WPT

Controversy has followed Chino throughout his career, but he wasn’t the only one at the final table who had skeletons in the closet. Runner-up Eric “E-Dog” Lindgren is no stranger to the heat from the poker community, but these two less than immaculate players were the final two from a stacked field at the Borgata Casino in Las Vegas.

Rheem went into the final six with the chip lead, in fact he had nearly twice the stack of Lindgren who came into the final day in second place.

First blood from the final six was drawn by Canadian Pro Jonathan Roy, when he eliminated David Peters in sixth for $173,993. Roy was aiming to take the WPT Season XI Player of the Year honours by winning the event.

The next head to be scalped was Brandon Steven, even after he had flopped a straight flush earlier in the action. Steven’s pocket Tens were cracked when Roy turned up holding a suited small ace that ended up with a higher two pair. Steven Exited with $223,203 for his troubles.

Roy was really in control of the action, and was responsible for the next elimination as well. Matt Hyman was on the sharp end of a cooler so cold that CERN wanted it for research into particle physics. Hyman’s pocket Kings were crushed pre-flop by Roy’s Aces, and the community cards we’re any help. Hyman went home with $289,988 to try and warm him up.

While Roy was closing in on the chip lead, it wasn’t in the stars for him to raise the trophy for the event, or beat out Matt Salsberg for the Player of the Year title.

Roy lost out on a massive pot against Rheem when his set of eights were destroyed on the river when Chino’s AdTd made the nut flush, and he snapped off Roy’s river shove.

Matt Salsberg was certainly happy, and he tweeted when he got the news the river was a diamond:

Thanks @chinorheem for getting there!

— matt salsberg (@msalsberg) May 25, 2013

Chino went into the heads up battle with a dominant chip lead, with more than 75% of the chips in play. It still took nearly 100 hands and more than two hours to clinch his second WPT win.

Rheem had got Lindgren down to 10 big blinds, and applied the pressure by open shoving the last hand. “E-Dog” called, and Rheem had his Qd9d dominated, with Kd9c. Rheem was confident, and turned to his rail and said “I got him.”

The board ran out, and Chino’s K high was the winning hand.

Chino pocketed $1,150,297 for his win while second place Eric won $650,275. The full results from the final six are below:

1. Chino Rheem – $1,150,297
2. Eric “E-Dog” Lindgren – $650,275
3. Jonathan Roy – $421,800
4. Matt Hyman – $289,988
5. Brandon Steven – $223,203
6. David Peters – $173,993

The next big live event will be the start of the WSOP, and we will be bringing you as much of the action a we can.

Today’s article covers both Wednesday and Thursday’s action.

We’ll start off with a quick round up of the action from Wednesday, and we head to the 2-7TD tables where Viktor didn’t have the best of starts. Over 208 hands, $169,184, with the lion’s share seemingly going to German poker pro “Kagome Kagome.”

No Limit Hold’em  made an appearance on Blom’s schedule, and saw him meet “riyyc225″ on the felt. We’ve not seen this account turn up in the Watch yet, and there is very little information out there about who this might be. What we do know it that over 218 hands of $500/$1000 $30k Cap NLHE Viktor made a profit of $72,270.

Next up was the biggest volume game of the day, FLO8. Here Viktor was up against the usual crowd in a 6-Max environment, and over 1058 hands, made a very impressive $500,269 profit. We caught some of the action when Viktor Played “SallyWoo” heads up as part of his FLO8 day. We have a video of some of the action below.

This brought Viktor’s Wednesday to a close, and he ended up with a $368,478 profit in the win column.

Thursday’s action started off with some PLO action, and a decent amount of the action needs to be filed under “Tollerene Head Butting Session” as Isildur was again up against his apparent PLO Cap nemesis in Ben “Bttech86″ Tollerene. The Force apparently wasn’t with Viktor on this given Thursday, but neither was it with Tollerene as the only difference in Viktor’s bankroll was $5,612 as he played 282 hands of PLO. We have some of the action from these tables in the video below.

