Deja Vu All Over Again
2007-05-07 11:35:42
By: Gene Bromberg
I know I'm stating the obvious, but reaching the final table of a massive online poker tournament ain't easy. It's a hard slog through through hundreds of players, surviving coin flips and dodging bad beats during hours of high-pressure play. You make a final table, you've accomplished something.
So how to describe what Loeppenthin pulled off last night during our $200,000 Guaranteed Tournament? You of course remember that name, because he reached the final table of last week's event, finishing third out of 934 entrants. And when our final table was assembled for last night's tournament, featuring our biggest Sunday night field ever (1008 players!)...there he was again.
; "finaltable5.6")
And, once again, he made it to the final three players, along with chipleader moseley9 and RML0422. The latter player fought his way back from a microstack thanks to three all-in hands he won against three different poker players. He won with K-J against moseley9's pocket nines, with pocket eights against Loeppenthin's A-Q, and with his stack revitalized he eliminated tigercat17 with KK against A-J.
After a run like that it almost seemed like Fate was providing a helping hand, and RML0422 want to be sure his run would be recorded for posterity. "If anyone from CardPlayer is watching this, my name is Ryan LeWinter" he posted in the chat. Well, Ryan, I was watching too.
Loeppenthin finished in 3rd place last week, and sadly he didn't improve this time around. After a flop of Ac-7c-5s Loeppenthin was check-raised by RML0422, and Loeppenthin decided to make his stand. But his A-2 was dominated by RML0422's A-K, and Loeppenthin went out in 3rd place. Two poker tournaments spaced seven days apart, 1942 players, two third-place finishes good for $35,942...that's a good week's work in anybody's book.
Down to heads up moseley9 had a bit less than a 2-1 chip lead over RML0422, and whatever fanciful thoughts one might have that Fate was on Ryan's side were shoved aside my moseley9's relentless big-stack bullying. Time and time again RML0422 was forced to give up pots in the face of an all-in raise, and before too long moseley9's aggression gave him an overwhelming chip lead. RML0422 finally found a hand to counter that aggression, calling yet another all-in with A-Q. Moseley9 held K-J, but when the flop came Qd-8d-2c it looked like we had ourselves a ballgame. The turn was an innocent 6h, reducing moseley9's hopes to three meager kings...and one of them, the king of clubs, fell on the river and dashed RML0422's hopes. For his 2nd-place finish Ryan "RML0422" LeWinter won $25,966, and as this week's champion moseley9 took home $44,352.
Another familiar name very nearly made last night's final table--Mark "P0kerH0" Kroon finished in 15th place for a $1411.20 payday. The rest of our final table was paid out like this:
- 3rd: Loeppenthin $17,942.40
- 4th: tigercat17 $13,104.00
- 5th: TheNateDogg3 $10,584.00
- 6th: mhrep $8,467.20
- 7th: dannysek $6,451.20
- 8th: TulsaJ $4,536.00
- 9th: m0nr0e360 $3,427.20
- 10th: shinytop $2,016.00
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