Yorky Pud

One area that many poker players struggle with is playing against an aggressive opponent who has position on them. For the most part good players try to avoid these situations but sometimes they cannot be avoided and the player just has to grit their teeth and get on with the hand.

A common scenario is for a player to raise preflop and then be called by an aggressive villain in a later position, the player then flops top pair and does not really know how to proceed. One of the reasons they struggle in this situation is that they fail to plan ahead in the hand and they are stuck in their ways when it comes to bet sizing.

There was a hand I played recently that fits the above description exactly and by deviating from my usual line I managed to make life a little easier on myself and I scooped the pot. Come play the hand with me. We are playing in a six-handed No Limit Hold'em cash game and from under the gun we are dealt AcTc and we raise it up 3.5 times the big blind to $1.75, our standard raise in this game. Everyone folds to the button, a pretty solid player who is aggressive both preflop and post-flop who was playing a similar style to me and is running with Holdem Manager stats of 28/26/4, and he opts to just call. The small blind, a total fish, calls and the big blind folds.

The Ts-7d-6d flop is not the best flop for our hand but we probably do have the best hand. The small blind checks and now this is where we have to think about out options. Checking, in my opinion, is out of the question as we will have to call the button's inevitable bet and we will not have any extra information about our hand. Anyone contemplating folding wants shooting so we are left with betting. But how much to bet? At NL50 if we make our standard 1/2 to 2/3 pot sized continuation bet the aggressive button is going to raise us with his entire range, that is all of his draws, all of his made hands and also some random bluffs a large percentage of the time and we are then in a really tricky spot. However, if we bet the pot or even over-bet the pot then we will fold out all of his bluffs, some of his drawing hands and he will only call with his weaker made hands, his stronger draws and only raise his really big hands. If we bet $7 into the $5.75 pot and he comes over the top we can let go of our top pair. We actually bet $7.50, the button calls and the fishy small blind folds.

The turn was 6c and there is no way villain has a six in his range unless he has specifically 66 or he has decided to call preflop with 76 and if he has these hands then fair play to him. Even aggressive villains generally will not raise on this board unless they have us beaten so ideally we want to bet an amount that he will continue to call with his drawing hands and hands such as QT or JT but also so he will raise us if he has us beaten. With $20.75 in the pot I fired a bet of $12.25 and villain made the call.

The river was the 4s which is as blank as we are going to get and does not hit any of villain's range. I really do not see him getting to the river with 53 even if it was 5d3d. Most of the time villain has a busted flush draw here so is not going to call a bet on the river. However, as he is aggressive there is a chance that if we check he could take a stab at the pot so check-calling is a play we could employ here and one that I did. Unfortunately for us villain did not take the bait and he checked behind and mucked Td9d.

In the hand villain flopped top pair with a flush draw and a gutshot straight-flush draw to boot so I was very surprised not to see him show more aggression in the hand but it is possible that the over-bet on the flop slowed him down a little. It is possible that he put us on a set or something like AdKd  (against 66,77,TT,AdKd and AdQd he only had 42% equity) and was either hoping his ten was good or to his that miracle 8d. Thinking about the hand now, I believe if the turn had not paired villain would have certainly bet when checked to on the river and maybe even have called a bet there.

By changing out bet sizing here we won a decent pot without being put under too much pressure, if any. Whenever you enter a hand you should always have a plan of what you want to happen and an idea of how to make that happen. Being out of position is rarely much fun but with some planning it does not always have to be a nightmare.

Over the past couple of days I have been playing some Pot Limit Omaha cash games on Betfair Poker and I have really enjoyed myself, despite the fact my profits have been up and down like a bride's nightie.

My little grindfest started off on Saturday night when I was playing some $0.15/$0.30 No Limit Hold'em cash games and a mixture of running bad and making a few poor plays cost me nearly two stacks. I just wasn't feeling the love for NLHE so jumped into some PLO games to see how they went and I am glad I did as I have been bitten by the Omaha bug!