Next up was a combination of 2-7TD and FLO8 tables that didn’t go well for Viktor. While he started off brightly at the nosebleed 2-7TD  tables by winning $120,724 over 120 Hands, it didn’t last. He ended up losing $212,686 over the next 162 hands of 2-7TD to out him in a hole for the day. The hole only got deeper when he started to play FLO8. The first 171 hands saw Viktor jump out to a $218,035 deficit, and wasn’t able to dig his way out of the hole over the next 303 hands with as he made a small $9,892 profit.

Thursday ended with Viktor down $305,717, and ended both days with a small $62,761 profit. This nudged Viktor’s yearly profit to $3,168,366, which still has him as the top earner online this year.

Pretty much, what Viktor won on Wednesday, he lost on Thursday. Wednesday wasn’t a bed of roses to start with, at some points, Viktor was down over $250k, but he managed to come back, and ended up turning a profit, largely due to the great action at the FLO8 tables.

Thursday saw Viktor try to do the same. He managed, for all intents and purposes, to break even at the PLO tables, but his 2-7TD, and especially his FLO8 game, cost him dearly.

He was always behind the action, and didn’t get on the profit side of the line all day. But, I’m not about to go on a tear through his game, calling him out for poor game selection. Both 2-7TD and FLO8 are swingy games, and the results Viktor posted do some wins in there, enough for me not to be overly concerned with him spiralling out of control. Before the last 2 tables of 2-7TD cost him badly, he was on course to have a mediocre losing day, and the FLO8 session he played after that actually turned him a small profit.

These two days actually show the life of an online high stakes poker player pretty well. One day you’re up, one day you’re down. It can be due to you playing badly, but it can also be just down to the cards not liking you. This is why we need to look at poker players both over a larger statistical sample, and on the smaller scale, into patterns of when/why they win or lose.

I stand by my assertion that Viktor may be one of the most gifted players to ever pick up a pack of cards, but I’m not saying he’s perfect. He has issues in his game, ones that I think can be easily resolved, if he gets the correct advice and help. If he does that, he could be unstoppable. In theory at least.

The Alpha Value Defined

Most people who have been around poker discussion here on the forums will have seen the calculation bet/(bet+pot) at least once. For example, if a player was betting $4 into a pot of $6, then the alpha value would be 4/10 = 0.40 or 40 percent. Many players use the alpha value to find profitable bluffing spots or to determine if a call is profitable. There are very strict limitations on when the alpha value works as a guide in any type of situation, and those limitations are the focus of our discussion here.

Using the Alpha Value When Calling

If you are calling to close the action (ie: calling on the river or calling an all-in), then you can use the alpha value as a guide to determine if your call is profitable. For example, suppose that after your opponent goes all-in that the pot is $20 and you have to call $9. In this situation, the alpha value would be 9/29 = 0.31, so you would need to have at least 31 percent equity to have a +EV call before taking into account the rake. The main limitation on using the alpha value with calling is that it has to be a call that closes the action on the hand completely. Here are some examples of when the alpha value does not apply when making a call:

• There are players left to act on the current betting street.
• There will be betting on a future betting street.
• Calling will result in a side pot because of multi-way play.

Suppose that there is a 3x raise pre-flop by a player in middle position in a 100bb no-limit hold’em cash game, and you call from the button with T9s. The blinds fold, and the flop comes AK9 rainbow. Your opponent makes a continuation bet of two-thirds the size of the pot. I have seen players try to use the alpha value to justify calling (or folding) in this type of situation. This is absurd because the alpha value is completely irrelevant!

The Relationship Between Bluffing and the Alpha Value

If you are making a pure bluff with absolutely no chance to win unless your opponents fold, then you need to take the pot down at least the alpha value percentage of the time for your bluff to be profitable. For example, if you were to bet $5 into a pot of $10 in a heads-up pot with no pair and no draw, then you would need your opponent to fold at least 5/15 = 33.3 percent of the time for your bluff to be profitable.

