pokerstars 500k guarantee - "official thread"

[poguemahone68 0]

Just joined, first post. Anyone still in?

Wow, nice job! I take it you are the player who took 8th place?

[PokerFan 0]

This guy El Capitano worked the final 4 after not taking a deal in 4th chip position...knock out one by one to win it....he is from Amsterdam and made a comment that he wanted to say who he was...but support advised against it...anyone know who he is?..

[Spademan 94]

This guy El Capitano worked the final 4 after not taking a deal in 4th chip position...knock out one by one to win it....he is from Amsterdam and made a comment that he wanted to say who he was...but support advised against it...anyone know who he is?..

I've been told it's Luske. But I don't know.

[dmb41 0]

Pretty sure that's Marcel Luske.EDIT: http://poker.sportinglife.com/News/story_63557.shtmlScroll down and Marcel confirms that is his online screen name.

[poguemahone68 0]

The final 4 was hilarious. They asked for a chop count and everyone agreed with it except the guy who was barely in 4th and was only gonna get $60k out of the chop. 4th place paid $36,980. He said no way to the chop based on chipcount. He said let's all take $65k and play for the remaining $28k. The way you guys play, I'm the favorite, he says. So no chop and then he proceeds to destroy them all and take 1st for $127,520.You gotta respect that.

[poguemahone68 0]

Pretty sure that's Marcel Luske.EDIT: http://poker.sportinglife.com/News/story_63557.shtmlScroll down and Marcel confirms that is his online screen name.

I had no idea! lolYeah, that was funny, cause emilie said she wanted to say her name and he said yeah, so do I. I figured at that point he was a big name player, just had no idea who.

[Ryan_Sanders 0]

I didn't save the hand history, but it went like this.I have a/10 off - raise to 50, 2 callers. Flop 10/2/5 - He checks, I bet 150, 3rd guy folds, he calls. Turn 9, he checks I bet 400, he calls. River 7, he bets 400 I push all in, he flips over pocket 7's. I might add this was the first hand of the tournament. Gotta love it

[loxo 0]

Yeah I would love to Know who emille was? She seemed pretty cocky but it didnt do her much good.

[93transam 0]

The final 4 was hilarious. They asked for a chop count and everyone agreed with it except the guy who was barely in 4th and was only gonna get $60k out of the chop. 4th place paid $36,980. He said no way to the chop based on chipcount. He said let's all take $65k and play for the remaining $28k. The way you guys play, I'm the favorite, he says. So no chop and then he proceeds to destroy them all and take 1st for $127,520.You gotta respect that.

that is awesome.especially if it is marcel.

[tweeds07 0]

Definitely Marcel.Plus, you gotta love how he said something like "If you need to buy/sell W$ go to tradepoker.com"...Lee politely told him to shut up, wonder how much he got paid to say that...Noah was plugging tradepoker the other day also.

[Spademan 94]

Funniest part was emilie saying "WISH I COULD TELL YOU WHO I AM".Like Marcel's going to be impressed.emilie is untardable.

[armen13 0]

Yes.. Thanks.I got a few suckouts at the end which let me go to 8 from 9, but was too short stacked to realy play. Too bad as I had been running well most of the tourney but got a bad beat a few hands before the final table.I played with El Capitano on 3 different tables before the final. He seemed to have a group of observers follow him around. Not sure if it was him. P.S. He would have taken the deal, all he wanted was a few K more, and then it seemed to get personal with one of the other players. :-)

[RyanM 0]

Brainwash is just insane man.5th place finish, 3 final tables in 4 months?

[tweeds07 0]

Brainwash is disgusting.I really don't know how he does it, I would pay several thousand for a lesson...although I don't think it's anything revolutionary, I think mainly just pick your spots early and attack the blinds of the smaller stacks around the bubble to build up a big stack. I don't know though, he is just insane, and only 18!

[PMJackson21 0]

Yes.. Thanks.I got a few suckouts at the end which let me go to 8 from 9, but was too short stacked to realy play. Too bad as I had been running well most of the tourney but got a bad beat a few hands before the final table.I played with El Capitano on 3 different tables before the final. He seemed to have a group of observers follow him around. Not sure if it was him. P.S. He would have taken the deal, all he wanted was a few K more, and then it seemed to get personal with one of the other players. :-)