That first session I played 372 hands and won $6.75 (playing $0.10/$0.10 blinds) and there was nothing much to write home about, although one player called 777Sasha777 called me a “complete donk” after this hand, which I don't think I played too badly to be honest. In fact I think if anything he was the donk but what do I know? Ironically, I clashed with the bad tempered git yesterday where I played a hand really badly and he again referred to my donkey qualities.

Yesterday's session was the longest I have played in quite a while with me logging a total of 1,009 hands over a 280 minute spell and at one point it looked like a solid brag of winning six buy-ins was on the cards but I ultimately only one two-thirds of one by the time I had logged off for the day. There was a mixture of me getting tired, running into some quite unlikely hands and also being in some cooler situations that saw my profits plummet. Still, a win is a win and think of all that lovely “valueback” next week or whenever it gets paid out nowadays.

In total so far I have played 1,381 hands of PLO10 and won $11.58 or 8.39bb/100 for those who are that way inclined. Whilst I will hardly be retiring just yet it is good to get some profit on the board early on. My profits would also be higher if it were not for my curious nature and the fact I am trying to learn this game. I read somewhere about a cash game player, who I cannot remember for the life of me, who said that when he/she was learning as much about the game as they could they would always call instead of fold if a decision was close so I have been doing just that and it has been interesting to say the least. It has cost me money but I see it as paying for an education and I might as well do it at these stakes than when I am eventually playing higher up.

I think that's about it for now to be honest regarding online poker anyway. I'll try and log a few more hands in August and see what happens, so far it has been fun but you know me, I'll probably go on a downswing or get bored and you'll find me playing Five Card Draw or something! Live pokerwise I will be travelling to France on September 4 for the WPT Grand Prix de Paris as a live reporter for the World Poker Tour site. I'll be there until the 12th and this will be my humble abode whilst I am out there, I've certainly stayed in worse! Then I will be back home for 10-11 days before I jet off to Malta for WPT Malta which should be pretty cool. It looks like a steady stream of reporting work from the World Poker Tour so I am certainly not complaining about life at the moment!

Until next time, thanks for reading and best of luck at the tables!

Betfair recently announced the schedule for the eagerly anticipated Betfair Poker LIVE! Tour and along with the great destinations it was also revealed that the Man Event's on this season's tour are going to be played as a bounty tournament. Bounty tournaments have a slightly different dynamic to a standard poker tournament so I thought it would be a good idea to highlight some of the differences here.

The bounty element adds a touch of fun and increases a player's chance of walking away with something to show for their money but try not to get distracted by the fact there are bounties on the heads of your opponents. With the bounties only being $100 they are not worth deviating from optimal strategy from than say if the bounties were $500 each. Although $100 would be welcomed by the majority of players, going out of your way to pick up a bounty by making plays that could jeopardise the chance of winning the entire tournament is ridiculous! You will find that some players will go all out in order to win a bounty but you should try to stick to your usual game and treat the bounties as a potential bonus and nothing more.

Being the short stack in bounty tournaments is an even tougher ride than a standard tournament due to the fact people are financially rewarded by your demise. As a result you should try to keep above the average stack size so that your opponents do not target you and try to take your bounty.  Normal tournament strategy dictates a player should start to move all in or fold when they have 10-15 big blinds in their stack but in a bounty tournament these size bets will be called so it pays to tighten up and wait for more premium hands, so dropping down to 6-8 big blinds is not horrendously bad if it gives you chance to pick up a premium hand rather than shoving any two cards. On the flip side of the coin, having a short stack on your table can lead to some profitable re-steal plays once the short stack has entered the pot. Due to them being worth $100 to anyone who eliminates them you will see people trying to frequently trying to isolate the short stacks, which means there will be plenty of opportunity to re-isolate these players and pick up valuable chips.

