A recap of the major results from this weekend on PokerStars…

• High Roller Club titles for Kurganov, Margereson, and Jones
• Romania’s “sica26” wins Sunday Million for $101K
• Top 5 High Roller Club results
• Top 5 results from the weekend majors

KURGANOV WINS HRC SUNDAY SUPERSONIC

PokerStars Team Pro Igor Kurganov was back in the High Roller Club winner’s circle this weekend, capturing yet another title with a victory in the $1,050 High Roller Club Sunday Supersonic. Kurganov banked $42,858 for his first-place finish.

Igor Kurganov

A total of 215 entries created a $218K prize pool, which was then shared between the top 24 players. While there were many top tier pros in the late stages, including Parker “tonkaaaa” Talbot (13th – $4,070), Kurganov was able to take it down.

HRC TITLES FOR MARGERESON AND JONES

There were plenty of other recognisable names taking down High Roller Club titles this weekend.

Scott Margereson bagged another online trophy in style, coming out on top in one of the toughest tournaments online. The $2,100 Sunday High Roller always attracts the game’s very best, and this week was no exception. Margereson was able to outlast a 104-entry field–and a final table which included Igor Kurganov (7th) and Romeo “RomeOpro” Romanovsky (3rd)–to win it for $47,930.

Scott “Aggro Santos” Margereson

Meanwhile, Ben “jenbizzle” Jones was busy capturing another title with his victory in the $1,050 Sunday Warm-Up. Jones added $49K to his bankroll after that win.

“sica26” WINS SUNDAY MILLION FOR $101K

The $109 Sunday Million has yet another Romanian winner, with “sica26” emerging victorious over the 10,224-entry field to win $101,770 after a heads-up chop. Their final opponent, Canada’s “slarki1”, banked $81,770 for finishing in second.

This week saw a prize pool of $1,022,400 split between the top 1,826 finishers. Both Fintan “easywithaces” Hand and Lex Veldhuis made the money, finishing in 500th ($314) and 846th ($273) respectively.

Fintan “easywithaces” Hand

TOP 5 HIGH ROLLER CLUB RESULTS

TOP 5 WEEKEND MAJOR RESULTS

Opening a PokerStars account is easy. Click here to get an account in minutes.

There might not be a live stream of the €100K Super High Roller, but there’s always PokerStars Blog. Watch clips from the bubble right here.

There’s only one person who enjoys a bubble, and that’s the big stack. With eight remaining and seven paid in the €100K Super High Roller at EPT Monte Carlo, however, that big stack switched hands.

We arrived just after Luc Greenwood’s first-hand elimination (A♥10♥ < Mikita Badkiakouski’s A♠J♠), and Sergio Aido was the table short-stack. He got busy quickly, doubling through Badziakouski when his A♦9♦ binked a nine versus A♠K♦.

Aido doubled again the very next hand, this time through chip leader Daniel Dvoress. Aido’s A♣Q♣ won a flip versus Dvoress’s pocket fives, but that didn’t really dent Dvoress’s stack. However, just a couple of hands later, some damage was done.

Dvoress shoved on Sam Greenwood in a battle of the blinds, and the defending champion (Greenwood took down this event back in January at the 2019 PCA) had a big ICM decision to make. He liked his hand, that much was certain, but was he willing to risk it all when there were some shorter stacks?

Roll the clip.

Greenwood’s A♥Q♥ held up against the A♦8♥ of Dvoress to give the former the chip lead.

Some time then passed with not much action, before finally the bubble burst. Action folded to Koray Aldemir in the cutoff and he opened to 750,000 (with the blinds at 40K/80K with an 80K big blind ante). Aldemir had 480,000 behind, and after Dvoress got a count he set Aldemir all in. Call.

Aldemir had 9♥9♦, Dvoress had A♥K♦, and…well…you’ll see.

A brutal river for Aldemir sent him out in eighth place, while all remaining players are now guaranteed €268K.

Follow live updates from the €100K Super High Roller right here.

There was a time in poker’s modern history, not even all that long ago, when Spanish players were the great underachievers in the world game. Even at EPT Barcelona, where the poker boom was even more incendiary than anywhere else in the world, no Spanish player could make the breakthrough and actually win a tournament.

Eventually, it was here in Monte Carlo in 2015 where Adrian Mateos broke the hoodoo. But today in Monaco, Spain stamped its authority on the game even more emphatically when Sergio Aido and Jesus Cortez went heads up for the €100,000 Super High Roller title.

Time was when you never used to hear Spanish spoken among the last five of a major tournament, but today it was the only language required as these two tried to arrange a deal for more than €2.6 million.

They couldn’t agree on the specifics — Aido’s chip-lead was so dominant it didn’t seem worthwhile — but by that point both men were already assured a payday of €1.147 million. A few hands later, Aido closed it out, winning €1.590 million, the biggest single payday of his career and enough to take him past $10 million in live earnings. He has come a long way since his breakthrough on the UKIPT.

Sergio_Aido_Winner_SHR

The first two days of the tournament were the usual story of entries and re-entries building a multi-million euro prize-pool, then a rush to the door as matters went awry, leaving only a handful in search of the big bucks.

In all, there were 52 entries including 18 re-entries, and that left prizes for the top seven. (The full pool hit more than €5 million.) But when Day 2 wrapped late last night, nine players were still involved. That’s how come we still had the bubble to burst today.

READ THE PLAY-BY-PLAY ACCOUNT
(In association with PokerNews)

Luc Greenwood at least didn’t waste much time. He was out on the first hand of the day, losing with a dominated ace. But it was crueller for Koray Aldemir, who went out on the stone bubble, losing a flip to Daniel Dvoress.

Koray Aldemir: Stone bubble

As is customary at this level, no one allowed any emotion to cross their ice-cold visage, but the dealer left it until the last moment to put Dvoress’s ace on the river, giving him the pot with his A♥K♦ and beating Aldemir’s 9♥9♦. We captured all this restrained indifference in full.

That ace cost Aldemir at least €264,860 and left all those remaining with at least that to look forward to. Aido was already likely happiest of them all, having not only successfully laddered into the money having started with relative pittance, but having doubled at least three times to now have a workable stack.

Sergio Aido on the comeback trail

Indeed, he had Day 1 chip-leader Wiktor Malinowski covered in the first post-bubble all-in showdown, and Aido’s A♠K♥ remained best against Malinowski’s A♥8♠. Malinowski, an online cash-game specialist and professional handball player was making his debut on the Super High Roller scene. Making it to the cash represents a fine result in any circumstances, and no doubt he will return.

Fine debut for Wiktor Malinowski

Charlie Carrel became the next man out, leaving in sixth place, earning €327,930, and once again falling foul of Aido. Carrel open-pushed his small blind with 9♣5♣ and Aido picked him off with A♠2♣. Carrel has made two final tables from his two events so far, so he is putting together a profitable week. But he couldn’t get past Aido either.

Charlie Carrel: Two from two

Cortes had taken something of a back seat as his countryman did all the damage, but then inflicted a mortal blow on Mikita Badziakouski as he double up. Cortes’s A♥Q♥ beat Badziakouski’s K♥Q♠, leaving Badziakouski with one blind. And then he was out on the next hand when Cortes again had ace-queen and Badziakouski could manage only six high. Badziakouski took €428,830.

Mikita Badziakouski: Another major score

Dvoress, the overnight chip leader, was next to hit the rail. His A♦9♥ lost to Aido’s K♠K♥. Aido flopped quads for good measure, and Dvoress left with €554,950. He is still hunting his first major title, but is, as ever, playing some of the best poker in the world at the moment.