I got a question for you Armen. You came to the final table with 9k, and the antes were 4k...You proceeded to fold two hands in a row to leave you with 1k. You then went on a little roll, doubled up a few times, and got up to 250k I think at one point. But then you let the blinds go through you and even though you are posting half your stack, you didn't defend. To get through a crap shoot tourney like the 500k, you obviously have to have some poker knowledge and ability in tournaments, but your play at the final table was questionable at best. You folded in spots where, unless the software messed up and only dealt you one card, all your money should have been in the middle regardless of your cards.So my question: was it a money thing, meaning were you intent on blinding off as long as you could move up a spot or two? Or are you very new to poker?I'm not asking to be a jerk, or to flame you. I cover the final table for pokertrails.com, so I was watching last night and I have all the hand histories. I was in the middle of writing my report, and I saw your post on here so I thought I'd ask what your motives were there before I wrote about it.For the record, once you let your stack get to 1k after posting the two antes and then proceeded to come back, I was rooting for you. As a writer, it would have been too good to be true. :-) Congrats on the showing, and again, no offense meant by this.Patrick

[PokerFan 0]

Yes.. Thanks.I got a few suckouts at the end which let me go to 8 from 9, but was too short stacked to realy play.  Too bad as I had been running well most of the tourney but got a bad beat a few hands before the final table.I played with El Capitano on 3 different tables before the final.  He seemed to have a group of observers follow him around.  Not sure if it was him.  P.S. He would have taken the deal, all he wanted was a few K more, and then it seemed to get personal with one of the other players. :-)

I got a question for you Armen. You came to the final table with 9k, and the antes were 4k...You proceeded to fold two hands in a row to leave you with 1k. You then went on a little roll, doubled up a few times, and got up to 250k I think at one point. But then you let the blinds go through you and even though you are posting half your stack, you didn't defend. To get through a crap shoot tourney like the 500k, you obviously have to have some poker knowledge and ability in tournaments, but your play at the final table was questionable at best. You folded in spots where, unless the software messed up and only dealt you one card, all your money should have been in the middle regardless of your cards.So my question: was it a money thing, meaning were you intent on blinding off as long as you could move up a spot or two? Or are you very new to poker?I'm not asking to be a jerk, or to flame you. I cover the final table for pokertrails.com, so I was watching last night and I have all the hand histories. I was in the middle of writing my report, and I saw your post on here so I thought I'd ask what your motives were there before I wrote about it.For the record, once you let your stack get to 1k after posting the two antes and then proceeded to come back, I was rooting for you. As a writer, it would have been too good to be true. :-) Congrats on the showing, and again, no offense meant by this.Patrick

Luske really showed he was in a league by himself. I'm surprised he even entertained a chop. once no deal was made he steam rolled the table...also I too was surprised by Armen's play to get blinded off, seemed to me was praying for some others to bust out to move up a spot...not sure thats a good startegy, but he was at the final table...

[PMJackson21 0]

Yes.. Thanks.I got a few suckouts at the end which let me go to 8 from 9, but was too short stacked to realy play.  Too bad as I had been running well most of the tourney but got a bad beat a few hands before the final table.I played with El Capitano on 3 different tables before the final.  He seemed to have a group of observers follow him around.  Not sure if it was him.  P.S. He would have taken the deal, all he wanted was a few K more, and then it seemed to get personal with one of the other players. :-)

I got a question for you Armen. You came to the final table with 9k, and the antes were 4k...You proceeded to fold two hands in a row to leave you with 1k. You then went on a little roll, doubled up a few times, and got up to 250k I think at one point. But then you let the blinds go through you and even though you are posting half your stack, you didn't defend. To get through a crap shoot tourney like the 500k, you obviously have to have some poker knowledge and ability in tournaments, but your play at the final table was questionable at best. You folded in spots where, unless the software messed up and only dealt you one card, all your money should have been in the middle regardless of your cards.So my question: was it a money thing, meaning were you intent on blinding off as long as you could move up a spot or two? Or are you very new to poker?I'm not asking to be a jerk, or to flame you. I cover the final table for pokertrails.com, so I was watching last night and I have all the hand histories. I was in the middle of writing my report, and I saw your post on here so I thought I'd ask what your motives were there before I wrote about it.For the record, once you let your stack get to 1k after posting the two antes and then proceeded to come back, I was rooting for you. As a writer, it would have been too good to be true. :-) Congrats on the showing, and again, no offense meant by this.Patrick

Luske really showed he was in a league by himself. I'm surprised he even entertained a chop. once no deal was made he steam rolled the table...also I too was surprised by Armen's play to get blinded off, seemed to me was praying for some others to bust out to move up a spot...not sure thats a good startegy, but he was at the final table...