One of the most common mistakes that players make when it comes to using the alpha value to determine the profitability of bluffs occurs in multi-way pots. If we were making the same bet of $5 into a pot of $10 in a three-way pot, then we would need both of our opponents to fold a combined 5/15 = 33.3 of the time. Players often take this to mean that each player has to fold 33.3 percent of his or her range individually, but that’s a big mistake. If both players fold 57.4 percent of the time each, then we will take down this pot just 33.3 percent of the time.

Another big mistake is using the alpha value to determine the profitability of a bluff whenever there are future streets of betting left. The implied odds, reverse implied odds and chances for future bluffs all drastically change the expected value of bluffing on an early street, so the alpha value becomes of little use. You often see this when players make a continuation bet with a weak draw or when they make a 3-bet pre-flop. By trying to take a shortcut with the alpha value, they inadvertently avoid looking into the real factors that influence the profitability of their plays, and this hurts their overall ability to learn what really makes these types of situations tick.

Avoiding Exploitation With the Alpha Value

If you’re closing the action on the river, the alpha value can give you what percentage of your total range that you have to call with to avoid being exploited by bluffs. As is the case with a lot of the situations that we have discussed here, a lot of people try to apply this to earlier streets without the best of results.

Here’s a common example. Suppose that Hero raises pre-flop to $3 and Villain 3-bets to $10 from the big blind in a $0.50/1 game. Because alpha is 9/13.5 = 66.7 percent from the point of view of Villain, some people would try to say that we have to fold 66.7 percent or less to avoid being exploited by bluffs. The problem with this logic is that there is future betting that drastically changes the calculation. If we’re winning a lot with the times that we continue, then it isn’t going to matter that we’re folding more than two-thirds of the time. Along similar lines, if we’re spewing chips when we continue, then it’s not going to help us much that we’re folding less than two-thirds of the time.

The Common Theme

The common theme with all of these examples of the alpha value being applied incorrectly is that implied odds, reverse implied odds and future bluffing opportunities usually change our total expected value a lot more than what’s happening on the present betting street. Because the alpha value is only a shortcut for basic, single-street situations under specific limitations, it cannot be applied as anything more than an extremely rough and borderline-useless guideline in the majority of other situations.

Questions or comments?

Discuss this article in our forum: http://www.flopturnriver.com/pokerforum/beginners-circle/%5bspoonitnow-strategy%5d-applications-limitations-alpha-value-194726.html

PokerStars has today released a new video on YouTube showcasing the roller-coaster journey of Shane “Shaniac” Schleger as a professional poker player – from working as a waiter in New York in 2004, to now living by the Mexican seaside.

Shaniac has overcome many challenges in his life as a professional poker player, and this short film captures the ups as well as the downs.

“The film focuses on some of the more painful, struggle-filled chapters of my history and ignores the happier, more carefree things I get to enjoy,” said Shaniac. “It definitely encapsulates the arc of my poker life in an accurate and comprehensive way: coming up into the poker life after being a lost 20-something New Yorker, succeeding in poker, struggling in poker, and the eventual need to leave my country to continue playing poker.”

Like many other professional sportsmen, Shaniac has had wonderful successes, but also challenging and difficult times. This film captures some of those moments, and shows him wrestling with these hurdles.

“It’s not the typical story of triumph in poker, but it represents my relationship with the game in an accurate way, and it also represents some of the realities that I continue to face,” said Shaniac.

“I can feel comfortable knowing that it’s a real representation of that story,” he said.

Importantly, Shaniac overcame his downswing, worked hard, and was able to return to top-flight competition. Shaniac’s story is one that many top poker players can relate to: the tough times as
well as the victories. Poker is a fun and competitive game, and Shaniac’s life is a demonstration that a strong competitive spirit is essential to succeed at this game.

About PokerStars

PokerStars operates the world’s most popular online poker sites, serving a global poker community of more than 50 million registered members. Since it launched in 2001, PokerStars has become the first choice of the world’s top players, with more daily tournaments than anywhere else and with the best security online. More than 95 billion hands have been dealt on PokerStars.com, which is more than any other site.

