Blog - online tournament special/High Stakes Poker
Tuesday, 23 February 2010
Firstly, I must apologise. Legions of loyal Bluff Europe readers were left trembling and confused at their desktops when their daily dose of Matt Perry’s blog was not uploaded to the homepage. Fruitlessly they clicked, crying silent tears onto keyboards.
Well, I was going to have one. Honest. Thing is, it was going to be about the FTOPS Main Event and the record-breaking $4m guaranteed Sunday Million at PokerStars. However, when I had consumed my morning coffee-slash-cigarette and sat down to write before riding my massively cool motorcycle to Uni, the two immense online MTTs hadn’t actually finished.
So, to make it up to you – here are two blogs in one. Not only will I be endlessly wowing how PokerStars made a $7m tournament as Full Tilt offered $2.5m as well as their usual guarantees, but I will also talk about the latest episode of GSN’s High Stakes Poker. Lucky you!
So, the tournaments. Check this list of rich mofos out:
1. RichieRichZH (Zuerich) $1,141,510.31
2. lankeshwar (Northborough) $754,774.69
3. petinvest7 (sag) $506,366.00
4. lirarerik (swe) $282,118.20
5. WNYCEC (New York) $151,909.80
6. DerHenker666 (Münster) $86,805.60
7. Jaggy42 (Adelaide) $57,870.40
8. highplaya (Prairie du Sac) $43,402.80
9. Amoneymagnet (Bronx) $28,935.20
That is the final table for last Sunday’s PokerStars Sunday Million. Let’s put that in perspective. A couple of years ago, the total prize pool guarantee was $1,000,000. Hence the name. Now it’s first freakin’ place!
How incredible is that? The popularity of online poker is still there – that’s evidence of that. Forget not that at the same time PokerStars were running a $1m guaranteed Sunday Warm-Up and a host of other tournaments.
Oh, and Full Tilt not only had their usual $750k guaranteed but also a $2.5m main event to their FTOPS XV. Both of them surpassed the guarantees by quite some way. Online poker dying, my arse. I’ve started a thread in the forums about the scaremongering many do regarding the industry’s state of affairs. In my books, we’re going to do fine.
So, now that we’ve looked at the Internet let’s watch some TV. Season 6 of GSN’s High Stakes Poker continued on Sunday night with episode two – Phil Hellmuth had busted and Ivey was running the show.
I hate to say it, but yawn. I mean, don’t get me wrong, I still like it. In fact, last Monday I blogged about it merrily (click here for a refresher) and gave it the thumbs up.
However, the more astute of you will be able to tell that my thumbs up wasn’t a grinning double thumbs up. Now the second episode has aired I’m kind of doing that shakey-thumb thing where it could go either way. You know what I’m talking about.
It’s good. But…
You notice the lack of AJ Benza. So, so much. Gabe Kaplan, bless him, keeps coming out with his great little jokes and references but without AJ to fill in a gap with a retort, straight-man routine or just a laugh, it feels empty. So many times I heard a notable silence after Gabe. He’s doing his best, it just doesn’t work so well.
Kara Scott – no faults there, of course. I still like the post-hand interviews and the 30 Seconds With… section. The PokerStars-sponsored Did You Know? section is old hat to a poker trivia buff like myself but I see its merits.
Overall, it’s going down. But you know I’ll still be loading up GSN’s YouTube channel next Monday morning, desperate for my next fix.
That’s all from me, boys and girls – I’ll see you again on Wednesday, or you can catch me hovering around the Bluff Europe forums.