The three-handed battle was intriguing. The two Spaniards flanked Sam Greenwood, this tournament’s defending champion. No one has ever successfully defended a Super High Roller title on the EPT, but Greenwood was, in theory, now in with an excellent chance.

However, the Spanish quickly completed a perfect pincer movement on Greenwood, with Aido flopping two pair with K♠3♣ to win a massive pot, and then finding pocket kings again to beat Greenwood’s A♥10♠. Greenwood’s €731,530 gets his week off to a decent start too.

The game is up for Sam Greenwood

After the briefest of discussions in the attempt to secure a deal, Aido quickly brushed off the proposed arrangement. Cortes didn’t push it, and they quickly sat down again to play for the title. Aido had something like a five-to-one lead and Cortes had no choice but to push at every opportunity. He got it through a couple of times, but then slammed 9♠2♦ into Aido’s K♣Q♥ and that was the end of that.

Jesus Cortez, left, in heads-up action

“It feels very nice,” Aido said–as he then hopped immediately into the €25,000 single-day high roller. No rest.

EPT Monte Carlo Super High Roller
Buy-in: €100,000
Entries: 52 (inc. 18 re-entries)
Prize-pool: €5,045,040

1 – Sergio Aido, Spain, €1,589,190
2 – Jesus Cortes, Spain, €1,147,750
3 – Sam Greenwood, Canada, €731,530
4 – Daniel Dvoress, Canada, €554,950
5 – Mikita Badziakouski, Belarus, €428,830
6 – Charlie Carrel, UK, €327,930
7 – Wiktor Malinowski, Poland, €264,860

Looking to improve your poker game? You’re in the right place. Here’s what’s new this week from our friends at PokerStars School.

Question of the Week: EPT Open Madrid Edition

PokerStars School is your ace in the hole for EPT Open Madrid satellite tickets

Have you ever wanted to play a live EPT event? This week PokerStars School wants to give you a chance to qualify for the next one on the schedule — and for free, no less!

You can earn a chance to attend the EPT Open Madrid in June by answering one simple question in 40 words or more. Even better, you already have a head start because you just read the question in the previous paragraph:

Have you ever wanted to play a live EPT event?

Head over to the PokerStars School forums and post your answer before the end of the week. The top five answers as judged by the moderation team will win an $11 EPT Open Madrid satellite ticket, and the overall winner will receive 25T$.

Learn to interpret BB/100 and you’ll know when it’s time to move up in stakes

What is BB/100?

Have you ever heard someone boasting or moaning about their BB/100 in their regular game and thought to yourself, “What in the world are they talking about?”

Put simply, BB/100 is your win rate — the number of big blinds you earn per 100 hands played. It’s one of the best ways to determine when you should consider moving up in stakes, and also a way to measure just how tough your opponents are.

Click over to Pete Clarke’s explanation of one of the most fundamental statistics in poker and learn what your BB/100 says about your game (or your opponents’).

Taking notes: one of the most underrated skills in poker

Taking good notes while you play is one of the most underrated skills in poker

When you’re trying to become a better poker player, it’s tempting to only focus on the big picture. Sometimes, though, leveling up requires getting into the nitty-gritty nooks and crevices of your game that are easy to overlook.

One of those is note-taking. If you’re not in the habit of taking notes on your opponents while you play, you’re probably missing chances to take advantage of your opponents’ tendencies. But where to start? This week OP-Poker’s Nick Walsh offers you not one but two videos focused on the art of taking notes.

The first focuses on why you should take notes, Nick’s process for note-taking while playing, and how you can use those notes in your future games. In the second video, Nick plays a session of $15 Spin & Go’s and talks through his process.

Check out the videos here and here and boost your note-taking game today!

Other new PokerStars School content you might enjoy

• Featured Promotion: 200 Billion Hands Celebration
• Twitch Stream: 100 NL ZOOM with Pete Clarke
• Video: MTT Course | Lesson 9
• Winners Wall: OMG @PokerStars! Did this really happen?

Open a PokerStars account today and start learning from PokerStars School. Click here to get started, and then click here to register for PokerStars School.

For a “former professional poker player” (and former garish dresser), Charlie Carrel has been putting on a stellar display so far at EPT Monte Carlo, final tabling three high rollers in a row for more than half a million euros.

But if it’s not poker, what does Carrel now consider his job? And what does he make of the current high roller world he’s still a crusher in? We caught up with him during his epic Monaco run to find out.

A poker career lasts for as long as you want it to last…assuming things are going well, of course. If you find yourself without a bankroll and without a backer, the duration of your stint in poker is pretty much out of your hands.

But when you’ve racked up millions in earnings and created a name for yourself, why would anyone choose to retire?

It’s a scenario we’ve seen a bunch of times over the past few years. Take Mike McDonald, for example. He went from a regular on the Super High Roller circuit to starting his own business, PokerShares, after which we’ve barely seen him at the tables at all. Then there’s Fedor Holz, the German wunderkind who rocketed to poker stardom and the top 10 of the all-time money list, only to step away from the professional high rolling poker life to set up Primed Mind, his own company.

You can now add Charlie Carrel to that list of top poker talent branching out into new endeavours. Although, like Holz, he’s not quite ready to step away from the tables altogether.

“I never made an official public statement saying I was retired,” Carrel laughs, on break during a €25,000 buy-in single-day high roller at EPT Monte Carlo. “I think I may have mentioned it on my YouTube channel once, like ‘Oh, by the way, I kinda retired six months ago’ and everyone was like ‘Oh my God!’. I wish I hadn’t said that.”

When you look at Carrel’s Hendon Mob results today, you certainly wouldn’t think he was on hiatus. Over the past four days, Carrel has final tabled all three high roller tournaments so far at this festival.

“It’s always a nice one,” Carrel says when asked why he chose to come to EPT Monte Carlo. “It’s always nice to come back to the place where I had my first big score.”

The score he’s referring to is the €25,000 High Roller here in Monaco back in 2015, which Carrel won for €1.11 million, completing his astronomical rise in poker which saw him go from grinding low-to-mid-stakes cash games in his grandma’s Jersey house in 2012 to becoming a millionaire poker personality. Carrel backed up that breakout result with a string of big cashes, not to mention the $1.2 million he won by taking down the Spring Championship of Online Poker (SCOOP) Main Event in 2017.

Charlie Carrel in action at EPT Monte Carlo

Carrel’s consistent results in Monaco this week take his career live earnings up past $7.1 million. And yet throughout 2018, we barely saw Carrel at live stops at all.

“I was taking a lot of time off because of my charity and another business that I’m starting,” he says. “A lot of my energy has gone into that. But the last few months have been revolving more around healing myself, spiritually, emotionally, physically, all of those different things. Coming to the almost apex of that, I feel like I’m abler now to do other things, which before I couldn’t have done without spreading myself too thin.

“Now I still have time for charity meetings and other meetings for the business, but I also have time to play poker, and I feel like hopefully, I can continue to juggle all three of those.”

The charity in question is called Abundance, and little is known about it at the time of writing (Carrel hopes it will be unveiled fully in three to six months). The project is clearly close to Carrel’s heart though, and his passion is evident.

“I honestly believe Abundance has the potential to change the world. The structure, at least, is beautiful. Whether I’ll be able to carry that through is another question.

“It’s primarily focused on lifting people out of poverty, specifically homeless people. It also focuses on bringing health to the masses, cheaper and more transparently than is currently available to them. It’s a hell of a complicated system that usually takes me 30 minutes or so to describe all the way.”

While away from the full-time live grind, Carrel kept busy. YouTube content, Twitch streaming, and coaching seemed to take up a lot of his time.