PokerStars.com and PokerStars.eu operate globally under licenses from the Isle of Man and Malta governments, respectively. PokerStars also holds separate government licenses in Belgium, Denmark,
Estonia, France, Italy, Spain and Germany.

PokerStars is a member of The Rational Group, which operates gaming-related businesses and brands, including PokerStars, Full Tilt Poker and the European Poker Tour. Rational Group entities in the UK and Isle of Man were collectively recognised as one of the UK’s best workplaces when they were awarded a top 25 position by the Great Place to Work Institute in its 2012 UK’s Best Workplaces – Large Category.

Visit PokerStars.com here!

Not that I’m calling Viktor a lazy guy, but after the past few days of significantly higher volume, yesterday must have felt like a lighter day.

He started off with a NLHE heads up match up at the usual $500/$1000 $30k Cap table. On this date he was playing “riyyc212″ and ended up losing $69,502 over 23 hands to yet another enigmatic unknown player.

Next up was 411 hands of 2-7TD over 5 tables, all against Isildur Watch regular, and still unknown German player “Kagome Kagome.” The confrontation didn’t start out well for Blom, and at the only dedicated heads up table they played at, Viktor dropped $63,002 to the German, but he was able to win out in the long run, and ended up with a daily $200,150 profit from the 2-7TD tables. We caught some of the action, and have a highlights reel for you below:

The next stop for the intrepid Viktor was the table named (we think) in his honour, Gondor (One of the kingdoms from Lord of the Rings for those not in the know). The $500/$1000 $40k Cap table was populated with high qaulity players all day, but when Viktor was sat, the only other really notable name sat was Patrik “FinddaGrind” Antonius, and he only sat towards the end of Viktor’s session. This left Viktor crushing the table made up of lesser known names. He took full advantage of this, and turned a $189,869 profit from 80 hands. We have some of the bigger hands in the video package below.

The rest of the day was spent at the FLO8 6-Max tables. Most of the action we captured saw Viktor up against two names that won’t be unknown to regular readers. they were fellow Full Tilt Professional Gus Hansen, and Watch regular Kyle “KPR16″ Ray.

The first 130 hands increased Viktor’s profit for the day, as he won $51,710, but that was the apex of his day. The action swung the other way, and the next 347 hands saw Viktor lose $435,102 to close out his day. We have some of the hands from this dramatic reversal of fortunes for your viewing in the embedded video below.

Viktor ended the day after this swing, and his final loss was only $62,875. This takes his yearly profit line to $3,105,605.

Given the he was up $372,227 for that day at one point, this can be looked on as a failure. I prefer to think that Viktor started his day well, and he played beyond what should have been the natural end of his day.

One of these FLO8 tables saw Viktor drop $269,254 over 100 hands. He actually took a break at this point, but 45 minutes later, he was back in the same games again. If he had followed through, and made this break the end of his day, he would have actually posted a $63,938 profit for the day, rather than the loss he ended up posting.

I think Viktor is actually learning when he’s playing  at less than his best, the break he took seems to back this up. If Viktor had played much more than the 120 hands he played after this break, I’d have thought he was spiralling out of control. As it is, he took a break, tried to level himself, came back to the tables, continued to lose, and quit for the day. It may be the beginnings of a better mental game for Viktor. I’m sure if he asked nicely, a certain mental game coach would be willing to send him a free copy of his books to help him improve his game.

However, to my surprise, it seems that neither the great weather, nor the ending of the FTOPS and MiniFTOPS series has had much effect on Full Tilt Poker’s traffic. In fact, it is the only major poker site that has been increasing traffic over the past few weeks and most of the weekend majors seemed to have more players than last week!