The bounty element of the Betfair Poker LIVE! Main Events should attract some weaker players who will see them as a fun day out rather than a serious poker tournament and, as mentioned, players who see the bounties as being the be all and end all. Take advantage of these weak players but remember at all times that out of the $600 that goes into the prizepool only a sixth of it is awarded in bounties, which means there is a lot of money to play for that is awarded in actual prizes.

Ever since the full details of the Jose Macedo scamming scandal came to light the online poker community has been asking questions of the management of Lock Poker site, the site that took the decision to sponsor and then fire the “Portuguese Poker Prodigy.”

Like many online poker sites that have faced scandals in the past, such as Ultimate Bet and the now defunct Full Tilt Poker, the management team had remained completely silent at a time when the poker playing public deserved answers. Amongst the questions the community wants answers for include how did a player, now known to be Haseeb Qureshi, manage to not only deposit at least $100,000 into a newly formed account despite being from the USA where depsoiting is extremely difficult and how did Lock Poker security not see the $100,000 being chip dumped to Macedo in order for the latter to win a challenge run by Lock Poker.

Whilst the management team of Lock Poker is still to comment on these points they did make an official statement on the Two Plus Two forums through Cardroom Manager and professional poker player Eric “Rizen” Lynch. The statement in full reads, “Lock is currently pursuing legal action against Jose so we are unable to make a substantial comment at this time. We do realize that ongoing silence can lead to people jumping to conclusions. What happened goes against the very core of our player based philosophy and we intend on exercising our legal rights in the most severe degree. We will keep you updated as things progress.”

The initial reaction to this statement has not been met positively at all, with the very first reply in the thread coming from a member called Todd Terry, a well-respected member of the Two Plus Two (more than 15k posts) and the poker community as a whole. Todd Terry is part of a group of poker players currently in the process of suing Full Tilt Poker and he had this to say about Rizen's Lock Poker statement,”IMO, that is a complete crock of ****. The "legal action" (can we have details of where it's been filed or is it just being contemplated at this point?) is purely being used as cover for Lock not to comment. There's no way in hell Lock will pursue a lawsuit and risk having to answer questions under oath about its role in this matter. And what is the purpose of the lawsuit, to recover a few thousand dollars that Lock paid to Girah for an endorsement deal?”

Later in the same thread Rizen reacted to Todd Terry by posting the following, “It's being filed in the near future, once it is the details of what exactly the purpose is will become clearer. There is still some due diligence that must be done first, but I advised it would be better to comment as best we could for now rather than stay silent.

I was VERY clear with Lock before we released this statement that it was a bad idea unless we were actually committed to pursuing legal action, otherwise it would just look like an attempt to avoid commenting.

I cannot control how the community decides to react to things, and given the nature and history of online poker over the last 4-5 years I certainly don't blame people for taking anything that goes on with a heavy dose of cynicism.

If a reasonable amount of time goes by and there are no updates and no filings then I fully expect the community to call us out on it. I think if history has taught us anything about the 2+2 community, it's that hoping they forget about things or let them go is a bad strategy”

Whether or not legal action will actually happen remains to be seen but if it does it will be very interesting to see what sort of precedent it sets for the online poker world. In the past the likes of Josh “jjprodigy” Fields and Justin “ZeeJusting” Bonomo have gotten off lightly for their crimes against the terms and conditions of online poker sites (agreed they lost their funds and damaged their reputation) but if Lock Poker do manage to successfully sue Macedo / Girah then it could open the door for other sites to follow suit or at least act as a major deterrent to the scummy under belly of this fantastic game.

When “Black Friday” finally forced PokerStars, UB, Absolute Poker and Full Tilt Poker to close their doors to American customers the online poker community wondered what would happen to some of its biggest stars. Many of those affected by the closures were kept busy by the World Series of Poker but now that has drawn to a close, until November, there seems to be a mass exodus of top online poker players from the USA to other countries.