“YouTube and Twitch was quite a small percentage of my year, it was more just like me keeping a diary,” he explains. “The Twitch thing links in with a lot of the coaching I’ve been doing, and I love coaching. I live for it. It’s so fun.”

This eventually led to Carrel producing his own poker training course.

“The masterclass was amazing, I’ve had the best feedback on anything I’ve ever done,” he says. “I think it’s because it was behind a paywall, and the people there really wanted to be there, rather than just being random people from YouTube. I’ve had lots of people tell me they’ve turned their results around, showing me graphs that went down, down, down, and after the masterclass go up, up, up. I’m probably going to do another one in the next couple of months.”

Despite his experience playing on live streams in front of thousands of players, and appearances on TV shows (Channel 4’s How’d You Get So Rich? In the UK) and podcasts (True Geordie), Carrel still wasn’t comfortable in front of the cameras.

“I feel like Twitch, and YouTube to some extent, really helped me get to grips with a certain version of myself that’s more of, let’s say, a ‘showman’ whereas before I was more inclined to be inwards towards myself. Even after three or four days of Twitching, it’s still not something that comes naturally to me.”

What does seem to come naturally to Carrel is poker. We always hear how tough it is to keep up with the best players at the top of the game, and yet here comes Charlie Carrel, a player who admits to “never having run a poker sim in his life” yet somehow continues to crush.

“I thought there might have been some sense of being rusty, and there usually would be, but for my game specifically I’ve still been coaching people, albeit not at the high stakes,” he says. “I’ve still been having conversations about what’s going on at the high stakes with my best friend Ben Heath. He’s running sims on PioSOLVER every day, and now and then he’ll mention a hand, see what I think about it, and see how we could exploit from the sim. So I think I still have an understanding of how people are playing to a certain extent, but the nooks and crannies of GTO (Game Theory Optimal) I don’t, for the solver stuff at least. The style that I play is a lot more based on live reads anyway, and they don’t change.”

A new smarter look for Carrel

While live reads don’t change, Carrel’s attire certainly has. Gone are the technicoloured hoodies and psychedelic trousers of old, replaced by smart suits and business shirts for an altogether more professional look. Was this a conscious decision Carrel made upon entering the business world?

“Exactly, yeah. I went kicking and screaming into this, I really did,” Carrel admits. “I didn’t want to change how I was. I was comfortable all the time, colourful, people were always saying hi to me and smiling when they saw me on the street.

“But I realised, when I was setting up the charity and getting my team together and starting the conversations, it was fine. I could be colourful, and people would listen to me because I was in charge of the conversation. However, now I’m at the point where I’m looking for further investment, and there are types of people in the world who will only take you seriously if you’re dressed in a way which appeals to them.

“At the same time, I would say that I feel like it’s time for me to grow up, y’know? Poker players tend to get stuck in adolescence for a long time, maybe even their whole life, and there are different aspects to my life now that I think are super important. I want to take responsibility, take action, and be calm and present, instead of just being a hippy who plays a game for a living.”

Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, is already gripped by UFC fever. Mixed martial arts originated here, so the game is already in the locals’ blood, but the city is also hotly anticipating its latest up-close glimpse of the Octagon on May 11 when Rose Namajunas and Jessica Andrade battle it out in UFC: 237.

Anyone walking through the streets of Rio over the coming weeks should also keep their eyes peeled for some vivid UFC-themed poker art works. These brilliant murals are not only spectacular in their own right, they also hold the key to an unprecedented giveaway.

Anderson Silva by Marcelo Ment

It’s an extraordinary prize for an extraordinary competition — and it all starts with the art.

HUNT THE FIGHT CARDS

Rio de Janeiro is a world-renowned destination for anyone with a passion for architecture, beaches, music, food, drink and parties (ie, everyone), and in recent years it has also developed a reputation as one of the global capitals for street art.

Rose Namajunas by Lidia Viber

It has now even infiltrated high-end galleries, with connoisseurs and collectors flocking to Rio to see the work of these trailblazers in its natural environment.

With the UFC coming to town, and PokerStars keen to tap in to the excitement of the movement, the company recently approached four of the city’s most celebrated artists with an idea for a unique commission. The brief was for each artist to produce a depiction of an MMA fighter from UFC 237 in their trademark style, and to place it on the background of two PokerStars playing cards.

The four artists represent a broad range of the art scene in Rio, each with a well-earned prominence in their field. They were encouraged to create a beautiful and eclectic range of portraits that capture the fighters in a unique way.

Jessica Andrade by Carlos Bobi

The rules are simple: once you find one of the Fight Cards, pose for a photograph alongside it, share the picture on social media with the hashtag #UFCPokerStars, and then hope for the best. There are two packages to be won, for the winner and guests, with the lucky UFC fans selected at random from qualifying entries.

All entrants will be asked for their Stars ID in order to qualify for the draw.

Although it’s worth finding all of them, you only need a photo alongside any one of them to qualify. You have until 23:59 on May 7 to get involved.

PLEASE SEE COMPLETE TERMS AND CONDITIONS

Jared Cannonier by Caze

“It has been a really fantastic project to work on, and to be part of the celebration of PokerStars and UFC here in my hometown is an honour,” said Ment, who has spearheaded the Rio street art scene. “I hope that the people of Rio enjoy seeing UFC fighters captured in true Brazilian street art style.”

Additionally, a unique “Sand Sculpture” of the Fight Cards, created by the world-renowned Rogean Rodrigues, also appeared on Copacabana beach on April 29. Rodrigues, who is a massive UFC fan, has previously been commissioned to welcome such luminaries as Pope Francis to Rio, and he was the obvious man to turn to to showcase his talents again. The sculptures wowed the crowds in Copacabana as the promotion kicked off. And although a thunderstorm was approaching, the Fight Cards won out and will remain in the sunshine this week.

Click and swipe left/right to see images

Few things have the power to change a child’s life like play. Sadly, many children don’t get the chance to play.

That’s where Right To Play comes in. The Stars Group’s official charity partner since 2014, RTP has raised more than £1.5 million to help vulnerable children around the world. And today they’ll be raising lots more through two special promotions.

The special edition Right To Play hoodie, in black

The charitable giving arm of The Stars Group, Helping Hands, has teamed up with Right To Play to create a limited-edition hoodie. But it’s not just any old hoodie. This one is also a soccer ball. It’s true: although parents the world over may normally struggle to get their children to fold their clothes, there’s an added incentive for this one.

If you follow five simple steps to fold the hoodie in the correct way, you can turn it into a ball.

The hoodie honors a young boy from Eritrea who found out that his hoodie-folding abilities made him remarkably popular in the playground, where sports equipment was scarce. A visiting humanitarian ambassador — Norwegian speed skater Johann Olav Koss, representing Olympic Aid, which latterly became Right To Play — noticed the boy’s popularity and learnt the reason, and eventually decided to market to hoodie/ball back home.

How to turn a hoodie into a football

It finally hit the shelves today. As of this afternoon, you can visit the Stars Store to buy your own football-making hoodie in red or black. And if you happen to be attending EPT Monte Carlo, you can buy one from the on-site store. Regardless of where you purchase, 100 percent of the profits from their sales will be donated to Right To Play. They cost $40, an amount that can do extraordinary good.

The hoodie was the centerpiece of the action earlier today here at Sporting Club Monte-Carlo in the Right To Play Keepie-Uppie Challenge.

A lot of poker players tried their hands at juggling the ball/hoodies, with mixed results. (Don’t worry, they have other talents.)

See how a few of them fared in the clip below:

Today’s other special event is the EPT Monte Carlo Right To Play Charity Tournament. Set to begin at 7pm CET tonight in the Americas Room at Monte Carlo Bay, it sports a $300 buy-in and unlimited $100 rebuys for the first hour of play. Register in the normal way, at the desk in the Sporting Club lobby.

