Poker From The Rail» Jon Turner

2009 World Series of Poker – Main Event Day 1a Pictures

AlCantHang — Sat, 04 Jul 2009 22:38:50 +0000

Perry Friedman rocks the Full Tilt Poker “grill” to go with his corn rows

I’ve generally stuck to doing a “Week in Pictures” during the preliminary events of the WSOP but I now realize that I’ll be getting more photos than I know what to do with now that we’ve come to the Main Event. So now we’re going to switch up to daily posts as long as we continue to get quality images.

Day 1a started with 1,116 and finished with 821 players. A good number of Team Full Tilt survived to see Day 2.

More photos after the jump:

Post from: Poker From The Rail

2009 World Series of Poker – Main Event Day 1a Pictures

2009 World Series of Poker – Week 3 in Pictures

AlCantHang — Fri, 19 Jun 2009 17:55:34 +0000

It was another great week for Team Full Tilt. Final tables were populated with players patched up in FTP gear and make a lot of noise. Three bracelets would be brought into the fold by Phil Ivey, Nick Schulman and Greg “FBT” Mueller. If the rest of the poker world wants to catch up, they better start working hard.

It’s Friday so that means it’s time for the Week in Pictures. These are just some of the collection that did not make any posts during the week but are worthy of your time

View of the final table of Event #27 Pot Limit Omaha/8. Three Full Tilt members were present but Roland De Wolfe would defeat Omaha-guru Scott Clements for the title.

More pictures after the jump:

Perry Friedman and John Juanda would find themselves seated next to each other to start the $3,000 H.O.R.S.E. Event #21. Juanda and Ivey have the unofficial lead in the massage therapist challenge. Neither Juanda or Friedman would cash in this event. Gavin Smith would go the furthest for Team Full Tilt just missing the final table. Blogger CK31 would take her Battle of the Blogger tournament prize and ride it to a 39th place finish in the money.

Lee Watkinson playing in Event #24. One of the $1,500 No Limit Hold’em tournaments where the big guns are generally looking to double up or prepare for the big 5pm game. Watkinson has one cash during the 2009 WSOP for just over $22,000.

Jon “Pearljammer” Turner starting in the $2,500 Omaha/Stud Hi-Low tournament. Turner would make the final table which was loaded with names like Phil Ivey, Carlos Mortensen, and Dutch Boyd. Ivey would get the glory at the end of the day winning his 2nd WSOP bracelet in 2009.

Richard “Quiet Lion” Brodie did not make his appearance at the 2009 World Series of Poker until early this week. Wasting very little time, he entered the $1,500 Limit Hold’em Event #26 and came just one spot from making his first WSOP final table. He finished 10th for a cool $13,000 and change.

At yet another Full Tilt stacked final table, Roland De Wolfe overcame all others including Scott Clements (above) and Andy Black. It always seems Clements is ready to come over the table and take your chips personally. De Wolfe appears to be eyeing up the bracelet, which he would collect at the end of the tournament.

Kelly Kim plays in a $1,500 No Limit Hold’em tournament (Event #28). Kim would cash in the tournament, his first cash since finishing 8th in the 2008 World Series of Poker Main Event.

Coming into the 2009 World Series of Poker many thought this would be the year Vivek Rajkumar made a huge splash, your humble author included. Rajkumar has collected nearly $2,000,000 in tournament earnings since September. Unfortunately Rajkumar has found himself on the wrong end of coolers and bad beats with no cashes in the series so far this year.

Hendon Mobster Ross Boatman made the $2,500 Pot Limit Omaha final table as well as John Juanda. Boatman started with the chip lead but would leave the tournament is 4th place. Also in the picture is eventual winner J.C. Tran.

French favorite Fabrice Soulier playing in the $1,500 H.O.R.S.E. tournament. Soulier would go on to make the final table and finish in 7th. To date he has 5 cashes during the 2009 World Series of Poker. Blogger Lana “LJ” Maier would make another deep run and represent well. She finished just short of the final table.

Team Full Tilt members Josh Arieh and Steve Zolotow playing in the $10,000 Limit Hold’em World Championship. The tournament would eventually be won by fellow Team Full Tilt member Greg “FBT” Mueller after a long, grueling final table.

Allen Cunningham is another Full Tilt pro who made a late appearance at the series this year. He is playing in Event #34 $1,500 No Limit Hold’em tournament which he would go on to finish in the money.