The excellent Short-Stacked Shamus wrote a piece on online grinders relocating from U.S here on the Betfair blog and one of the players he mentioned was Phil Galfond, one of the best online poker players of all time. Galfond recently left his New York apartment and travelled across the border to Vancouver, Canada and set up shop there, and what a decision it seems to have been for the popular high-stakes cash guru.

Galfond keeps a blog on the training site he set up, Blue Fire Poker, and although his latest entry is not up to his usual standard the screen-shot of his Holdem Manager database makes up for it. As the adage goes “a picture is worth a thousand words” and this one certainly is as it shows Galfond's Pot Limit Omaha, Omaha Hi/Lo and No Limit Hold'em results since he arrived in Vancouver during the last week of July. In these games he has played a total of 43,197 and he reveals that he has played quite a few hands of stud and draw games that cannot be tracked by the software so he really has been busy. He has been so wrapped up grinding online that he has not had time to explore his new surroundings. “Some might say I should go out and experience the city, but those people don't understand how much I enjoy being inside and playing poker,” said Galfond who plays under the moniker “MrSweets28.”

Anyone who questioned Galfond's decision to stay indoors and play poker have been given 607,548.35 reasons as to why he has been grinding instead of exploring, that's right Galfond has won $607,548.35 in his last 43,197 hands! This works out at an astonishing $14.06 earned for every hand he has played! Galfond readily admits that he has been running “pretty hot” and “well above EV” the latter is shown on his screenshot and it works out he has run over EV to the tune of $354,295.02.

Those who have had to take on Galfond at the tables over the past couple of weeks can breathe a sigh of relief as he is planning on taking a few days off to spend some time with friends and is also planning to change his sleeping schedule so that he is online during European prime time, when the larger games are more likely to be running.

The schedule for eagerly anticipated Betfair Poker LIVE! Tour has been announced and those taking part in the events are sure to be delighted with the venues chosen for the four stops.

First up is the first-ever Betfair Poker LIVE! Tour in Dublin, Ireland, one of the most popular destinations for partying and poker in the world! Running between September 22-25 at the historic Fitzwilliam Casino & Card Room, it will be the first chance players get to see the new blind structures, which have been slightly tweaked this year to make them more appealing to recreational players, and also the brand new, unique format of this year's Betfair Poker LIVE! Tour Main Events.

Each of the Main Events will cost $600+$50 to enter but $100 of that entry fee will be placed on each player's head in the form of a bounty, meaning each tournament is being played to an Eliminator-style format. We will have the full rules up on the site shortly and also some strategy and hints on how to approach this particular type of tournament. It should make for an interesting dynamic as every single all in could win players money!

After Dublin the tour heads to the Gran Casino in Costa Brava, Spain between November 11-13, then to the excellent Fox Poker Club between February 17-19 before heading off to Prague for the finale, though dates are yet to be confirmed for the final leg.

The only way to qualify for any of these four events is through Betfair Poker, either buying in directly through the poker client or by winning the many satellites that will run right up to each stop. There will be plenty of freerolls being offered but for those wanting to bypass that stage can buy into Level 1/4 for just $0.55, Level 2/4 for $5.50, Level 3/4 for $24 or Level 4/4 for $120 and try to win their seats that way.

The Fitzwilliam Casino & Card Room only has the capacity for 160 players and seats are sure to be in high demand so either buy-in directly or get busy with the various satellite tournaments running now exclusively on Betfair Poker.

In a previous article we covered defending our blinds by becoming the aggressor preflop and three-betting them in an attempt to take the pot down before the flop for the most part. Three-betting is the most common form of blind defence and against habitual blind stealers who like to fold prelfop it is becomes profitable rather quickly but against certain opponent types it is best to simply call, take a flop and play some poker!

There are some players who think they are loose-aggressive (LAG) players but in truth the only time they are a LAG is preflop but as soon as the first three community cards are dealt they either completely shut up shop unless they have a big hand or they take a solitary stab at the pot before giving up. These opponents are great for seeing a flop with and either taking the pot away on the flop or floating the flop and helping yourself to the money on the turn.