Beyond the chance to support a great cause, you can also pick up some valuable prizes:

We’ll be dropping by the tournament tonight to check things out, so stop and say hello if you’re there to play!

Right To Play reaches 1.9 million children per week at 2,600 schools in 15 countries throughout Africa, Asia, and the Middle East.

Click and swipe left/right to see some of the hoodie-ball keepie-uppie players in action:

Tonight sees the first ever 6+ No Limit Hold’em tournament at a PokerStars Live stop. The €2,200 Single Re-entry (Triple Chance) event kicks off at 9pm.

There’s a first time for everything, even after 15 years of European Poker Tour stops.

While the EPT Main Event and €50,000 Single-Day High Roller play out in their respected corners, a brand new live event for PokerStars Live will take place tonight, as 6+ Hold’em moves from the online streets to the virtual felt.

The €2,200 buy-in tournament allows a single re-entry, and also offers a ‘triple chance’ stack format. This means players can either take their entire 30,000 starting stack at the beginning of play, or divide it into three 10,000 stacks which they can claim at any point (in a bid to reduce variance). Indeed, variance plays a big role in this format.

Scroll down for a full breakdown of how 6+ differs to regular NLHE

Max Silver: Another 6+ convert

“I think €2,200 is a very reasonable buy-in point for players who may want to play 6+ for the first time,” said UK pro and SnapShove founder Max Silver, who will be in the mix tonight. “6+ is a gambly game and equities run really close, so I expect to either win a lot of all-ins or be out pretty fast!”

Like Silver, Mike “SirWatts” Watson is another seasoned pro who will be pulling up a chair in tonight’s game. Both have played 6+ a lot on PokerStars, but neither have made a trip to Asia to try it out live yet. Luckily, thanks to this EPT addition, they won’t have to.

“I think it will be interesting to see how the game catches on in America and Europe with traditional Hold’em players and tournament players,” Watson told us. “I hope there’s going to be a lot of interest in the game, as people who are used to NLHE should be able to pick it up quickly, especially if they have a little PLO experience too.

“I think it’s the kind of game that when people get exposed to they’re going to really enjoy playing. I hope it catches on far and wide.”

Unfortunately, as it clashes with the aforementioned EPT Main Event and €50,000 Single-Day High Roller, there’s a good chance we won’t see many of the high rollers here in Monaco taking a seat. Nevertheless, we asked Watson who he wouldn’t like to see at his 6+ table.

Mike Watson in action today at EPT Monte Carlo

“The players who are spending a lot of time over in Asia are ahead on the experience curve,” he says. “I know Rui Cao plays a lot, Peter Jetten plays quite a bit, Isaac Haxton has had some success, and Stephen Chidwick is great at every game. All of these guys would be great guys to bet on, but I don’t imagine any will be playing tonight. It will be interesting to see who turns up, it seems like it could go any way. I hope we make a few more converts today.”

Play kicks off at 9pm tonight.

Unsure of how to play? Here’s all the info you need.

€2,150 – NL Hold’em – Single Re-Entry – Triple Chance – 6+

Date: April 30 – Tuesday | Start Time: 21:00 | Starting Stack: 10,000
Buy-In Breakdown: entry – €2150 | entry-cost – €2000 | entry-fee – €150

• Everyone posts an ante and only the button posts a blind – known as the ‘button blind’
• The left of the button will be first to act
• Triple chance (Players may start with 10,000/20,000/30,000 chips) from the start of the tournament
• All chips must be claimed before the close of registration
• Registration closes at the start of Level 9
• Single re-entry
• All of the 2 to 5’s are removed to make a total deck just 36 cards
• A flush beats a full house
• As in regular Hold’em an ace can play high or low
• The highest straight is still T-J-Q-K-A, the lowest straight is now: A-6-7-8-9

You can play 6+ on PokerStars. Simply click here to open an account.

As part of our 200 billion hand celebration, we’re giving you the chance to win Spin & Go tickets when you vote on some of your favourite poker moments.

Vote for the best laydown right here.

The people have spoken!

Yesterday (Monday, April 29) on Twitter, we asked you for your best laydowns from the annals of Twitch poker. You answered, we listened, and here we present you with the top four nominees.

Watch the video clips from the shortlisted hands below, then click the link to the tweet at the bottom to cast your vote.

LAYDOWN #1

Lex Veldhuis

LAYDOWN #2

Spraggy

LAYDOWN #3

Fintan Hand

LAYDOWN #4

xflixx

Head to this tweet and vote now!

Opening a PokerStars account is easy. Click here to get an account in minutes.

EPT MONTE CARLO MAIN EVENT – DAY 2 SEAT DRAW

Ramon Colillas turned a dream into reality back in January. He won the PSPC and a first prize of €5.1 million.

It’s not easy to have that level of success. But it can be done. You might even have the same talents and attributes required to do the same.

If you want Ramon levels of success you’ll need to possess, the same qualities that earned him that famous victory.

Which is why we created a special Dare to Dream quiz. It will help determine how far along you are in that process.

So in the spirit of popular teenaged magazines from the 1990s, you’ll find ten questions that will help you find out below.

Select the answer you think is correct for each question. Your score will determine just how “Ramon” you are.

Unscientific perhaps, but you’ll notice that the qualities Ramon used are the type anyone will need to succeed.

Keep track of your answers, then check them by scrolling below.

Q1. When you watch PokerStars TV coverage do you…

1. Find it hard to understand what’s going on?
2. Consider the players on screen to be way better than you?
3. Think that one day it’ll be you that people are watching?

Your answer: ______

Q2. When you play against top players, do you…

1. Keep folding and stay out of their way?
2. Say to yourself that you’re capable of playing against anyone?
3. Hope other players get knocked out instead of you?

Your answer: ______

Q3. You play freerolls on PokerStars to…

1. Learn why the good players keep winning?
2. Play without having to take the game too seriously?
3. To try to get lucky and win some free money?

Your answer: ______

Q4. When facing set-backs, how do you tend to react?

1. Figure it’s just not to be?
2. Curse your bad luck and blame it on things beyond your control?
3. Set about immediately getting back on your feet?

Your answer: ______

Q5. When you daydream, what do you day dream about?

1. Work tomorrow?
2. Poker?
3. The weekend?

Your answer: ______

Q6. When you get a free hour how do you spend it?

1. A Netflix binge?
2. Sleeping?
3. Studying and playing poker?

Your answer: ______

Q7. At what point in a tournament do you dare to dream?

1. When you first take your seat?
2. Heads up?
3. When you reach the money?

Your answer: ______

Q8. If you lost your bankroll, what would you do?

1. Give up?
2. Work out what you needed to do to improve and start again?
3. Blame it on luck and try something else like stamp collecting?

Your answer: ______

Q9. If your girlfriend insists that all she wants her birthday is to see you win your way to play poker in the Bahamas, do you…

1. Tell her it’s impossible. You’re not a magician?
2. Set about winning a Platinum Pass?
3. Book tickets anyway, in case you don’t automatically win a seat?

Your answer: ______

Q10. Your favourite colour is…

1. Green?
2. Red?
3. Black?

Your answer: ______

So. How Ramon are you?

 0 correct: We’re assuming you found this page by mistake.

1-3 correct: Well, you’ve made a start. And not everyone needs a big win to enjoy poker. And think of it this way. If you got the “favourite colour” question wrong, you’re practically in the next category already…

4-7 correct: Much better. You might still have a little work to do to get to Ramon’s level, but you’re in the right place. With a little effort (and maybe less Netflix) you could be up there with Ramon in no time.