Nick Schulman considers his action during the No Limit Deuce to Seven Draw World Championship final table. Schulman would go on to win after handling a very tough table that included John Juanda, David Benyamine, Michael Binger, Archie Karas and Ville Wahlbeck.

Post from: Poker From The Rail

2009 World Series of Poker – Week 3 in Pictures

2009 World Series of Poker Day 18 – Seat Open!

AlCantHang — Sat, 13 Jun 2009 17:42:12 +0000

Jon “Pearljammed” Turner leads Event #25 at the 2009 World Series of Poker
Photo credit: IMPDI

I’m running out of terms and having trouble thinking of a new way to describe what happens during the weekend $1,500 No Limit Hold’em events. How many times over seven weeks can I use the terms donkey, lemur, pushmonkey, etc? I may have to start a contest to keep my content and vocabulary up to date. “Seat Open!” will be the call of the day.

Today’s noon event will draw near 3,000 players and I ran into every single one of them this morning. My standard procedure is to be firmly planted in my media row seat by no later the 10:30am. It’s quiet in the Amazon Room and I can get more work done before I hit the tournament floor. Today I did not get to the hallowed halls until just before noon, found myself swimming against a constant stream of weekend warriors pushing their way into their respective rooms to see how fast they can dust off 4500 in chips.

My plan is to watch the finals of the Omaha/Stud Hi-Lo tournament where Full Tilt is well represented. Phil Ivey and Steve Wong are alive and Jon “Pearljammed” Turner leads the final 14 players in the tournament. Also playing are Carlos Mortensen, Dutch Boyd and Chad Brown. They will play down to a winner later today with first place taking home over $220,000 plus the bracelet.

There are also two other non-NLHE events to keep my attention. The field for the Limit Hold’em event was smaller than your average push/pray festival and there are some sharp people at the top heading into Day 2. Richard “Quiet Lion” Brodie, Bill Chen, Justin Bonomo and Noah Boeken are just a few in the top 10.

Only 198 registered for the $5,000 Pot Limit Omaha/8 tournament which usually means it’s easier to locate the bracelets in the event. 59 players return and attempt to make tomorrow’s final table. If my fuzzy memory is correct, the only events to stick to the schedule have been Pot Limit tournaments. Three of the top 10 will be sporting Full Tilt gear. Roland De Wolfe, Richard Ashby and Andy Black are just a few of the FTP pros still in contention.

Finally, the fun 5pm tournament. It will be my first time covering a live Heads Up tournament. Spread throughout the Amazon, Brasilia, and Miranda rooms will be the 256 players who drop $10,000 on the latest “World Championship”. They’ll play two heads up matches today bringing the field down to 64 at the end of the day. The field is capped at 256 and spots were nearly full at the start of the day.

I’ll need to sharpen my elbows to make it through the railbirds but I’m a veteran now.

Chip counts of the restarts after the jump.

Gavin Smith cashed in the H.O.R.S.E. event saving him from chopping off his hair
Photo credit: IMPDI

Event #24 No Limit Hold’em
Buyin: $1,500
Number of Entries: 2,506
Net Prize Pool: $3,420,690
First Place Prize: $607,256
Total Spots Paid Out: 270
Players Remaining: 19

1	Andy Seth	1,407,000
2	Alan Jaffray	1,193,000
3	Glenn Mccaffrey	737,000
4	Roberto Truijers	681,000
5	Dean Hamrick	629,000
6	Benny Champlin	623,000
7	Stuart Marshak	616,000
8	David Lerman	589,000
9	Brian Fitzpatrick	582,000
10	Andrew Seden	575,000
11	Michael Greco	546,000
12	Souvanh Vilayvanh	523,000
13	Ernst Hermans	518,000
14	Gualter Santos	512,000
15	Mihai Manole	436,000
16	Pete Vilandos	325,000
17	Roberto Correa	309,000
18	Ali Davoudi	254,000
19	Chris Sparks	202,000

Event #25 Omaha/Seven Card Stud Hi-Low 8 or Better
Buyin: $2,500
Number of Entries: 376
Net Prize Pool: $864,800
First Place Prize: $220,538
Total Spots Paid Out: 40
Players Remaining: 14

1	Jon Turner	465,000
2	Carlos Mortensen	328,000
3	Blair Rodman	290,000
4	Dutch Boyd	236,000
5	Steve Wong	226,000
6	Frank Debus	218,000
7	Eric Buchman	213,000
8	Matt Kelly	184,000
9	Phil Ivey	161,000
10	Peter Gelencser	156,000
11	Tom Koral	139,000
12	Ming Lee	97,000
13	Mark Scott	95,000
14	Chad Brown	23,000