An example of this would be being sat in the big blind and facing a raise from the button, a player who frequently three-bets and has been known to four-bet but post flop his aggression drops off a little. We decide to call with a hand such as Ts9s and the flop comes down 2h-6c-7s, which completely misses us but we can still easily take this pot by using our opponent's tendencies against them and also representing a big hand. This is where you have to think about how you would play different hands in accordance with the board texture.

On a board like this and against this villain we should probably never lead out or donk bet as it is known because what are we representing by doing so? If we held an overpair to this board we would most likely three-bet preflop, especially with tens or better, and even if we only held eights or nines would would probably not lead most of the time either. Likewise with sets or two pair, unless we knew villain always had an overpair and was likely to get it in. So in my opinion the bets move would be to check with the intention of raising this villain's inevitable continuation bet. By check-raising this flop you can quite easily represent a number of strong hands including two pairs, medium pairs and sets of deuces, sixes or sevens and are likely to pick up the pot there and then against most villains of this type.

However, taking this route is much higher variance than the standard three-betting preflop line, and it becomes much more costly when villain does have a legitimate hand. You also need to factor in that if you do go for a check-raise on the flop and are called you will be left playing a large pot out of position with literally air (in this case) so it is not a play you would want to employ on a regular basis but it is a move that should be in your arsenal should the right circumstances lean towards using it.

Over the past couple of months I have been grinding away at the short-handed cash games and doing pretty well for myself. Although I was only been playing micro-stakes I managed to win something like 19 buy-ins over the course of 25,000 hands, which is good going in my book. Then something happened and I decided to try my arm at MTTSNG, reporting on poker tournaments is what happened.

Behind every poker journalist is a frustrated poker player, and that certainly runs true with me. I have said of late that if I am not good enough to put my theory into practice constantly and win at the highest games then I am fortunate enough to make a living out of those who are doing so. One way to make money from them doing the live updates from the various circuits, something I love doing. But working on the circuit always makes me want to play in tournaments when I sit down and play poker online and each time I do I am left disappointed, have my confidence crushed and am left questioning my ability. This previous attempt at breaking into tournaments has been no different and I think I am ready to put online tournament poker behind me for good.

Since last Tuesday I have played exactly 150 MTTSNG, the 45-man turbo version and I have been destroyed in every way you can imagine. Those 150 games were played over six session, all of them ended in disappointment and financial losses, each of them making me question WTF I was doing playing in them in the first place! I managed to cash in 14.0% of the games I played but my ROI was a dreadful minus 43.7%. The ITM figure is probably about right but the distribution of cashes needed to be more towards the top three than the bottom three as I only won a single tournament, came second twice and third once from the 150 game sample.

In contrast to that I finished in sixth or seventh (seven paid in these games) 11 times and burst the bubble 15 times. FML! Naturally I was worried that my bubble play was awful so I downloaded SNG Wiz and discovered that almost all of my play on the bubble was spot on, which strangely made the fact I was losing even more depressing, despite the fact I could actually put it down to variance. Also, over the 150 games I played I ran more than 100,000 chips under EV and managed to run into AA or KK a total of 16 times in situations where I would have been propelled to chip leader or thereabouts with 8-14 players remaining.

All of the above is basically a big fat whinge in the face of Lady Variance, the horrible bitch, but in reality it may just be that my own way of playing poker, and No Limit Hold'em in particular, just is not suited to this particular format of poker tournament. My Holdem Manager statistics show that I play best and are most profitable when both my opponents and I are playing 85-150 big blinds deep, which is almost never in these games and hardly ever in any online tournament for that matter. It may be a different story in a WPT, WSOP or EPT Main Event but I'm as likely to play in one of those in the next few months as I am flying to the moon by the power of my arse.

