A Star-Studded Affair
2007-08-20 12:09:29
By: Gene Bromberg
Last night saw 909 runners in our $200,000 Sunday Guarantee Tournament, short of the record number of players we saw a few weeks ago. What the event lacked in quantity (and we would like our Sunday tournament to resemble a pulsating mosh pit) it made up for in quality, as some of the biggest names in online poker made deep runs.
Eric "Rizen" Lynch no doubt wishes his run had been just a wee bit deeper, as he finished in 106th place, just out of the money. Ryan "Daut44" Daut was the chip leader as we approached the bubble and finished in 29th place. And my least-favorite online poker superstar, Kevin "BeL0WaB0Ve" Saul went out 19th. What do I have against Mr. Saul? Well, you try typing "BeL0WaB0Ve" a half-dozen times and see how much YOU like it. I'm glad to see that he's having considerable success in live events, as it's much easier writing "Kevin Saul" than...than his other name.
Two other notable players made our final table last night--Faraz "The-Toilet" Jaka (now there's a cool name) and Sasha "bikocruz" Rosewood. And another player looked very comfortable seated at a UB final table--rps5000. He was our Perfect 10 Champion during the UltimateBet Online Championships And, of course, anyone who makes the final table of our $200,000 Sunday Gurantee automatically becomes a notable player:
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The-Toilet went out in 10th place, the unfortunately-named ron_mexico7 was eliminated eighth (if you're curious about the origin of his name I would advise you to use the Google). rps5000 was knocked out in 6th place and bikocruz in 3rd, leaving Roywing and T_Fund to battle it out for the title.
T_Fund had about a 2-1 chip lead going into heads-up play but Roywing immediately went on the offensive and seized control of the match and the chip lead. Both players played cautiously, making small preflop raises and avoiding big postflop confrontations. Very few hands were shown down during this time, but Roywing took down the majority of pots. Still, every time he got T_Fund down to around 500K he wasn't able to deliver that final blow.
T_Fund fought back until he had around 1 million to Roywing's 1.3 million when this hand developed. T_Fund raised to 95K and was called, and the flop came 9h-8s-3d. T-Fund bet 100,000 and Roywing check-raised to 250K. He was called, and when the 5c fell on the turn Roywing led out for 520,000. T_Fund moved all-in for his last 667K and the pot-committed Roywing called. He held the Js-10h for an open-ended straight-draw while T_Fund had Ah-8c for middle pair. After such patient play it was a bit surprising to see the two players risking it all with such modest hands, but such is the nature of tournament poker, especially once the blinds edge up and aggression takes on so much importance. Roywing had lots of outs, and one of them was the Qs, which fell on the river and gave him a straight, the victory, and the $45,000 first prize. The $26,500 T_Fund won for finishing as our runner-up should provide some small consolation for that most unwelcome Queen that cost him so dearly.
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