8-10 correct: Congratulations! You’re practically related to Ramon. You’re showing signs of having the same dedication, commitment, and determination it took Ramon to win the PSPC. It won’t be too long before you step up.

Read more about the Ramon Colillas story on the Blog. Although if you got full marks in the quiz, it’s going to seem very familiar.

A total of 337 players returned today to the Salle Des Étoiles here at Sporting Club Monte-Carlo for Day 2 of the EPT Monte Carlo Main Event. Of everyone in the room, nobody had fewer chips than Sio Hong Si. But that didn’t bother him in the least.

Just as Si’s short stack set him apart from the rest of the field, his journey here was unique among the competitors here in Monaco. Si lives in Macau, where he works as an activity coordinator and enjoys playing basketball. A year ago his friends got him into poker through a home game. He took to it quickly and began watching live streams from every EPT stop.

Celina Lin and PokerStars qualifier Sio Hong Si share a laugh on Day 2 of the EPT Monte Carlo Main Event

Soon enough Si had opened an account on PokerStars, where he began playing as “Michaelsi1031.” And then, last month, he made a fateful decision: he played in a $3 Spin & Go. Nothing too out of the ordinary there, but the result certainly was: Si won a package to play in the €5,300 EPT Monte Carlo Main Event.

That was just the beginning. An arduous 35-hour journey took him from Macau to the other side of the planet. He played Day 1B of the tournament and survived with the smallest stack of any player from either starting flight, but he displayed no obvious sense of disappointment.

“I feel so excited that I can make it to Day 2, even with 7300 chips,” he told PokerStars Blog as he emptied his bag and placed his chips — one blue 5K, two yellow 1Ks, and three black-and-white 100s — on the table in front of Seat 3. “Now it’s only all-in! So I maybe double up.”

Team Pro Celina Lin arrived a moment later and sat directly to Si’s right. The rest of his table was a real murderer’s row. Mustapha Kanit, Nicolas Chouity, and Vlad Darie were all behind him in the rotation — the kind of players you expect to watch on TV, if not necessarily the kind you expect to sit down and play against. And yet here Si was.

Si and Lin chatted for a bit until he found himself under the gun with pocket kings. He made his one move: all-in. Darie called with Q-T and flopped two pair. It looked likely that Si would begin his walk for the exits right there, but another king on the river made him a set to take the pot.

The rest of the table cheered Si on as he stacked up, including Team Pro and new arrival Fatima Moreira De Melo, who arrived in the middle of the hand from a broken table and took her seat to Si’s left.

Sio Hong Si, all-in for his tournament life against Fatima Moreira De Melo

Si survived his big blinds and then found himself in the small blind with A♠7♥. He moved all-in again, and Moreira De Melo called in the big blind with K♠8♦. A king hit the flop and that was the end of the line for Si — at least in this tournament. He still gets to enjoy Monaco for the rest of the week.

Though Si’s story didn’t end in glory, he was thrilled just to be here. And why not? For just $3, he had the experience of a lifetime.

“I feel excited,” Si said. “It is a dream come true, I feel very good. Thank you PokerStars to make me come here!”

Sio Hong Si: excited to be in Monte Carlo, and rightfully so

The popularity of playing on the European Poker Tour is matched only by the popularity of sitting at home and watching it. What PokerStars Blog pioneered, PokerStars Live continued and for a good few years thousands of people get their updates from the tournament via moving pictures as well as in text form.

Hundreds of armchair poker fans have also made the transition from passive to active participants by winning online satellites or competitions to take their seats in live competition. But now here’s the chance to sample the EPT experience without ever leaving the comfort of your own home.

This week, our good friends at the PokerStars Live webcast are hosting an online version of the EPT Main Event, for 1,000th of the price. This €5.50 single re-entry tournament will be played over four days (May 1–4), starting at 20:05 CEST each day, with registration open until the start of Day 2.

Type “EPT Online” in the search box in the PokerStars client to find the tournament.

It has a similar format (8-max) and structure to the EPT Main Event, but here’s something even players here in Monte Carlo don’t get: added money. The way it works is that at the start of Day 2, players at 10 random tables will all receive EPT Open Madrid satellite tickets.

Players at THREE tables will receive €162 tickets
Players at SIX tables will receive €22 tickets
And players at one other table will receive €11 tickets

That’s 80 tickets in total, representing €5,000 in added value. (PLEASE NOTE: The EPT Online is only open to players in global shared liquidity markets.)

As ever with tourneys arranged by the EPT Live webcasters, there will be a huge field. But there will also be some special guests no doubt playing, including Joe Stapleton and James Hartigan, as well as a number of their celebrity buddies who might opt to sit down for a bit of fun.

Knock out the webcast duo: James Hartigan and Joe Stapleton

Keep watching the stream and reading the updates to build the anticipation levels.

If you have ever lived among a big family, you know there are times when all of a sudden you show up for a holiday dinner and discover you have three new aunts, six new cousins, and occasionally a new grandfather. Once you get used to the idea that you’re going to need more chairs and a French to English dictionary so you can talk to your new Aunty Monique, you often find these new family members are even better than the ones you have known for years.

With that in mind, meet the the 12 new members of the PokerStars streaming family.

There are several milestone moments in the career of a poker player. Finding a group of poker friends, that would be one. Winning your first tournament, there’s another. Going on your first poker trip, that’s a big step.

Kalidou Sow ticked off another one at the European Poker Tour (EPT) stop in Monte Carlo this week: sticking on a PokerStars Ambassador patch for the first time at a major live event.

After the announcement of Sow joining Team PokerStars was made on April 10, it was clear that Frenchman’s big unveiling would take place in Monaco (almost home soil, but not quite).

“My first stop as a PokerStars Ambassador has been amazing,” Sow tells us midway through Day 2 of the €5,300 Main Event. “Wearing the patch for the first time, it’s been incredible, and the relationship between the other ambassadors is fantastic too.”

Unfortunately for Sow, who found himself sat up on the feature table with a 45,000 stack to start the day, he busted within the first level. You can watch how that played out below:

Sow may have said goodbye from the Main Event, but he’s been saying hello to just about everything and everyone else this week. From organised meet and greets to local players hailing him a hero, this trip has been non-stop for the 38-year-old.

“The reaction of the French players to me here in Monaco has been surprising, but it makes me very happy,” he says.

Born in Paris, where he still lives with his wife and two children (both boys, aged 7 and 3), Sow balances his family life with one as a globetrotting poker sensation.

“I really want to play poker as much as possible at the moment because volume in poker is the best answer to variance,” he says. “But I’m also a father, and I have to manage my family life too. These past few years, though, I’ve wanted to grind as much as I can.

What does a normal day look like in the life of Sow?

“My wife takes the kids to school in the morning, and I bring them home in the afternoon. I spoil them to compensate for the times when I have to be away. I don’t know if that’s a good thing to do, but I do it anyway, so who cares,” he says. “But when I’m at home, I really like to stay at home. My wife actually has to tell me to go out and see friends or whatever. But I just like being at home with them, that’s an ideal day in my life.”

Kalidou Sow in action at EPT Monte Carlo

When Sow took down the PokerStars Festival London Main Event for £121,803 and a Platinum Pass to the PSPC back in January 2018 (just one month after winning the PokerStars Championship Prague Main Event for €675,000), he told us that his wife didn’t normally accompany him on poker trips. “She always wants to come with me to events and I say ‘No, no, no.’ But OK! You can come with me to the PCA, my dear,” he said at the time.

The Bahamas and the PokerStars Caribbean Adventure (PCA) was always going to be different.

“She loved the Bahamas, obviously. My kids were there too. We visited some of the islands and went to the beach, but as I was playing a lot I didn’t get as much time with them. Even so, she really enjoyed her time at the PCA,” he says.

