Big Money Sunday – October 18th

Posted by AlCantHang | Filed under Bloggers on the Rail

Vivek Rajkumar at the 2008 WPT Borgata Poker Open

It was one of the rare Big Money Sundays where the blog post almost writes itself. This week brought the monthly upgrade from the $750 Guarantee to the cool $1 Million Guarantee with a slightly smaller field and hugely larger prizepool. Big names were running deep all across the major tournaments and my little laptop screen was full of different tables as I attempted to capture some of the action.

My usual routine when keeping an eye on these tournaments is start at the beginning and move my way towards the big one, checking for red letter pros and big online runners, always looking for notables. When I took a quick look at the $1 Million Guarantee I saw two Full Tilt pros sitting together deep in the tournament. Both Vivek Rajkumar and Michael Craig (fresh off my having fun at his expense last week) were sitting together at one of the few remaining tables. Unfortunately Mister Craig busted out shortly after began railing him, getting out pipped when he 77 ran into 88 for 52nd place. Rajkumar, on the other hand, was a completely different story.

Once the field was down near 3 tables he picked up the lead and rarely released it. He started the final table with the chip lead and I sent an IM message to a friend saying “Vivek is running over the final table, he’ll have to be unlucky to lose.” I saw the exact same action in person when he took down the 2008 WPT Borgata Poker Open championship. He put his foot on their throat with constant pressure and never let up. In the end he chopped the prizepool heads up and took down the title for literally 1 penny short of $180,000. It was an impressive showing by the Full Tilt pro who also cashed in the Sunday Brawl. Also running deep in the $1 Million Guarantee were former FTOPS winner Jake “psutennis11” Toole, Brian Hastings, Phil “USCphildo” Collins, Brian “SN8WMAN” Hawkins, and Alex “AJKHoosier1” Kamberis.
All finishing in the top 100.

I also spent quite awhile railing the final few tables of the Sunday Mulligan that saw Matt “All In At 420″ Stout make a final table push along with FTOPS runner up Austin “The Quietwinner” McCormick, Dan “USCswimmer” White, Bruce “Not Michael” Buffer, and Rick “MookieBlaylock1″ Whittington. I have to give props to MookieBlaylock1 since he’s based in my home neighborhood. Stout battled the entire final table, eventually moving his way up into a 3rd place chip stack but ran into a big blind versus blind hand. His JackAce was no good against the small blind’s KQ. That put a hurt on his chances and the JackAce was his final undoing when it ran smack into Kings.

Matt Stout is a ton of fun, if you get a chance you should read his blog post about getting berated at the Borgata in a preliminary event. I was one of the bloggers who witnessed the hand and this guy would not let it go. Just laying into Stout while he calming stacked the poor Jersey gentleman’s chips. He got “scumbagged”.

Those were the two really interesting developments during the evening, the Brawl moved along quickly and I continue to only throw a mildly amused eye towards the $200k Double Deuce. Yet another situation developed as they moved towards the final table that me shaking my head in disbelief. Simple question for every poker player on the planet, except for maybe this one. You need to call here with any two cards.

It was a 5-handed table just short of the final 9 players. With blinds at 50k/100k/10k ante it folded around to totsev on the button who pushed for 1,085,351. slikone is the chip leader sitting in the small blind and flat calls the all-in bet. JetYourChips in the big blind reshoves for 1,508,393. How can a player possibly fold getting near 10 to 1 with over a million already invested? Here’s the math, slikeone only needed to call 423,042 to win a 4,152,137 pot. 9.8 to 1 odds with any two cards with a chance to knock out two players and hit the final table with a much larger chip lead. Needless to say, slikone folded or I wouldn’t be writing this. Don’t believe my account, here’s the screenprint before he folded. Don’t ask me why I grabbed it then, I just had a feeling he was going to fold.

Click to enlarge

I felt pretty confident in my prediction that slikone was not going to win this tournament even with the chip lead. And I was correct.

You can find final table numbers and results after the jump:

The Sunday Brawl
Entrants: 2,606
Prizepool: $521,200
First place: $105,803.60

pez102 – 2,227,216
YrrsiN – 962,485
jse81 – 956,749
Irv Gotti – 745,998
DonT11 – 693,960
Vluff S4S – 669,629
XXJNRXX – 666,256
Sammy Siam A – 475,449
chinchati27 – 420,258

1st – pez102 – $105,803.60
2nd – YrrsiN – $68,277.20
3rd – XXJNRXX – $50,556.40
4th – DonT11 – $38,047.60
5th – Sammy Slam A – $26,581.20
6th – jse81 – $17,720.80
7th – Vluff S4S – $11,987.60
8th – Irv Gotti – $8,339.20
9th – chinchat27 – $6,254.40

The $200k Double Deuce
Entrants: 10,718
Prizepool: $214,360
First place: $33,225.80

slikone – 8,379,095
Chezebby – 5,856,510
Henrich1 – 4,619,988
ppucca – 4,083,276
JetYourChips – 3,649,095
PageUpV – 2,731,944
CEJM 2008 – 2,321,396
woodpigeon – 1,968,773
Tommy Cash 99 – 901,883

1st and 2nd made a deal:

1st – ppucca – $28,947.69
2nd – Chezebby – $26,785.91
3rd – JetYourChips – $15,862.64
4th – silkone – $11,403.95
5th – CEJM 2008 – $8,360.04
6th – Henrich1 – $6,002.08
7th – PageUpV – $4,287.20
8th – woodpigeon – $3,065.35
9th – Tommy Cash 99 – $2,167.18

$1 Million Guarantee
Entrants: 2,326
Prizepool: $1,163,000
First Place: $213,352.35

Vivek Rajkumar – 2,226,316
aheggem – 1,759,146
krasark – 1,635,222
tyme2gab0l111 – 1,457,196
bdubs3737 – 1,249,503
Jake “psutennis11” Toole – 966,264
bedias – 952,562
thugmonkeymkr – 854,647
smokrokbyflock – 529,144

1st – Vivek Rajkumar – $179,999.99
2nd – krasark – $164,306.16
3rd – bdubs3737 – $85,713.10
4th – tyme2gamb0l111 – $68,384.40
5th – aheggem – $51,753.50
6th – bedias – $37,216.00
7th – thugmonkeymkr – $27,330.50
8th – smokrokbyflock – $21,399.20
9th – Jake “psutennis11” Toole – $16,282.00

The Sunday Mulligan
Entrants: 1,282
Prizepool: $256,400
First place: $56,408

leguito – 627,680
kvista – 521,077
AKat11 – 517,515
MrQuist – 511,628
Big Dann – 494,561
The_End_15 – 354,729
Timvd20 – 318,793
Matt “All In At 420″ Stout – 318,535
WhoIsThisGuy – 181,482

1st – kvista – $56,408.00
2nd – AKat11 – $35,896.00
3rd – leguito – $26,409.20
4th – The_End_15 – $20,832.50
5th – WhoIsThisGuy – $16,025.00
6th – MrQuist – $11,538.00
7th – Matt “All In At 420″ Stout – $7,692.00
8th – Big Dann – $5,769.00
9th – Timvd20 – $4,102.40

Popularity: 1% [?]