Yeah, Luske was smart enough to realize the play at the table had been mediocre at best. Even Brainwash, who's success has been tremendous in the Sunday tourneys, made a couple of questionable moves.As for Armen, he obviously played well to get that far, but it seems pretty obvious he was trying to hang on and make as much $$ as possible. Horrible strategy, (Armen: read Tournament Poker for Advanced Players by David Sklansky) but you can't fault a guy for trying to make more money if that was what was important to him.Patrick

[armen13 0]

Thanks for the interest Patrick. I will try to answer some of your questions as best I can. I do not remember many of the specific hands and just ordered the hand history. Anyway, here is my take on it.You asked a very specific question about whether or not I was hanging on for as many $$ as possible. In a sense I was. That is why I play poker. That and many other reasons. Was that on my mind when I got to the final table. Yes again, but it was not the foremost reason I played the way I did. My goal was to get as far as I could. I wanted to play as best I could for as long as I could. I had been playing fairly aggressively throughout the tourney and was not afraid to shove the couple of chips I had if I thought I had a reasonable chance of success. Let me clarify.When I had far less than the big blind left, in fact only enough to ante a few more times I had to make a choice. Here is what I thought about:1- How are the pot odds? Extremely good, in fact unbelievable. with Just a few thousand bet I could go up to over 80k IF I WON. However, one important fact was that the pot odds would still be there if I did not play. So the immediate pot odds were not an overriding factor in whether or not I would play the hand I had at the time. 2- How many more hands can I play before being forced all in? Early on, it was a handful, 3 or 4. That means 3 or 4 ante's before I am forced all in.3- Is my hand likely to improve if I wait? If I had a hand far bellow average, I would guess (or hope) yes.4- What am I up against. I was at a full table. The size of my stack had no impact on the hands that were received by the other 8 players. So chances were that I would be up against a good hand (not necessarily a monster hand). Against such a hand, any 2 garbage cards would have pretty much the same chance, from one hand to another. So waiting did not reduce my chance of winning the hand. Boy did I get garbage. I was not expecting pocket Aces, but 8 3 off suit and all it's relatives decided to visit. 5- Who am I up against: I had so few chips that I was guaranteed a call by at least the big blind, if not by a raiser. this worked to my advantage later when I did get good cards, but early on it meant that the other players had 0 intimidation factor by my going all in. They had nothing to lose by calling me and everything to gain by knocking out 9th. In my situation, the gap concept just did not apply.6- what's my edge? nothing. With these in mind I thought I could wait another hand and see if the cards got better. They did not and I was forced all in and sucked out ( a great feeling no matter what anyone tells you). and so it went on, until the blind came to me again. same logic same results. This bought me time. Time would get me two things. First, it would let some others get big hands and get excited and knock each other out (this eventually happened). While moving up a spot was to my advantage, it would not solve my problem of having too few chips. You see what I really wanted to do was play. Interspersed with these garbage hands came some real gems. I got Kings twice and an AQ. I also sucked out with 99 against TT. At one point I got up to over 250k. Now things changed. I was actually in 7th place in chips. I wanted to see what DMD would do. He had been playing very tightly and I wanted to see how he would run. At this point there certainly was no reason to jump in with trash hands. Eventually he got the cards he needed and doubled up. Good for him. During this period of time, I did get a couple of ok hands which I admit to folding but I took my time and considered each hand carefully. But in most of these cases I was in bad position (early with most players still to act) or the pot was being hotly contested (which would have given me the opportunity to triple up, but I considered it a long shot) When I did see the flop, which was not as rare as I thought it would be, these hands would have been crushed. There was one blind I would have liked to defend in retrospect. El Capitano raised on the button and it passed to me. I had a T7 and enough chips to make a double up significant for me. He was very likely stealing and I did realize this at the time, but this came after a good run and I just felt I would be pushing my luck. If I had won, it would have left Marcel with about 300k and could have changed the tournament entirely. Anyway, 250k does not last long when you are paying 138k per round in blinds and antes. Hey, at least Marcel was the one who took me out.Hope this was helpful.

[PMJackson21 0]

