All the talk was mainly surrounding a new face on High Stakes, ‘Gypsie Queen,’ as they made their debut last week. There was much speculation into who the new player actually was, as it’s not that often new faces are seen at these nosebleed stakes.
There was a massive wait list in the small hours of Wednesday morning to get in on the action with Gypsie Queen at the “Ivey Mix” and “Patrik’s Paradise” $500/1,000 HA tables on Full Tilt Poker. Several players normally not found at these stakes bought in for a short vs the unknown, including Cole South and David Benefield.
Many believed that we were witnessing the return of Cirque du Soleil founder Guy Laliberté to the high-stakes cash games, where he dropped over $17 million in 2008. Others speculated that it was former Full Tilt Pro David Benyamine, who had previously been playing under the handle “MR B 2 U SON.”
In this week’s action on Full Tilt Poker we saw the return of David Benyamine and a million-dollar upswing for Gus Hansen!
Benyamine was returning on his usual MR B 2 U SON handle, putting to rest some of the speculation that he was Gypsie Queen. Playing five-handed at the “Patrik’s Paradise” table, Benyamine won the largest pot of that night’s session. Tom Dwan opened $2,400 in the CO and Benyamine 3bet to $3,800 from the button. Dwan called and the flop came 7h5d2s. Dwan checked raised Benyamine’s c-bet of $9,000 to $36,100. Benyamine re-potted to $117,400, enough to put Dwan all-in. Dwan made the call for an additional $43,000 and showed AdKsKdTh for the overpair, while Benyamine revealed 8c6c5h2h for bottom two pair. The 2c on the turn filled Benyamine up and the 8s river made him an even higher boat. Benyamine took down the $168,000 pot with deuces full of eights.
The high-stakes swings continued to fall in Gus Hansen’s favor when he booked over a million in winnings within 24hours. Many in the High-Stakes community consider Gus to be a ‘fish’ or at least a catalyst for some of the biggest games online. But Hansen seems to be proving them all wrong, booking $4 million in 2009 so far.
In Friday night’s HU PLO games, Hansen took on everyone from Tom Dwan, to David Benyamine, to Ilari “Ziigmund” Sahamies. In one of his biggest pots of the session, Dwan opened for $3,000. Hansen reraised to $5,000 and Dwan called. Hansen c-bet $10,000 on a 7d3c5c flopp and Dwan called. The turn came 9d and Hansen bet $30,000. Dwan shoved for $91,478. Hansen made the call, showing KdKs8s6c for an overpair and an open-ended straight draw and Dwan showed Ah9h7s3h for two pair. The 4s came on the river made Hansen an eight-high straight raking in the 200k+ pot.
While Durrr might have lost that pot, he’s been trying to recoup some of his early 2009 losses. Last month Dwan was down nearly $4 million for the year, but over the last few weeks he has clawed back to $2.5 million in the red. Playing around 8,000 hands this week, Dwan picked up $427,000 in winnings in over 100 sessions.
This week’s winners: Gus Hansen (+$1.57 million), luckexpress10 (+$727,000), durrrr (+$427,000)
This week’s losers: tsarrast (-$844,000), Phil Ivey (-$826,000), Patrik Antonius (-$590,000)
Biggest 2009 winners overall (estimated): Gus Hansen (+$3.42 million), trex313 (+$3.09 million), Patrik Antonius (+$1.95 million)
Biggest 2009 losers overall (estimated): durrrr (-$2.48 million), Urindanger (-$1.87 million), MR B 2 U SON (-$1.05 million)