And of course things kicked off Friday with the traditional Friday Night Fight. However, not much fighting has been done by big name tournament pro’s as only two of them made it to the final table. Mike “CuteIsWhatIAim4” Telker was eliminated in 5th place and “MTstackin88” let the tournament right behind him in 4th. Heads up was between Latvian “Bredovsk Gatis” and Bulgarian “cocojamb0_BG”. With no deals being made, the Latvian was the one who had what it takes to fight through to the end and took home $10,314 for his efforts!

Friday Night Fight

$315 buy-in
191 runners
$38,200 prize pool

1. Bredovsk Gatis $10,314
2. cocojamb0_BG $6,494
3. brianm15 $4,870.50
4. MTstackin88 $3,820 (High Stakes tournament pro with $3m in cashes)
5. CuteIsWhatIAim4 $2,865 (Mike Telker, High Stakes tournament pro with $3m in cashes)
6. pitboss1988 $2,101
7. 1nods $1,432.50
8. domador1 $1,146
9. shakentucan $859.50

Saturday saw some great performances by many great players and as usual it all began with the $1K Saturday.
The last six players remaining in this tournament were all established tournament pro’s and combined, their tournament cashes add up to more than $15m! Among them was Scott Clements who made several final table appearances last weekend. However, only two of them could reach heads up play and this time it was Canada’s “hustla16” and “freddiewalli” from the Netherlands. “freddiewalli” had some impressive results with a 4th place finish in the Sunday Million and an outright win in the PokerStars Big $162. “hustla16”, however, had even more impressive results on his resume, including a win in the 2009 WCOOP $530 NLHE [2-day], $3M guaranteed. In the end experience prevailed and it was “hustla16” who snatched the first place prize of $44,550!

While the big battle was raging at the $1K Saturday final table, an interesting line up was set for the ExPLOsivo final six. Among them was multiple triple crown winner Chris Hunichen, who unfortunately was eliminated in 6th place. A little further down the line was “Thekillerxxx”, who took down FTOPS Event #20 just a few months ago, but he also couldn’t make it all the way and was eliminated in 4th. And the winner was Japanese pro Kosei Ichinose who defeated UK’s “Olsworthy” in heads up play.

The Saturday Six-Max saw the final table evenly split between well known pro’s and unknown players. Representing the pro’s were big names like Christopher Brammer and Kevin MacPhee. However, they were on completely different paths on this final table as Christopher was the first to be eliminated from the final table, while MacPhee went on to battle Austrian pro “Tenkamusou” heads up. Again, players decided that no deals were necessary and Kevin went on to win the tournament outright for $17,325!

$1K Saturday

$1050 buy-in
165 runners
$165,000 prize pool

1. hustla16 $44,550 (High Stakes tournament pro with $3m in cashes)
2. freddiewalli $28,050 (Paul Berende, High Stakes tournament pro with $2.5m in cashes)
3. Scott Clements $21,037.50 (Scott Clements, High Stakes tournament pro with $2.8m in cashes)
4. jimmie23 $16,500 (High Stakes tournament pro with $2m in cashes)
5. pez102 $12,375 (Matt Perrins, High Stakes tournament pro with $1m in cashes)
6. Naza114 $9,075 (High Stakes tournament pro with $3.5m in cashes)
7. MrVengeanceCH $6,187.50
8. Takter $4,950
9. cliff47 $3,712.50

ExPLOsivo

$215 buy-in
99 runners
$19,800 prize pool

1. Shimbunshi $5,989.50 (Kosei Ichinose, High Stakes tournament pro with $1.5m in cashes)
2. Olsworthy $3,811.50
3. just_the_nuts $2,722.50
4. thekillerxxx $2,029.50
5. dynoalot $1,435.50 (Alex Difelice, High Stakes tournament pro with $1m in cashes)
6. Big Huni $940.50 (Chris Hunichen, High Stakes tournament pro with $5.2m in cashes)

Saturday Six-Max

$320 buy-in
191 runners
$57,300 prize pool

1. Wu_Wizard $17,325 (Kevin MacPhee, High Stakes tournament pro with $5.5m in cashes)
2. Tenkamusou $11,399.85 (High Stakes tournament pro with $3.2m in cashes)
3. Prostakovich $8,385.30
4. Antesvante $6,098.40
5. MeZZiaS $4,365.90
6. kid_bramm $2,910.60 (Christopher Brammer, High Stakes tournament pro with $3.1m in cashes)