Sow has previously stated that it’s his kids who make him the man he is today. But are they aware of what their old man actually does?

“My oldest son already knows and understands what it is I do for a living,” Sow says. “When my son is at school and people ask him what his dad does for a job, he tells them: ‘He’s a poker champion.’ So he knows. He plays with cards and chips at home, so he’s into it already.”

Kalidou Sow

How would Sow react if they wanted to follow in dad’s footsteps and pursue poker when they were old enough?

“What’s most important is that I just want my kids to be happy,” he says. “My whole life I’ve been chasing money. I don’t want that for my kids. I just want them to be happy and to do what they want. I’ll always be there for them. Whatever job they decide they’d like to do, I’ll be happy for them if they are happy. I want them to follow their passion.

“I was raised in a difficult neighbourhood outside of Paris,” he continues. “There was violence, a lot of drug issues. I didn’t like it. We didn’t have holidays or anything. I would say I’ve had a good life, but not an easy one. I’m doing everything I can for my kids to have a better life than I had.”

Everything Kalidou Sow has done in his life has led him to Monaco for EPT Monte Carlo. But thinking back to when he was a youngster playing on the streets of Paris, what did he make of Monaco? Did he ever think he’d end up here one day?

“Monaco was considered an unreachable place. It was only for the rich, certainly not for me, or anyone I knew,” he says. “Now, being able to come to Monaco every year and play big tournaments for a living…it’s just amazing.”

Another milestone ticked off. ✓

MORE ABOUT KALIDOU SOW: AMBASSADOR ANNOUNCEMENT
CAREER TIMELINE AND QUOTES | PRAGUE CHAMPION | PSF LONDON WINNER

Interview conducted with help from Henri Frey of PokerStarsBlog.fr.

If you don’t know who Seth “SFisch04” Fischer is, that’s partially by design. Though he’s a PokerStars qualifier here at EPT Monte Carlo, he doesn’t maintain a PocketFives profile and says he enjoys flying under the radar. But it’s also partly chance. Had a single card fallen friendly in 2008, things might have been different.

Born and raised in Florida, Fischer was at college in Atlanta when he became one of the millions who picked up poker during the Moneymaker boom.

“I actually ran a poker game out of my apartment during grad school,” he recalls on a sunny day outside the Sporting Club Monte-Carlo. “I would go to school in the day and then at night I would run the poker game. I was just trying to get better and play poker on the side to make some extra money. I had no grandiose ideas of trying to become a professional or anything.”

Fischer had finished the coursework for a degree in sport administration and only needed to complete an internship to graduate. When the one he had lined up fell through, he saw an opportunity in disguise.

“All during that time I just needed an excuse to play poker, to give it a shot, so I told myself, ‘I’ll give myself two months while I’m looking for internships to play poker full-time.’ Since then I haven’t really looked back. I started making more money than I’d ever made my entire life.”

Marriage followed, as did a move to California when his wife began pursuing her own graduate degree. And then came a moment that changed everything.

“That’s when it sunk in”

The first cash on Fischer’s Hendon Mob profile is a final table appearance at the 2008 WSOP worth more than $330,000. It remains the largest of his career. People remember that final because of two things: the spectacular number of bad beats handed out and the guy who won the bracelet.

Seth “SFisch04” Fischer in Monte Carlo

The scarf-wearing, diminutive, hyper-aggressive Italian pro Dario Minieri earned his first WSOP bracelet and more than $528,000 for the win. But just 10 hands earlier, Minieri had been one card away from taking Fischer’s place as the runner-up.

Fischer had caught a break of his own earlier, cracking Justin Filtz’s pocket aces with A-K and knocking him out in third place. That gave him a big lead as heads-up play began against Minieri. Then Fischer picked up K♠K♦.

Fischer re-raised Minieri’s opener; Minieri jammed with 4♠3♠, and Fischer snap-called with his cowboys. Fischer was a four-to-one favorite before the flop fell J♠8♠2♦. He still had 70 percent equity after the 4♦ turn, but the 4♥ on the river gave Minieri three of a kind and turned the entire game around.

Within minutes Minieri was doing interviews and taking his winner’s photo. “I have never seen so many bad beats in one day,” Minieri told PokerStars Blog at the time. “I feel very lucky.”

Fischer, meanwhile, headed off to the payout cage for his first WSOP cash.

“I was happy because this was way better than I was ever expecting to do,” Fischer says. “And honestly, I thought I would get there again. I remember going into it Dario was already kind of a personality, he was the big favorite going in. I thought I actually played better than him at the final table. Obviously I got super-lucky to bust the guy in third place. And when I was heads-up for the bracelet, with the chip lead, all-in with 80 percent equity — it’s one of those things.”

When ESPN began airing that year’s WSOP coverage, Fischer caught the episode where they showed Minieri beating him heads-up.

“That’s when it sunk in. It was really painful looking back. At the time I didn’t care [about finishing in second]. But once I saw it on TV afterwards, it was like — there’s a very real possibility that’s the closest I would ever get.

“It still stings, honestly — I’m not going to lie. It probably motivates me to play sometimes. But you have to deal with it. That’s poker.”

A long and winding road

Painful as it was, that WSOP experience opened up doors for Fischer. He dipped his toes into playing higher buy-in events later that year, playing in the Trump Classic at the Taj Mahal in Atlantic City. He was in Philadelphia to visit family and saw a $5,000 Main Event on the schedule.

“I thought, ‘I can do whatever I want. I can play the bigger buy-ins.’ Then I show up and there’s like 30 people and even back then I recognized 25 of them. I was like, ‘This is stupid.'”

And then he went and won the thing for $34K.

“(For winning) they gave me a Movada, a pretty decent watch,” he says. “Then the floor man said, ‘Hey, too bad, last year we gave out a Rolex!’ The whole environment seemed kind of — I don’t want to say unprofessional, but not fancy at all. The Taj was kind of a dump. I think within three years from that point it was closed. There was no special stage or anything, we were just out in the middle of the casino floor. I can’t complain though, it was my only live tournament victory.”

More live cashes followed, including a WSOP Circuit Main Event final in Atlantic City featuring familiar names like Andy Frankenberger, Chris Klodnicki, and eventual champion Chris Bell. Fischer’s newly flush bankroll also allowed him to begin taking on higher buy-in tournaments online. After Black Friday he began traveling from his home base in Berkeley, California, to Vancouver, Canada, where he booked a win in the Super Tuesday in 2012 and later came within a few spots of repeating the feat in 2015 and 2016. It’s a trend that continues to the present day: Fischer took down the winning the High Roller Club $530 Bounty Builder a few months ago.

These days Fischer’s live poker schedule is mainly focused on Las Vegas, where he says he plays about 30 events most summers around the time of the World Series. Though he says he doesn’t particularly enjoy the live poker road life anymore — he doesn’t care for living in the casino, and the crew of friends he came up with has slowly drifted out of the game, meaning he’s often the only one of his group of friends traveling anymore — there are a few spots that he enjoys visiting if he can win a seat in a satellite.

Monte Carlo: the “best environment in the world to play”

EPT Monte Carlo tops that list.

“I’ll play more satellites for Monte Carlo because I like it here. PCA, same type of deal. Everything from the accommodations to the poker room being right on the water — the whole environment is second to none. It’s the best environment in the world to play, for me. I can’t imagine a more luxurious place to play. So once I came last year and had such a good time, I knew I definitely would like to come back.”

While variance is an occupational hazard for every poker player, Fischer’s experiences over the last 15 years have given him perspective that lets him roll with whatever the game throws his way.