Event #26 Limit Hold’em
Buyin: $1,500
Number of Entries: 643
Net Prize Pool: $877,695
First Place Prize: $197,509
Total Spots Paid Out: 63
Players Remaining: 124

Top 50 chipstacks:

1	Von Halle, Jan	68,300
2	Kulicki, Dominik	61,100
3	Chen, Bill	60,600
4	Keikoan, Matt	48,300
5	Levine, Josh	47,800
6	Porter, Rep	44,900
7	Bonomo, Justin	44,800
8	Bromberg, Corey	43,700
9	Boeken, Noah	42,400
10	Brodie, Richard	41,500
11	Seber, Bill	40,800
12	Eichel, William	40,100
13	Harris, Nikki	39,400
14	Darden, Paul	39,300
15	Yek, Kuong	38,100
16	Burkart, Alexander	38,100
17	Damany, Paul	37,700
18	Cordone, Joseph	37,700
19	Blanco, Christiano	37,400
20	Hart, Daniel	37,200
21	Glickstein, Rich	37,200
22	Engelbert, Glenn D.	37,000
23	Lackner, Daniel	36,700
24	Buckley, Jim	36,000
25	Cicconi, Guy	35,900
26	Arvanetes, Demetrios	35,100
27	Zimmerman, John	34,900
28	Clemento, Jack	34,300
29	Rae, William	34,100
30	Devonshire, Bryan	34,100
31	Ho, Tam	33,500
32	Yu, Benjamin	32,700
33	Kerstine, Andrew	32,700
34	Ellis, Michael	32,600
35	Greenstein, Barry	32,200
36	Nack, Reinhard	31,200
37	Price, Craig	31,000
38	Neilan, Craig	30,900
39	Ramdin, Annand	30,900
40	Bailey, Earle	29,800
41	Olson, David	29,300
42	Dong, Zelong	29,200
43	Minnullin, Albert	28,100
44	DeFusco, Marc	27,200
45	McCarrel, Casey	27,200
46	DeNiro, Joe	27,000
47	Morgan, Douglas	26,500
48	Cornell, Tyler	26,100
49	Smith, Jason	25,900
50	Svendsen, Katja Sophie	25,200

Event #27 Pot Limit Omaha/8
Buyin: $5,000
Number of Entries: 198
Net Prize Pool: $930,600
First Place Prize: $246,616
Total Spots Paid Out: 18
Players Remaining: 59

1	Newitt, J.D.	185,900
2	Ramirez III, Sergio	134,200
3	DeWolfe, Roland	130,800
4	Filippi, Amnon	128,100
5	Tang, Benjamin	123,800
6	Ashby, Richard	122,300
7	Lellouche, Anthony	100,100
8	Black, Andrew	97,000
9	Yancik, Stewart	95,300
10	Ruiz II, Armando	92,600
11	Lisandro, Jeff	92,000
12	Kirill, Rabtsov	86,200
13	Negreanu, Daniel	78,300
14	Baxter, Mike	76,900
15	Gabor, Fabian	70,600
16	Racener, John	66,100
17	Bartlog, Mark	63,000
18	Foulias, Andreas	59,800
19	Clements, Scott	58,800
20	Isaia, Alessio	57,000
21	Danzer, George	54,400
22	Bell, Chris	51,600
23	Shulman, Barry	49,800
24	Elezra, Eli	47,300
25	Matusow, Mike	46,200
26	Corpuz, Martin	43,300
27	Ivey, Phil	40,800
28	Bloch, Andy	36,100
29	Campbell, Robert	35,900
30	Giannokostas, Gregory	35,600
31	Friedman, Patri	33,600
32	Tam, Kenny	32,300
33	Ozkan, Ender	31,500
34	Krueger, Quentin	31,000
35	Kravchenko, Alex	30,900
36	Beevers, Joe	30,700
37	Richey, Brett	29,100
38	John, David	26,600
39	Freedman, Bruce H.	26,300
40	Mercier, Jason	25,000
41	Sexton, Mike	25,000
42	Reslock, Chris	23,700
43	Singer, Nathan	23,700
44	Guth, John	23,300
45	Petersen, Kevin	22,500
46	Solomon, Michael	20,000
47	Longfellow, Karen	18,400
48	Murphy, Kevin	18,300
49	Cousineau, Tony	18,000
50	Binger, Michael	17,700
51	Rapoport, Al	17,000
52	Singletary, Matthew	16,200
53	Appleman, Mickey	14,000
54	Wiesner, Nathan	13,900
55	Boatman, Ross	11,000
56	Ladowsky, Stephen	8,800
57	Kassin, Charles	7,600
58	Gould, Alan	7,500
59	Lefkowitz, Matt	6,200