Sunday saw some big prize pools being awarded as the biggest tournament of the week kicked off yet again! The Sunday Brawl was first on the list and strangely enough, only one known high stakes pro made it to the final table. Gustavo “PIUlimeira” Goto has some impressive results on his resume, including a $334,000 score on a four-way chop of a $2,100 NLHE Two-Day WCOOP event in September 2012. Unfortunately for him this time he could only manage a 6th place run. Eventually it was Argentinean player “tuviejareda” who beat Sweden’s “Fisksson” heads up and took home $40,000!

The $350,000 Guarantee saw a different final table line up five pro’s battling it out, and this time the results were more like Saturday’s majors. Heads up was between two pro’s from Canada, Dario Pavan and Nate Bjerno, both of whom have impressive track records. Apparently every player felt very good about their games this weekend as another tournament went by without any deals being made and this time it was Dario Pavan celebrating the win and the $72,200 first place prize.

The Super Sized Sunday final table also saw some big names gunning for the win. Eventually this final table produced perhaps the most interesting heads up battle among all the weekend’s final tables. It was Randal Flowers, currently residing in Mexico who was up against well known UK pro Craig McCorkell. Both players are not only experienced online players, but also have big Live wins, which is not that easy to come by online. Randal ook down the WPT Festa al Lago Main Event ($10,000 NLHE) for $831,000 in 2010 and Craig McCorkell captured a WSOP bracelet in a $3K NLHE Shootout for $368,000. After a long battle it was Craig McCorkell who emerged victorious and $42,432 richer for his efforts.

The Sunday Brawl

$255 buy-in
981 runners
$200,000 prize pool

1. tuviejareda $40,000
2. Fisksson $26,640
3. Pasiu $19,000
4. Rabbit_hunterSA $14,200
5. gbmantis12 $10,600
6. PIUlimeira $7,800 (Gustavo Goto, High Stakes tournament pro with $1.7m in cashes)
7. TheSquee $5,800
8. Treezer $4,200
9. Sfeylous $3,000

The $100K Double Deuce

$22 buy-in
4,603 runners
$100,000 prize pool

1. zlattee_ $17,100
2. JoanMordan $11,900
3. sumerki-2012 $8,500
4. Mejwon $6,400
5. peanut172 $4,795
6. IMurtazin $3,300
7. FullShroom $2,150
8. dtan88 $1,500
9. rungoodfoeva $1,050

$350,000 Guarantee

$215 buy-in
1,900 runners
$380,000 prize pool

1. wptchamp9 $72,200 (Dario Pavan, High Stakes tournament pro with $500K in cashes)
2. carbonmonoxide $50,046 (Nate Bjerno, High Stakes tournament pro with $1m in cashes)
3. DIMJR $35,340
4. dadham9 $26,600
5. useintuit $19,760
6. SCTrojans08 $14,440 (High Stakes tournament pro with $3.5m in cashes)
7. Flush_Entity $10,260 (Griffin Benger, High Stakes tournament pro with $4.5m in cashes)
8. MoeRdiSH $7,220
9. PureCash25 $4,940 (High Stakes tournament pro with $1.8m in cashes)

Super Sized Sunday

$635 buy-in
272 runners
$163,200 prize pool

1. mcc3991 $42,432 (Craig McCorkell, High Stakes tournament pro with $2m in cashes)
2. ScoopAndStack $26,928 (Randal Flowers, High Stakes tournament pro with $3.4m in cashes)
3. Gusterous $20,400
4. Apalma $15,912 (António Palma, High Stakes tournament pro with $1.4m in cashes)
5. McNallyville $11,832 (Steve McNally, High Stakes tournament pro with $3.8m in cashes)
6. MaXiOwnS $8,568
7. Lilla82 $5,712
8. RenRad 01 $4,488 (Mark Darner, High Stakes tournament pro with $3m in cashes)
9. EELiz $3,427.20