“As I’ve gotten older it’s hard to go to any live tournament, especially when I’m playing two or three events at the most, and say, ‘Yeah, I’m going to win!’ or ‘I’m going to make the final table!’ because you’ll end up being disappointed. So you try to temper your expectations a little bit.

“That’s the reason I come here to Monte Carlo and to the Bahamas. Even if I don’t do well with poker, at least I’m in a nice place and I can enjoy myself.”

As part of our 200 billion hand celebration, we’re giving you the chance to win Spin & Go tickets when you vote on some of your favourite poker moments.

Vote for the best winning moment right here.

The people have spoken!

Yesterday (Wednesday, May 1) on Twitter, we asked you for your best winning moments from the annals of Twitch poker. You answered, we listened, and here we present you with the top four nominees.

Watch the video clips from the shortlisted hands below, then click the link to the tweet at the bottom to cast your vote.

WINNING MOMENT #1

SolidPenis

WINNING MOMENT #2

xflixx

WINNING MOMENT #3

Lex Veldhuis

WINNING MOMENT #4

Arlie Shaban

Head to this tweet and vote now!

Best. Winning. Moment. Ever.
There are four to choose from, watch them at https://t.co/Ylr7q9ygcw then pick your favourite. #SpinAndGlobes #200BnHands

— PokerStars (@PokerStars) May 2, 2019

Opening a PokerStars account is easy. Click here to get an account in minutes.

We’d bet there aren’t many poker players at this European Poker Tour stop in Monte Carlo with a story as interesting as Maria Konnikova’s. The psychology PhD, New York Times best-selling author and PokerStars Ambassador is back in Monte Carlo for her third time, marking the two-year anniversary since she started playing poker from scratch.

We caught up with Konnikova in Monaco to talk about her study regime, the powerful poker minds she mines, and how the writing of her highly anticipated new book, The Biggest Bluff, has been balanced with her poker grind.

PokerStars Blog: Hi Maria, how has your EPT Monte Carlo been so far?

Maria Konnikova: The trip has been great in terms of Monte Carlo, but it’s been terrible in terms of results. I’ve bubbled everything I’ve played, including the Main Event where I busted 14 off the money. It was actually the last hand of the level. It’s not like I made any bad mistakes or anything. I just lost a flip with ace-king against queens, got short, and then got it in with sevens against eights.

What are your plans once you leave Monaco?

I’m going to be in Las Vegas for the World Series of Poker for the whole summer. After Monte Carlo, I’m going to take May off to hopefully finish some significant chunks of my book. I’ll be in Vegas from June 1st right through to the Main Event.

EPT MONTE CARLO
LATEST | SCHEDULE | NEED-TO-KNOW | TIMELINE | IMAGE GALLERY | RESULTS

Do you ever write on the road, or do you always take time away from poker to focus on writing?

I’ve taken a few chunks off. Normally after the PokerStars Caribbean Adventure (PCA) in January, I go to some of the World Poker Tour (WPT) stops, there are multiple things I would have done. I didn’t do any of that this year. Between PCA and now I’ve mostly had off, aside from a few things like playing one tournament.

I think it’s a bad idea to step away completely, just because poker is something where not only do you constantly have to study but if you’re just studying and not playing, you’re not consolidating the concepts. I’m not planning to quit poker so it would be a bad mistake for me to completely disappear off the grid, even if I were studying for an hour or two a day but not playing. But it’s really mostly been writing, and will be for the next three weeks. 

It must be difficult doing both at once.

I think once the book is done it will be easier to have a balance where I’m doing both at once. Books are different from magazine pieces and shorter things because they require more all-in concentration. After the book is done it will be easier to keep playing at a steady pace and balance that with taking a day here and there to write. 

Do you think poker will always be a part of your life, even when the book is complete?

Konnikova still loves the poker grind

Well, we’ll see. This is one of the themes of the book. Poker has taught me that you just never know what’s going to happen. All you can do is make the best decision with the information you have in the current moment, and then adjust as it changes. As of now, I’m really enjoying poker still and I’m learning a lot from it. It’s challenging me. I feel like there’s still a lot of growth opportunity, and I don’t just mean in terms of my poker strategy, although that too obviously, but more just growth opportunity personally. There’s still a lot the game can give me, and while I’m still enjoying it, why would I stop playing? The moment that changes, I’ll re-evaluate. As of now, I have no plans to stop playing poker, and I have no plans to stop being a writer.

MORE ABOUT MARIA KONNIKOVA:
PCA NATIONAL VICTORY | AMBASSADOR ANNOUNCEMENT | WORLD ECONOMIC FORUM | WSOP INTERVIEW

You mentioned your balance between studying and playing, but what does your study process look like at the moment?

My study depends on the day. Some days I’m running sims, so I had to buy a separate computer for PioSOLVER. I’ve always had a Mac, and obviously, no poker software works on a Mac!

Some days I’ll just work on that and go through some hands and try to figure out what the solver is telling me. Some days it will be watching live streams and archived footage from Super High Rollers or some final tables with players I’ve played against. When I watch those, it’s not passive watching. It’s very active watching. So it will take me at least two hours to watch an hour of the stream. I’ll stop it, rewind it, figure out why they’re doing what they’re doing, why they chose that bet size, what’s going on, etc.

When it’s the Super High Rollers, they are the best players in the world who really know what they’re doing. I can look at their decisions and try to figure out what they’re thinking, and also what mistakes they’re making in-game. They’re not computers–OK, I think some people might be computers–but most people aren’t. Sometimes I’ll watch an EPT final table where it’s some of the best players in the world, but also some not. It’s really interesting to see what they do then. I pause and rewind and really go through the hands and think about it. But you’re no longer thinking: “Why is this the best decision?” You’re thinking: “Oh, these are mistakes they make on a regular basis”, “These are the type of hands they like to three-bet on a regular basis”, etc. I think you can get a lot from watching those type of streams. 

How has your relationship with your poker mentor Erik Seidel changed as you’ve progressed in the game?

Erik Seidel hugs Konnikova after her $85K PCA National victory (Jan 2018)

So, sometimes I’ll study with my own hand history reviews, and that’s mostly what I do with Erik. We’ll go over hands that I’ve played and also hands that he’s played, and we talk about what the different options were, what the things to think about were at every point.

The relationship has evolved to the point where it’s much more of a conversation and a lot less “What do I do here?” Sometimes I still ask that, because that’s the beauty of no limit hold’em. You will always run into interesting spots, no matter how long you’ve played.

Erik told me a hand that he played here in Monte Carlo where he said it was a really interesting hand and “I don’t know what I was supposed to do here”. It makes me feel a lot better about myself when I realise that even the Erik Seidels of the world will sometimes run into spots where they’re not sure.

You’ve got to know a lot of the other top players over the past couple of years too. Is there anyone else you reach out to?

The person I work with the most aside from Erik is Phil Galfond. He’s amazing. Phil has so many things going on—his Run It Once training site, his Run It Once poker site, his new baby—he’s got so many things. But I’ll write him a quick text message or an email, saying: “Hey, interesting spot, blah blah blah, would love to hear your thoughts when you have a moment.” Then he’ll send me back a book. All of a sudden I’ll get an email that’s multiple paragraphs, correctly punctuated, with “On the other hand, you could consider…” and it’s just a beautiful work of art.

Phil Galfond: poker genius, businessman, and…poet?

Sometimes he’ll send me a text message poem of analysis. Phil really takes the time, and really loves the game. With him and Erik, I’m so lucky because these are two people who are incredibly well-rounded outside of poker and have so many interests but also have a passion for poker that’s really pure. They love the game and the intellectual challenge. Had I learned it from different people, I wouldn’t love the game as much as I do. It’s such a pure relationship. 