Another reason I don't think me and tournament poker will ever really get on is that I play quite loosely, which is fine and dandy when you can reload when you inevitably get stacked but not so much when a mistake can result in you sitting on the sidelines for the rest of the night. Also, I'll admit to being a bit of a station too and love to hero call, which really isn't cool in a tournament scenario. Likewise I love to try force folds by representing hands etc but that hardly works in tournaments either because villain has like 19 big in his stack and doesn't care if you're representing middle set because he has king-high and is looking for a double up. You're just never deep enough to play poker how I like to play it and you're never deep enough to have fun with weird cards too, something that keeps the fun alive when you're grinding and when you add all those factors together and combine them with how I love being able to just get up and leave in a cash game it is a no brainer really.

So it looks like the online tournament scene is dead for me. I'll still play the odd one with friends and maybe also try to satellite into some of the higher buy-in MTTs etc from time to time but there will be no more grinding dozens and scores of MTTs or MTTSNGs for the foreseeable future if ever. Until further notice you will find me at the cash tables.

Earlier today 18 of the world's best tournament poker players returned to their seats at the Palms Resort Casino knowing they had won at least $43,190 in the inaugural Epic Poker League Main Event. Each of these 18 players knew that if they survived until the end of play they would then have locked up $107,980 and have a realistic shot at the $1,000,000 first place prize.

One man who maybe did not have such high hopes was Justin Bonomo who started the day with just 42,000 and on a table that had a legitimate claim to being the ultimate “Table of Doom.” Bonomo was seated with Hasan Habib, Eugene Katchalov, Sam Trickett, Jason Mercier and Erik Seidel who between them had more than $41,000,000 in live tournament winnings, 12 World Series of Poker bracelets, two European Poker Tour titles and a World Poker Tour title.

Bonomo managed to double up on the very first hand when he got his stack in with QsJd against Habib's Ah9h on a flop reading Js-2h-8c and then he doubled again on the very next hand when he entered a raising war with Trickett and found himself all in with AdJs against the Brit's pocket fours. Bonomo spiked an ace on the flop, which stayed ahead, to put himself well over 200,000 chips! Any hopes of an epic comeback were soon dashed though as Bonomo made it 13,000 to play and then jammed for more than 200,000 when Mercier three-bet to 37,000. Mercier called with AcKs and was in a coinflip scenario against Bonomo's 7c7d. The Js-8c-2c flop kept Bonomo in front but the Kh on the turn left him drawing to just two outs, neither of which appeared on the turn and Bonomo was the first casualty of the day.

Over the next few hours there were a steady stream of eliminations including Matt Glantz, Noah Schwartz and Trickett, the latter never getting going all day and judging from his tweets throughout the day he was being dealt trash hand after trash hand and generally running badly. He eventually busted out in 11th place when his pocket sevens ran into the pocket nines of Chino Rheem and could not improve.

When Katchalov was sent to the rail in eighth place, the remaining players were all seated together on an unofficial seven-handed final table. It was announced that play would continue until one more player was busted out and the final table was set, something that took four and a quarter hours to occur! The unfortunate final table bubble boy was Adam “Roothlus” Levy who was sent packing in unfortunate circumstances, again at the hands of Rheem. With blinds at 8,000/16,000/2,000a Rheem opened the betting with a raise to 40,000 and Levy, next to act, three-bet all in for around 400,000. When the action folded to Rheem he snap-called and turned over pocket kings, way in front of the queens held by Levy. But, the queens were catapulted into the lead as the flop came down As-Qs-Ac to give Levy an unlikely full house. The 9s on the turn failed to alter anything but the Ad on the river meant Rheem had improved to a better full house and Levy's and the latter was sent to the cashier's cage to pick up seventh place's prize money, $70,960.

When play resumes at 1400 local time it will be Habib who leads the way with a stack of 1,655,000 and he will go into battle against Erik Seidel (1,109,000), Rheem (1,432,000), Gavin Smith (766,000), Mercier (1,495,000) and Huck Seed (396,000) the latter is essentially freerolling after winning close to $700,000 on a video poker game last week! It is actually quite difficult to pick a winner out of these six players with Habib being vastly experienced in prestigious, high buy-in tournaments, Seidel being in the form of his life and Mercier being Mericer. This humble reporter believes it will be one of the three aforementioned players and if he had to stick his neck on the line would opt for Mercier to take it after defeating Seidel heads up. You read it here first!