Big Game of the Week

$109 buy-in
90 runners
$10,000 prize pool

1. JN123 $3,025
2. eugul1968 $1,925
3. skuunyy $1,375
4. Emilia12 $1,025
5. kawauso29o $725
6. zwacke $475

The Sunday Mulligan

$215 buy-in
444 runners
$88,800 prize pool

1. sexystuff1989 $22,200 (Toby Lewis, High Stakes tournament pro with $3m in cashes)
2. Artur Silva $13,764
3. matfrankland $10,212 (Mathew Frankland, High Stakes tournament pro with $2m in cashes)
4. TheAssassinato $7,992 (Alex Fitzgerald, High Stakes tournament pro with $2.7m in cashes)
5. Ricestud $5,994 (High Stakes tournament pro with $1.2m in cashes)
6. Sgoup $4,440
7. Vinkyy $2,886 (High Stakes tournament pro with $4m in cashes)
8. Phwap $2,220 (High Stakes tournament pro with $1m in cashes)
9. Sentapied $1,776 (Paul Senter, High Stakes tournament pro with $2m in cashes)

SCOOP 2013

SCOOP 15 Mid ($82) saw a 30 hour marathon NLHE Ante Up event come to a close with a four way deal. 1,794 players had started, 234 got a return on their investment, and the final four chopped $58631.07 between them. “ex6tenceLV” took home the most with $16,124.22 to go with his SCOOP title and watch.

PokerStars Team pro George “Jorj95″ Lind III made the final table of the High ($700) tournament but failed to win in the heads up match, coming second behind a previous SCOOP winner in the format, “JIZOINT” who won $50,827.76 to go with his second title.

“JAIMEHUNT83″ took the low ($7.50) event for a $7,465.80 payday after a five way deal.

Given the recent resurgence of Fixed Limit Omaha Hi/Lo, I was surprised to see the numbers for SCOOP 16 were so small. With only 2,953 players stumping up the $27 for the low event won by “holako” for $11,456.32 and 657 paying $215 for the Medium event that ended up being Chopped heads up between “thefish01x” ($22,142.49) and “Kid Blaast”($20,234.01), it seemed smaller than I was expecting.

The High event was even smaller at 129 entrants, but the $2,100 price tag couldn’t have been described as pocket change. Anders “Donald” Berg won this one for $64,500.

“JIZOINT” was back at the final table of SCOOP 18 High ($2,100) for the 10-Max Shootout. He again made it to the heads up battle, but this time wasn’t able to scale his way all the way to the top of the mountain, and came in second to Shawn “buck21″ Buchanan who took home $118,800 for the win.

The Low was won by “Cem1994″ for $23,588.18 and the Mid was taken by “reelhugefish” for a win of $32,727.67.

Vanessa Rousso turned up at the SCOOP 20 final table. This $2,100 Zoom event ended up being won by “T 54 97s” for a very healthy $177,699.40. She seems to be on a nice SCOOP run with this being her second deep run so far this series

Got 9th in the @pokerstars SCOOP 2K Turbo Zoom…that’s two deep SCOOP cashes in two days…playing again tmrw!

— Vanessa Rousso (@VanessaRousso) May 18, 2013

The $215 SCOOP 20 Mid event was won by “andrekos0095″ for $83,834.91 while the Low was spilt in a four way deal, with “Rkdel” taking home the title and the watch to go with his $27,402.13.

Tomorrow we’ll be looking at the events from this week, and an update about the SCOOP leader boards.

Viktor started off his day with 14 hands of 6-Max FLO8, which only cost him $3. Considering how much of the day was spent at these tables, we’ll gloss over this, and concentrate on the first session that involved some real volume. This was a 84 hand session of $500/$1000 $30k Cap NLHE against “Trueteller”. Little is known about “Trueteller” but what is known is he was able to win $8,332 from Viktor in this session.