Click here for more information on Maria Konnikova’s forthcoming book The Biggest Bluff.

Boutros Pierre Naim is a man of will.

The Lebanese-born, poker-playing Monaco resident — and PokerStars qualifier to the EPT Main Event this week — once quit his investment banking job on a whim because his company moved offices from one part of London to another. It increased his commuting time and Naim wouldn’t stand for it.

Shorter commute? Check. Better weather than London? Big check.

“For me,” he says, “this was basically a no-go.” So he moved to Monaco.

But when he was in his 60s and living in the principality, Naim found himself missing his son, who had moved to Massachusetts to attend Babson College. Naim decided to move nearby and applied to Harvard University — not to seek a degree but simply to take courses on subjects like economics, the history of the Ottoman Empire, and meta-ethics. He applied for admission through the same process as any other student, leading to some bureaucratic-themed amusement.

“I have seven years of university studies over and above my baccalaureate, so it was fun trying to retrieve all those diplomas from over 35 years,” Naim says. “At the end of the day I got a filigreed diploma reading, ‘We declare Mr. Naim got his diploma in the session of July 1975.’ And it was signed Paris, January 2011. Thirty-six years later!”

At Harvard, Naim became close friends with a Nobel Prize winner in economics and spent his days in the Widener Library, plucking books from the stacks at will and plundering the JSTOR archives for knowledge that simply wasn’t widely available earlier in his life. “I really loved the atmosphere,” he says of the eight months he spent there. “I really enjoyed butting heads with 20-year-olds all the time.”

While his surroundings may have changed again now — he moved back to Monaco a few years ago — there is a sense in which things these days aren’t much different for Naim. He still spends his time butting heads with highly intelligent people decades his junior. The only difference is that those interactions now come over chips and cards against the world’s most talented poker players.

“Being 30 years older than the average guy, I know exactly how they perceive me. Like, ‘Here comes the fish, we’re going to kill him.’ And I’ve made a lot of money and won a lot of hands because the other guy tried to frighten me.”

When Naim was a young man, he swam the breaststroke and medley competitively. “I used to swim eight kilometers a day,” he says. “If I entered a race, in the worst-case scenario I would end up in second or third.” The state of Naim’s back these days makes it tough for him to run or play tennis, so instead he plays poker — but he’s not entirely comfortable with the nature of the game.

“Considering that I need some adrenaline flowing, the only place I can find it is poker,” he says. “Some skill and some intuition is required so I do that. I think poker is one of the most ungrateful sports in history — you can study all you want, you can make the right decision, and you don’t win. My theory is that the best poker player in the world is an unknown guy who still hasn’t done more than one level in any tournament because he loses every time with hard luck. There’s an undiscovered gem somewhere playing for the last 10 years, always busting.”

In that case, does that player’s polar opposite also exist? Someone who makes the wrong move time and again yet comes out smelling like roses?

“I respect Fedor, he’s a good friend mine, he has one of my paintings in his flat in Vienna, but he got very lucky!”

“Yes,” he says, and starts to tick off players he thinks have borne some resemblance to this theoretical monster, at least in particular circumstances. There’s Jonathan Duhamel (“Give me a break, every hand he won making the worst decision in the world!”). There’s Phil Hellmuth (“When he won the WSOP in Cannes, that was the luckiest man in the world!”). And, a little closer to his heart, there’s Fedor Holz. (“I respect Fedor, he’s a good friend of mine, he has one of my paintings in his flat in Vienna. I really like him but he got very lucky, it’s unbelievable.”)

There’s no venom or bitterness from Naim when he says these things — he’s just calling it as he sees it. Talk to him about his experience at the US Poker Open at the Aria in Las Vegas last year, where he finished in second place, and he’s effusive in his praise of the players who impress him.

“I like to play with the pros like David Peters, Justin Bonomo, Stephen Chidwick,” Naim says. “They deserve what they have, because they work hard, these guys. They’re really lovely players to play with because they’re serious, they’re disciplined, [not like playing with] some clown in the $1K or the Main Event going all-in with rags. You play with serious people and they bluff you, but at least you have a pattern.”

Justin Bonomo: In Naim’s good books

At the end of that tournament, despite being an amateur at a table full of pros, Naim found himself heads-up against Justin Bonomo. “I am probably the only one who was one card away from beating Bonomo,” says Naim. “He had just started in February last year his incredible run. He got very lucky. I had Q-8, he had 8-7. The board was 6-6-3, so check-check. Turn 8, I go all-in — heads-up when I pair, I’m all-in, I don’t want to wank around. He calls and sees I’m beating him with the kicker, and then there was an ace so we had to split. I hate the chop! When I saw the producers later and Jeremy Ausmus and these guys, they were all like, ‘We were rooting for you!’ Because I wasn’t taking it seriously whatsoever. I was enjoying myself.”

Naim doesn’t care much for traveling to play poker, partly because he doesn’t like spending a week at a time living in a casino and partly because of his back.

“When I ended up heads-up with Bonomo, it was the beginning of the US Poker Open series. Maria Ho asked me, ‘Are you going to continue the series, you have earned points.‘ I was like, are you joking? I’m leaving tomorrow! You want me to throw it all away? I just won $136K, give me a break!”

A few years ago, though, he played a circuit of EPT Main Events funded by a win in a Prague high roller satellite. “I ended up in the final five entries. Mustapha Kanit was the bubble boy. So I said, ‘Hold on guys, I don’t want that [the tournament seat]. Give me cash.’ Kanit says he’ll buy it for 47K, I said done.”

Naim says that one day he’d like to replicate that tour on a bigger scale.

“Even though I have the means to play the high rollers, I respect the money I made elsewhere. If it was 30 years ago I might have. But to play those bigger-stage games I think you should have 10 times the buy-in and dedicate yourself to play these tournaments over the year. You don’t play one tournament and that’s all you have for your budget, that’s ridiculous. The minute I have 250K to throw away, I probably would do a year of 25Ks around the world. If I fuck up in one or two or three, I am going to cash in one of those and catch up on what I’ve lost.”

“One of these days I will follow them.” He looks away for a moment and then laughs. “But I think I’ll have to do it in the next two years or I’ll die!”

There’s a lot of talk these days about making poker fun again. Anyone who really wants that to happen should hope Naim follows through on his plan. A man of will like him might be just the spice they’ve been awaiting.

It’s dinner break time here on Day 3 of the EPT Monte Carlo Main Event and only 43 players remain from a starting field of 922. Among the high rollers and past EPT champions sits Evy Kvilhaug, an online qualifier from Norway. She has a small handful of live cashes on her Hendon Mob profile from tournaments in Norway and Ireland, but this marks her first appearance on the EPT.

Kvilhaug’s journey here started in a €55 PokerStars satellite. A win there booked her seat in a €530 qualifier. “I almost bubbled, but I made it,” she told PokerStars Blog on the floor a few minutes ago. Avoiding that bubble earned her a Main Event package, an experience she’s been soaking in for three days now.

She’s in the money

As the tournament has progressed, Kvilhaug has been seated with some of the biggest names in the game. Earlier today she sat to the left of both Sam Greenwood and Christoph Vogelsang. She’s also taken out a few players along the way, including last year’s €25K High Roller runner-up, Shyngis Satubayev.

“It’s real scary!” she said of tangling with the big guns. “I’m really out of my depth. But it’s fun too, because I’ve seen a lot of them on TV.”

We asked Kvilhaug if she had any expectations of cashing when she arrived here and she quickly answered in the negative. Now that she’s there, though, she making the most of it.

“It’s been so much fun. No matter what happens now, I’m super happy.”