNDAYKING who ended up winning the tournament in a pot that went like this.

SUNDAYKING minraised the button to 100k
brianm15 3b the BB to ~287k and SUNDAYKING called.
The flop came AK5 all clubs, brianm15 bet around half pot and SUNDAYKING minraised.
brianm15 then shoved his remaining 1.8million chips and was quickly called by SUNDAYKING.
SUNDAYKING held T7 of clubs against brianm15′s AsTd and brianm15 did not hit a running full house giving SUNDAYKING the win and the title.

1st place: SUNDAYKING ($293,250)
2nd place: brianm15 ($211,140)
3rd place: kenny05 ($156,400)
4th place: mig.com ($117,300)
5th place: nachobarbero ($82,110)
6th place: jonyctt ($66,470)
7th place: -MortenVM- ($50,830)
8th place: BrynKenney ($35,190)
9th place: anthonyff ($22,052)

It basically begins with a short bit of Black Friday and from there continues from the beginning of the poker boom with testimony and stories from many top industry managers as well as seasoned professionals as well as a lot of the current internet pros. Without giving any spoilers it’s worth watching for anyone interested in poker or struggles to explain or rationalize poker to people who can’t quite understand it.

It’s currently on youtube right now, and I am not sure how long it will last before it’s taken down but like I said earlier this movie is certainly worth a watch. This movie is likely the best poker documentary taking the throne from Bluefire Poker’s “A Kid’s Game” in this author’s opinion.

As if this were not enough the very next tournament Blom won as well. The SCOOP-03-H $530 six max rebuy, possibly one of the most prestige events in online poker. An event featuring the toughest six max regulars from online poker eventually ended with Isildur1 making a full house on the river with 98 against the straight flush draw of Ruxandescu. This time Blom bested a field of 486 entrants for a tidy sum of $160,000.

It’s pretty early in the SCOOP season and who knows if this sick trend will continue but as of right now Blom leads the SCOOP leader board for most money won with a total of over $411,000. Congrats to Blom and he’s certainly silenced those who believed high stakes cash players couldn’t crush tournaments as well.

1.) If you use the same password for 2p2 for other things, change them immediately. He further details that it’s possible to take lots of money from you if you use the same password for something important such as online bank accounts. In my opinion you should have unique and independent passwords for every website you use so if one account gets compromised there is much less at risk than if you use one password for every site.

2.) Change the password you used for your 2p2 email to something more secure. It seems likely that the hacker already has all the emails used to register on 2p2 so even if you password is different from your 2p2 account password you are better off safe than sorry.

3.) Be aware if you had important info in your PM boxes. It’s worth potentially changing some things if you had relevant information ranging from site to site training to skype/aim screen names or even cell phone numbers. It’s possible to do quite a bit of damage if people don’t know its you so it’s probably worth it to issue warnings or create some kind of confirmation system so the hacker is not able to scam anyone using your good name.

Naturally the poker world is pretty upset but it’s very important to remain calm and protect yourself from any damage that this hacker may cause.

LOCKOPS was to be an exclusive set of tournaments set for only Lock Poker players. However it seems Merge did not approve of the exclusiveness of LOCKOPS and pulled the plug in what Lock called the ’24th hour’. After the Poker Nordica unexpected closed out of the nowhere many players have been apprehensive concerning the safety of funds on other Merge Network skins. My inside source at Lock Poker tells me it’s business as usual at Lock, as well as there being on cause for concern. He points out that Lock has a separate cashier from the rest of Merge that facilitates faster cash outs as well as Lock Poker continuing to sign reputable pros to it’s roster.

As for what this means for the future of Full Tilt Poker remains up in the air. If Full Tilt regains it’s lost license then we could potentially see the reopening of FTP rather soon. What this means for repayment of former funds remains also in question. It seems logical if FTP reopens that it would be a top priority for FTP to repay in full the players outside of the United States, as these players will be the player base until the U.S market reopens. It is largely unknown when, how or to what extent. US players will be refunded their lost funds.

PokerStars made it very clear that the cease and desist was not an empty legal threat and shortly after PokerTableRatings complied and removed all PokerStars players from their tracking with a message on their site saying “Stars has requested that you not view your poker player profile on PokerTableRatings.com”. Poker players on various forms of social media, including twitter and forums such as twoplustwo, have called this a great move by PokerStars saying it protects players and the integrity of the games. It remains to be seen if the other major sites such as PartyPoker or sites on the Ipoker network will follow in the steps of PokerStars by demanding that data mining sites such as PokerTableRatings stop tracking their respective player bases.

One Drop is a charity created by Guy  Laliberté, the creator of Cirque du Soleil. One Drop focuses on eliminating poverty around the world by focusing on bringing water to areas without water or where water is lacking. This tournament will provide the charity with $111,111 per entry and with the field expected to reach the cap of 48 players this will mean the charity will have a little over $4.88 dollars to utilize in bringing water to regions without it.

The field is already filling with famous poker professionals such as Tom Dwan, Patrik Antonius, Daniel Negreanu, Johnny Chan as well as many business men including the famed Andy Beal, the man behind the story of “The Professor, The Banker and the Suicide King” by Michael Craig. This book detailed the time when Beal attempted to force the poker pros of Vegas, known as “The Corporation” to play absurdly high stakes in the hopes it would affect their play. The story ends with Beal losing more than $16 million to Phil Ivey.

With a huge buy in, as well as a top heavy prize structure, this tournament will surely continue to attract more amateurs and pro poker players alike. Especially with a large percentage of the tournament going to a very deserving charity this tournament looks very promising as a great way to portray poker in a favorable light. With ESPN televising, every poker fan should be in for a real treat watching this very high stakes tournament.

This trend of live streaming started by the W.S.O.P with a 3 hour delay seems to be catching on rapidly. The PokerStars Caribbean Adventure and the W.S.O.P.E with delayed streaming and the IseriesLive with live streaming seems to be the new default in poker and it’s most certainly a good thing. The commentating is rather decent with one extremely good pro and a color commentator as well which adds nicely to the overall quality of the stream. If this trend continues we could see a slight boost to poker’s popularity in the future as people in general seem to be gravitating away from watching constantly flips of televised tournament poker and appear to be more interested in live action games. Hopefully this trend of streaming or televising will continue and perhaps a live stream of TV tables at the W.S.O.P. this summer could create a small push into getting U.S. Legislation in a little sooner.