Final table seat draw and chip counts

Seat 1: Hasan Habib: 1,655,000 chips
Seat 2: Erik Seidel: 1,109,000
Seat 3: Chino Rheem: 1,432,000
Seat 4: Gavin Smith: 766,000
Seat 5: Jason Mercier: 1,495,000
Seat 6: Huck Seed: 396,000

The inaugural Epic Poker League (EL) Main Event has now reached the money as the 137 players who parted company with $20,000 have been whittled down to the final 18. Each of the surviving players is now guaranteed $43,190 but none of them will want to be taking home that amount, especially as there is now a $1,000,000 first place prize on offer.

At the start of Day 2 there were 63 runners and they voted to take $17,340 from the second place prize and add it to the winner's total so that the eventual champion takes home $1,000,000 and it is Britain's Sam Trickett who is the man on course for this massive cash prize as he ended the day with a massive stack of 1,032,000, almost 400,000 more chips than his nearest rival.

It has been quite a year for Trickett, who is currently ranked 30th in the Global Poker Index, and this latest cash means he will have won more than $3,000,000 from live tournaments during 2011! He started the year by winning the $100,000 High Roller event at the Aussie Millions for a cool $1,508,258 and followed that up with a second place finish in the $250,000 Super High Roller, a result that netted him another $1,384,631. In addition to those amazing results he has cashed in three more major events, including twice at the recent World Series of Poker.

Although Trickett has a huge chip lead going into Day 3 he also has by far the toughest of table draws. Whilst there are rarely going to be any easy tables in the Epic Poker League just by its very nature, when the players sit down at Table 3 in the Palms Resort Casino at 1200 noon Las Vegas time, it could quite possibly the the toughest six-handed table of all time. Keeping Trickett company are the currently in second place Hasan Habib (646,000), Erik Seidel (609,000), Jason Mercier (418,000), Eugene Katchlov (418,000) and Justin Bonomo (42,000). Wow! Dare anybody say that that particular table could make for some “epic” poker viewing?

It took 13 hours to reduce the 63-strong field down to the 18 money place, including a two-hour long bubble. Making the money in the EPL is vitally important as the top 27 money earners from the four Main Events are entered into a $1,000,000 freeroll at the end of the season, so it is not surprising that play was tighter than usual around the bubble, something Trickett took full advantage off. When Nam Le was eliminated in 20th place Trickett had 865,000 chips in his stack and by the time Matt Graham became the bubble boy two hours later the Brit had accumulated a further 300,000 chips!

Graham was eliminated in most unfortunate circumstances at the hands of David “Chino” Rheem, the man who finished seventh in the first-ever November Nine of the WSOP Main Event. The action had folded around to Graham in the small blind and he elected to just complete it, despite holding JhJs. Rheem looked down at KcJc and moved all in, Graham called off his remaining 142,500 chips and the dealer feverishly got to work putting the community cards out. The flop came down Ac-6h-4c giving Rheem outs to a club flush, and one such out appeared on the turn, the nine of clubs. This left Graham drawing completely dead and when the inconsequential 4d landed on the river the 18 surviving players had made it through to the money. Rheem had already pushed his luck during bubble play as he and Bonomo entered a raising war preflop that resulted in Rheem being all in and at risk of elimination. On that occasion Rheem held QcQh to Bonomo's pocket aces but the board ran out Kh-5h-3c-Qs-3h to cripple Bonomo and leave Rheem chipped up.

Play resumes at 1200 noon Las Vegas time and will continue until the final table of six is reached. At this point each of the players who are still sat behind piles of chips will be guaranteed to take home no less than $107,980 but will only be five eliminations away from winning $1,000,000 and an Epic Poker League title.