Holiday $100k Live Blog

Posted by AlCantHang | Filed under Bloggers on the Rail

Today brings us the first Holiday $100k and I’m going to try something new and crazy. I will be attempting to live blog my trip through the 10,000 player field for the $100,000 prizepool. The structure is solid and deep. It should be an interesting tournament, the field is full and the waitlist is growing. We have several red letter pros in the field including fellow FTP blogger Michael Craig, Aaron Bartley, Lee Watkinson and Jon “Pearljammed” Turner.

Hop into the game, get on the waitlist, do whatever you need to do to play. I’ll be back at the start to begin the grueling job of live blogging, unless I crash out on the first hand. Then you are on your own.

Tournament: Holiday 100k
When: Saturday, December 27th at 15:15 ET
Buyin: 2,000 Full Tilt points
Prizepool: $100,000

13:00 - The tournament field is hovering right at the 10,000 player max, sometimes over, sometimes a waiting list. So what are waiting for? You can use those 2,000 points to play in a $100,000 tournament or you can buy yourself a FTP beanie cap, bandana for your dog or one of those stress balls from the FTP Store. I think the tournament is a better deal.

15:15 – The tournament kicks off with 10,000 players. We’ve been joined by FTP Pro Scott Fischman and a handful of others. I’m suprised at the number of players who unregistered at the last minute but it filled up as we got closer and a few poor souls never maid it off the waitlist. I’ve started out with a table of players that I don’t know. Not really suprising with the number of players.

15:25 – And that didn’t take long for me to go from player to Poker From the Rail yet again. I thought I’d outlast Michael Craig who flopped a set and lost to a turned flush leaving him with only 20 behind. But right after that I found KK and three bet preflop. EP player insta-pushed with 88. The picture below give the ugly story.

Click to enlarge

I did outlast Jon “Pearljammed” Turner though. It’s the little things.

15:41 – Quicker than thought possible we loss 10% of the field. 24 minutes from the time cards were in the air til we are down to 9,000 players. I suppose I shouldn’t say “we” since I am back on the rail where I belong.

Lee Watkinson was the second pro to exit stage right, everyone seems to be gunning for the red letter pros not realizing that no bounty exists.

Michael Craig has made a nice comeback. After losing a big hand early and going down to just 20 in chips, he back over the 2,000 starting stack. Click on the image below to see Michael’s big early loss.

16:00 -Top of the hour update and it only took another 20 minutes to get down to 8,000 players. The play is remarkable, if you can’t tell by just a few screenshots. At this rate the tournament will be complete before the Extra Holiday $100k, something I wasn’t sure of when the tournament started.

Update on the red letter pros:

Michael Craig is still healthy with over 3,000 although he didn’t get any favors when FTOPS V Event #5 winner Garrett “GBecks” Beckman was moved to his right. Scott Fischman is sitting with big amongst the pros with nearly 6,000. Ali Sarkeshik is the only other pro to drop and everyone else is piddling around average chip stack.

16:17 – At the first break there are just 7,056 players remaining from the initial 10,000. Average chipstack is just over 2,800 and all the remaining red letter pro are sitting comfortably with Stuart Paterson leading the way with 8,675.

This pace is amazing. I’m beginning to wonder just how deep the players sitting out will go.

16:45 – It seems a little crazy that we continue to lose a thousand players after roughly 20 minutes. You would expect the pace to slow down sooner or later but not since the first break. Things got rough for the pros as we lost a boatload. I was too busy keeping up with everything and missed Michael’s bustout.

We also lost Berry Johnston and Matt Vengrin.

Average chipstack is sitting around 3,500 with blinds at 60/120. Did I mention the structure for what is almost a freeroll? T2000 to start, blind levels at 10/20 with 12 minute levels. None too shappy.

17:00 – If it was possible, the pace has actually quickened. 20 minutes before the second break and we’ve lost over half the field. This is NOT a turbo. Maybe that should be the mantra of the remaining players. The average chipstack is sitting with over 26 big blinds. Ya’ll crazy.

Aaron Bartley took a nice sick beat when the chips went in pre-flop. He had the player covered but it was still a fine river beat. Click the image.

17:25 – The second break and we’re still cruising along at breakneck pace. We have 2,891 players remaining with an average chip stack of 6,918. Level 11 will have blinds at 120/240/25 ante. At this current clip, we are losing 711 players per level. I continue to beat myself up over my bad beat at the beginning of the tourney because this event is juicy. If you told me that we would make the money (top 1800) before the third break I would have called you loco.

Aaron Bartley took another hit, this time he was dominated pre-flop. Bizarre to see the best hand preflop hold up.

The remaining pros in the tournament:

Eddy Scharf – 22,660
Scott Fischman – 11,430
Marco Liesy – 2,340

18:00 – We have just 30 minutes to drop 70+ players to make the money before the 3rd break. I think you can lock that up unless the bubble goes longer than normal but I’ll set the over/under line at 2 for the number of hand-to-hands played before we’re in the money.

Marco Liesy was the next pro to get knocked out and while I was screenprinting his hand, Scott Fischman followed suit. Unfortunately the table immediately closed so I have no idea how it happened. I do know that he had a huge chipstack so it must have been sick. That leaves Eddy Sharf as our lone red pro representative in the tourney. Below I show yet another fine example of how the day is going. Marco Liesy loses to magic AQ.

18:10 – And the winner was under. By a ton. No sooner did I hit post on the latest update and we were down 70 players and looking at the bubble. The longest part was waiting for all the tables to finish up but it only took one hand. And we lost 16 (SIXTEEN!) players on the bubble hand. The unforunate bubbleboy was topvegas69. Standard tournament play sees the action slow down near the bubble and then a ton of bustouts as the shorties try to double up or go home.

