I had to get past Tom “Durr” Dwan in a late session in Heat #2 to get a seat into the final. I beat him with J-10 against his pocket eights.
The final was an incredibly tough table, Peter Eastgate, JC Tran, Roland de Wolfe, Juha Helppi, and Tom Dwan. Early on I raised before the flop with the 10S-9C and got reraised by Dwan for another 21K. I called and we saw the flop of 4D-JC-10C. Dwan led out for 43K and I just went all-in. Dwan held the QC-4C. The board didn’t help him, bringing the 3H and the KH on the river and I doubled up to 434K. I was ready to play.
Peter Eastgate was the first to go and JC Tran took him out. The next out was Roland de Wolfe when he lost with K-K against Juha Helppi’s A-Q. Then Dwan was gone when he played 8-6 against my J-8. I flopped top pair and the board held an open ended straight draw for Dwan but it bricked out. I became the chip leader and the new table captain, a role I love to play. I had 1,145,000 in chips to JC Tran’s 430,000 and Juha Helppi’s 365,000.
I was very happy. This is a tournament I want to win and look forward to playing in. I was singing. I put Juha on his bike when I picked up A-Q to his A-10 and he moved all-in pre-flop. I caught a Queen on the flop and he couldn’t catch up.
I had 1,150,000 in chips to JC’s 780,000 and then ran into a hand that really hurt me. I raised pre-flop to 75K with 8S-6S and JC called with 10H-8C. The flop was 10D-QH-6D and I led out for 95K. JC Called. The turn brought the QS and I bet out for 110K. JC raised it to 260K and I folded. JC had 1,140,000 and I was left with 790,000.
The blinds were 20-40K and I checked with KS-8D. After the flop came 5D-7H-6H, I checked and JC bet 60K, I bet all-in and got called by JC’s 9C-7D. The turn was a JC and the river was the 2S.
This is one tournament I want so badly to win and look forward to playing in and I managed to make the final table again, the second year in a row ,and played my heart out to take second place to JC Tran. It just wasn’t meant to be this time, JC played too good and the cards weren’t there for me. I was hoping to send JC out looking for his bike, but I had to pedal slowly back to my hotel.
It was really a tough final table and Phil Hellmuth ended up being in the commentator’s box.
Winning second place gave me $202,000. I will look forward to playing the Party Poker Premiere League again and try my best to win it the next time out.
For now I go back to Lithuania and relax until Ladbroke’s Milllions starts the 11th of December.
Sveikinu
Taip ir toliau.
Translation: Congratulations. Keep on doing
Hi Tony! First of all I’m a big admiral of Your works and your results in Poker. This was the reason I started to play on the site You promoted on PokerNews. This site was T6poker.com. I played there a lot and it was my favourite site because the softwear and the rng was cool. Deposits and withdraws were okey and i loved guaranteed tournaments with huge overlay. I did not care about comments here in your blog that the whole site is a big scam, a pyramid game which was created from the first time to steal investors and players money. I just saw You and european Pros playing at the tables and i throught that: ‘What do those idiots talk about?? This is such a pretty good site!’. As I mentioned I loved playing there but the traffic did not became bigger as it was promised. The Pros disappeared from the tables and guessing began in chat boxes about that the Company is broken and the withdraws will not be processed. Than You announced in your blog You left T6Poker. I got frightened and I turned into puzzled. I started to withdraw my money from the site. The online supporters said there will be no problems with the withdraws and everybody will get their founds out. It was a few months ago and I’m still waiting for my money. The site closed meanwhile in November and left behind only a meaningless message about changing network. The website disappeared. I wrote emails to the support and the owner of the site but noone answeared them. I am not alone with my problem. A lot of poker players had money on the site from 100 to 20 000 euros. They worked for that euros very hard and now It seems like they lost them with this big-big Bad Beat. Many of these players (Me too) disapointed in the whole Online Poker business. Seems like anything may be done in Online Poker and if a site’s management decides to close the doors and walk away with players’ money is okey. Noone helps players in this situation and that’s all. What can we do? Nothing. For this reason I stopped playing online and made a withdraw from the other sites i used to play. Somewhat more uncomfortable but I return to live tournaments where I handle my money and not an unreliable third persons. The reason I wrote this comment is that: Tony, I ask you to share the informations with us what stand for your provision the T6Poker.com. We do not want revenge. We only want the truth.
With best regards: An ex Online Poker Player