Next up was a quick 40 hand session of 6-Max PLO at the $500/$1000 $30k Cap tables, which earned Viktor a $25,594 profit. After this we saw Viktor have a 79 hand heads up session against Kyle “KPR16″ Ray at a FLO8 heads up table playing at the $2k/$4k levels.

The result went in Viktor direction, along with $104,975 of Ray’s money, taking his cumulative total for the day do far to $122,234.

At this point, Viktor jumped over to the 2-7TD tables, and over 252 hands racked up a $172,454 win against “Kagome Kagome.” over two 6-Max tables that looked decidedly empty with just these two players seated.

Viktor then got into the meat of his day, and was up against players including Gus Hansen, “SallyWoo,” Tom “durrrr” Dwan and Phil “OMGClayAiken” Galfond. These players, who make up some of the cream of the online poker world, were all sat at the FLO8 6-Max tables. Viktor sat for 1442 hands and even though he lost $177,771 at these tables, when he stood up from his last FLO8 action of the day, he was in profit overall to the tune of $116,920. We have some of the action in the video below.

With Viktor showing a profit for the day, PLO was next game of choice, and it was time for the regular head butting session against Ben “Bttech86″ Tollerene. This regular game between these two top class PLO players has seen more swings and roundabouts than a well travelled playground salesman, with both players having won over $1,000,000 from each other over a single day.

Today saw the two play over 931 hands, over three “Mini-Sessions.”

The first of these saw Viktor win out over 427 hands, taking $131,510 against Tollerene, starting the battle off with a big bang.

the next two mini sessions didn’t go as well for Viktor, as he lost them for $162,732 and $166,992 respectively. These two sessions are very similar, especially as they only had 271 and 233 hands respectively. Viktor ended up with a $198,214 loss to Tollerene, and we do have some of the capped hands below for your enjoyment.

The action against Tollerene brought Viktor’s day to a close, with a loss of $81,294 over a very respectable 2828 hands. This takes his yearly totals to $3,168,480. A total which, while still more than respectable, has been a lot bigger in recent history.

Yesterday was a day that saw Viktor Blom put in a lot of volume, and so nearly turned a profit. He was up before he sat down against Tollerene, and was even up after the first Mini Session. If the cards had fallen a little differently, Viktor may have made a profit. The really good thing about the day was Viktor didn’t spiral out of control, and generated some decent volume.

I’d put it down as being a good day at the tables, even if it did end without a profit, especially after the mess Sunday was for Viktor.

I really hope he is working on his Tilt Control and other parts of his Mental Game, as I’m sure that part of his overall poker game is what is costing him the most money.

FTR Quick Tip: Helping you plug leaks in 5 minutes or less.

Slowplaying allows you to get more value from your concealed monster hands. But slowplaying in the wrong situations can be very costly indeed. Use the ideas contained in this video to recognize the times when slowplaying is appropriate. When you’re playing no limit Hold’em cash game tables, slowplaying is a powerful tool to have in your poker-playing arsenal.

Discuss this video in our forums: http://www.flopturnriver.com/pokerforum/beginners-circle/%5bftr-quick-tip-008%5d-slowplaying-flopped-monsters-194667.html

FTR Exclusive Tournaments

We have the FTR Party Poker Monthly $5 on Saturday at 20:00 CET (14:00EST). The buy in is $5.50, and the prize pool has been juiced with an extra $600.

The password will be given out to Qualified Members about an hour before the event, and on our Facebook and Google+ pages just before the start of the event.

More info is available here

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Free $10 “Taster” still available for Full Tilt Poker

I really can’t believe we’re still offering this, and this deal is too good to hang around forever, but you can still get $10 free to try out Full Tilt Poker.

To claim it, click on the banner, or click here for more information.

So, that’s your lot from FTR this week, along with the video tutorials, the daily news updates, the forum packed full of information, and loads of other things. Head over to the forum post of you want to chat about the article.

I’m off to plan my assault on the WSOP.