This might get even more entertaining.

18:33 – The third break comes around and we’re well into the money. 1,139 players of the original 10,000 remain and Eddy Scharf continues to tread water. The lemur who took me out by overplaying 88 managed to donk his way to the money but was out not long after the bubble. The average chipstack is 17,559 and Level 16 will start with blinds at 400/800/100 ante.

The pace of lost players has slowed down just a bit and we’re just a couple hundred players away from the next bump on the pay scale.

I’ve signed up for Extra Holiday $100k at the same time tomorrow. You should get there quick since there are over 9,000 players already registered.

19:00 – The last of the red letter pros, Eddy Scharf has been eliminated and we’re looking at some lucky grinder picking up the $10,000 first place prize. It’s a pretty fluid situation with the bustouts and tables closing so I’m still having a hard time tracking who’s left in the event, we still have nearly 80 tables.

FTOPS winner Garrett “GBecks” Beckman is still hanging around with a healthly stack as well as poker blogger RecessRampage. The image below shows Eddy Scharf’s bustout hand, he was shortstacked after a couple big hands and forced to push his KQ into AQ.

I shall return after a short break while I change locations from my nice warm bunker to the friendlier confines of the local pub.

19:40 – I made it to my barstool with enough time to get a pint in front of me just at the 4th break came around. We lost blogger RecessRampage just as I arrived but Garrett “GBecks” Beckman is still kicking even though he took a hit right before the brea

Since the last break we’ve seen the money bubble burst, go through several levels of the pay table, and lose our last red letter pro. We’ve whittled the players down to under 400 and it will start to get easier to rail the action. Listed below are the top 10 chip stacks as we begin Level 21, blinds 1200/2400/300 ante. Average chip count is 51,413

1. Maxton Arrott – 196,245
2. Johnny Souless – 189,444
3. big bob wil – 186,069
4. werf – 177,094
5. iminluck – 172,782
6. FuNkyFrESH_MiKe – 161,178
7. zidanemoney – 156,101
8. THE GENIUS 115 – 143,864
9. PokerJoe1210 – 143,592
10. basir – 140,621

20:15 – As soon as it became easier to track the field I found blogger / Poker News writer / friend asphnxma was still alive deep into the tournament. Past tense. I’m starting to get the feeling I’m bad luck when railing players. It also wasn’t too tough to find him since he was sitting to the right of Garrett Beckman. Alas poor asphnxma could not arrange the shortstack suckout. Around 230 players remain.

20:45 – The last 4 levels saw us lose GBecks after a couple of tough hands. That gets us almost down to double digits players and things have definitely slowed down. 113 players remain and the next pay jump occurs at 90 players on 9 tables. I’m starting to get a better feel for the players left in the field and starting to research the potential final tablist.

Below is GBecks bust out hand and the top 10 heading into Level 26.

1. Johnny Souless – 545,912
2. ilmagowalter – 517,701
3. aron2007 – 459,602
4. BrownBella – 450,873
5. black Dog GER – 377,213
6. KinGani – 369,179
7. werf – 365,456
8. LinxTom – 360,860
9. iminluck – 360,286
10. OverdoeZ – 357,123

21:55 – This hour was certainly interesting and entertaining. We had our first player go over the 1million chip mark and finish the hour with 3 players over 1,000,000. They play I’ve witnessed and has definitely been questionable considering the amount of money on the line. Apparently I’ve been doing things wrong. Our chip leader OMGOLIVIAdelRio from Germany has the chip lead with 31 players and had a string of bizarre hands to get there. When I finally write that book about how to win donkaments, I will include the following hands:

32 players remain, average chip stack is 625,000 and blinds at Level 31 will be 12,000/24,000/3,000 ante. Top ten chip counts at the break.

1. OMGOLIVIAdelRiO – 2,357,511
2. Gromph – 1,872,016
3. aron2007 – 1,542,021
4. davidsthubbins – 944,795
5. el_Scheffe – 926,644
6. flowcontrol – 857,479
7. Kaskraker – 837,101
8. abruzzi1988 – 718,579
9. cashqueen88 – 702,172
10. dpottz – 693,846

23:00 – After nearly 8 hours of play in the Holiday $100k we are down to the final table. There continued to be some interesting play not the least of which was the leader at the last break, OMGOLIVIAdelRio, got his/her hand caught in the cookie jar a few too many times and wasn’t a factor going into the final 9.

It’s a international group that’s left to win the $10,000 first prize. We have players from Sweden, Netherlands, Canada, Germany, the UK and the US. Here is your chip count for as we play down to the champion.

1. aron2007 – 3,984,980
2. magicm20 – 3,050,632
3. el_Scheffe – 2,470,948
4. FuNkyFrESH_MiKe – 2,159,441
5. Gromph – 1,970,134
6. Kaskraker – 1,838,752
7. SHUPID – 1,758,175
8. pkoike – 1,539,715
9. LinxTom – 1,227,223

00:20 – And we finally have a Champion for the 2008 Holiday $100k. aron2007 from Sweden defeated el_Scheffe of Germany to take it down. It was a grueling 9 hour battle taking us from 10,000 players down the last player standing. Congrats to everyone who cashed and condolences to all those how took the horrid beats (my hand is in the air). Here are your final table payouts.

Don’t forget to sign up for the Extra Holiday $100k Sunday at the same time.

1. aron2007 – $10,000
2. el_Scheffe – $7,500
3. Gromph – $5,000
4. pkoike – $4,000
5. Kaskraker – $3,050
6. SHUPID – $2,500
7. LinxTom – $2,000
8. FuNkyFrESH_MiKe – $1,500
9. magicm20 – $1,000

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