Post from: Poker From The Rail

2009 World Series of Poker Day 18 – Seat Open!

2009 Borgata Winter Poker Open

Heads Up: Steve Zolotow Versus Jon Turner

One Angry Monkey — Thu, 10 Jul 2008 09:33:25 +0000

Welcome back for another round of action in the Full Tilt Poker Heads-Up Challenge, where we take 64 of our top pros and face them off one by one to determine who’s the top dog of them all. This week’s match is our final six seed versus 13 seed showdown, with Steve “Fly like an eagle” Zolotow taking on Jon “Thank god my favorite band isn’t Limp Bizkit” Turner. Today’s match will once again be slightly abbreviated due to prior engagements (i.e. getting drunk); we’ll try our best to return to our regularly scheduled programming as soon as possible. Let’s get this party started:

Category	Steve Zolotow	Jon Turner	Survey Says
Career Earnings	More than $1.7 million	Just under $400K (live tournaments only)	This isn’t quite fair, since according to the bio up on Full Tilt, Turner has made more than a million in online tournaments. But we can’t start amending meaningless rules at this stage of the game; it just wouldn’t be fair to those who’ve already been hampered by this phenomenon. Stevie Z takes down the first category and is off to the early lead.
Major Titles	Two WSOP bracelets	None	Turner is such a good tourney player that I have no doubts he’ll top Zolotow’s WSOP bracelet total one of these days. Until then, this one has to go to big Z. He leads 2-0.
Tournament Play	Established tournament veteran.	Hot shot young gun looking to take the tourney circuit by force.	This one’s really a tough call. I’d usually go with the established vet over the young gun on this one, but Turner has so much talent and plays a much tighter style than most of his online brethren I just feel like he’s going to do some really big things one day. So I’m going to pull an about face here and go with my instinct, which is telling me Turner is the guy here. The score now stands at 2-1 in favor of Steve.
Cash Game Play	Born and raised on cash game play and honed his skills at the world-famous Mayfair Club.	Not known as much of a cash game guy, but I’m sure he still holds his own.	It’s a funny thing, with most of these old pro versus young pro matches I’ve found that the old pro is a better tourney player while the young gun is a better cash game guy. But that’s clearly not the case here. Zolotow is a guy who honed his chops playing in the cash games, while Turner is more or less a straight tourney grinder. Life can be a funny, funny thing – oh well. You look for the patterns, think you find them, and as soon as you do they’re gone. Wacky! At any rate, this round goes to Z – he leads 3-1.
Playing Style	Old school TAG	New school TAG	Turner is an anomaly in that not too many big time online guys have cultivated a successful tight aggressive (TAG) style on their way to the top. And while these two TAG-tards might approach the game in a similar manner, I’m still more liable to go with the online guy on this one (if only to keep this a close match). Let’s give this one to Turner and hope he can make a real match out of this.
Nickname	Stevie Z, or The Bald Eagle (my preference)	PearlJammed	Talk about something being over before it even started. I mean, it’s cool that Turner’s nickname (and online handle) stems from his love of the band Pearl Jam (those of evil gnome, butt on fries fame), but come on – The Bald Eagle? Classic, just absolutely a gem. I’d give anything to have a nickname as cool as that. “Hey You” seems to be catching on, but that’s really not by my choice. At any rate, this one goes to Steve, who has effectively sealed a victory in this match and leads 4-2.
Outside Poker	Not too much, although he does own several bars across the country.	Also not too much. Who needs a life when poker provides so much pleasure?	You gotta hand it to these hardcore poker players; they sure are committed to their craft (and not much else). This category has to go to The Bald Eagle though; if there’s one thing America needs, its more places to get hammered.

So there you have it, Zolotow takes down Turner by a score of 5-2. This match feels like it should’ve had a closer final score, but hey, those are the breaks. Check back next week for more madness and mayhem as we continue the march from 64 players all the way down to one.

Post from: Poker From The Rail

Heads Up: Steve Zolotow Versus Jon Turner