Thanks for the interest Patrick.  I will try to answer some of your questions as best I can.  I do not remember many of the specific hands and just ordered the hand history.  Anyway, here is my take on it.You asked a very specific question about whether or not I was hanging on for as many $$ as possible.  In a sense I was.  That is why I play poker.  That and many other reasons.  Was that on my mind when I got to the final table.  Yes again, but it was not the foremost reason I played the way I did.  My goal was to get as far as I could.  I wanted to play as best I could for as long as I could.   I had been playing fairly aggressively throughout the tourney and was not afraid to shove the couple of chips I had if I thought I had a reasonable chance of success.  Let me clarify.When I had far less than the big blind left, in fact only enough to ante a few more times I had to make a choice.  Here is what I thought about:1-  How are the pot odds?  Extremely good, in fact unbelievable.  with Just a few thousand bet I could go up to over 80k IF I WON.  However, one important fact was that the pot odds would still be there if I did not play.  So the immediate pot odds were not an overriding factor in whether or not I would play the hand I had at the time.  2-  How many more hands can I play before being forced all in?  Early on, it was a handful, 3 or 4.  That means 3 or 4 ante's before I am forced all in.3- Is my hand likely to improve if I wait?  If I had a hand far bellow average, I would guess (or hope) yes.4- What am I up against.  I was at a full table.  The size of my stack had no impact on the hands that were received by the other 8 players.  So chances were that I would be up against a good hand (not necessarily a monster hand).  Against such a hand, any 2 garbage cards would have pretty much the same chance, from one hand to another. So waiting did not reduce my chance of winning the hand. Boy did I get garbage.  I was not expecting pocket Aces, but 8 3 off suit and all it's relatives decided to visit.  5- Who am I up against:  I had so few chips that I was guaranteed a call by at least the big blind, if not by a raiser.  this worked to my advantage later when I did get good cards, but early on it meant that the other players had 0 intimidation factor by my going all in.  They had nothing to lose by calling me and everything to gain by knocking out 9th.  In my situation, the gap concept just did not apply.6-  what's my edge?  nothing.  With these in mind I thought I could wait another hand and see if the cards got better.  They did not and I was forced all in and sucked out ( a great feeling no matter what anyone tells you). and so it went on, until the blind came to me again.  same logic same results.  This bought me time. Time would get me two things.  First, it would let some others get big hands and get excited and knock each other out (this eventually happened). While moving up a spot was to my advantage, it would not solve my problem of having too few chips.  You see what I really wanted to do was play.  *snip rest*:

I'm sorry Armen, but none of that explains, or excuses, folding the first 3 hands with antes of 3k+3k+4k, when you have only a little over 11k total. I don't even know why you mentioend the Gap Factor; it has nothing to do with this situation. You also mention the intimidation factor...Uh, you had 1/6 of a big blind...Of course they aren't going to fold; you are only posting for a portion of their BB.The incredible odds you were getting on thsoe three hands was enough to warrant an all-in, regardless of your two cards.Hand #1 - 9 handed, blinds 30k/60k with 3k antes. After posting your ante of 3k, you have around 8k left. If you go all-in here for your 8k, you are entitled to the antes + 8k from the BB and SB each. If anyone else calls or raises, that's another 8k. To keep it simple, let's just say no one else got involved in the hand. So:27k (antes) + 8k (bb) + 8k (sb) = 43kThat means you would be getting at the least over 5-1 on your money.Hand #2 - Same variables, but now you only have a little over 5k after posting your ante:27k (antes) + 5k(bb) + 5k(sb) = 37kSo, this time you were getting over 7-1.Hand #3 - Blinds raise to 40k/80k with 4k antes. This means new variables:36k (antes) + 1k + 1k = 38kSo now, you are down to the point where it costs you a little over 1k in chips to win ____38k____ in chips. This was an absolute, without a doubt, call, regardless. There is no hand that is even close to a 38-1 dog.So, you then were forced in for 1/4 of an ante, and proceeded to double up a few times, but you again let it all blind/ante off. This was just as bad as the play of the first 3 hands, because now you had enough chiips that if you doubled up, you could get your stack healthy again. Chips = leverage, and by you letting them all waste away, you took away any sort of chance you had of becoming a force. Ignoring the basic math of all of this, you had 1/6th of a big blind at the start of the final table! There isn't a tournament professional alive that wouldn't have all his chips in the middle without even looking at his cards. It's a no brainer; As I said, I'd really consider reading Tournament Poker for Advanced Players by Sklansky if I were you. Again, not to flame, but your logic/line of thinking in this situation was very flawed. I really am trying to be helpful here, because you seem like an intelligent enough guy, so please take my advice and read TPFAP.Patrick

[kinghill 0]

It's always interesting to hear details about a player's thought process during a big final table. Thanks for sharing, armen. I must say it was entertaining to watch when the tourney was down to around 3 tables (IIRC) when you were short-stacked, in no way did I expect you to make the FT. GG! You definitely got some luck down the stretch, which is always needed in a big MTT.Also Patrick thanks for the HH analysis, I'd have to agree with pushing allin on one of those first two hands (i didn't see final table, so just going by your HH record)

[BACKDRAFT999 0]

Definitely Marcel.Plus, you gotta love how he said something like "If you need to buy/sell W$ go to tradepoker.com"...Lee politely told him to shut up, wonder how much he got paid to say that...Noah was plugging tradepoker the other day also.

It was not Marcel but, Noah Boeken or Exclusive playing on Marcels account. Here's the chat from the stars 100-200 game. Exclusive: lost half already in 4 daysTeam Angle: half what?Exclusive: won the 215 last sundayExclusive: 127kjakz101: no kidding?jakz101: congratsExclusive: tyTeam Angle: i have NEVER EVER seen you loseTeam Angle: i thought Marcel wonExclusive: u should have been at the event jakz saw me in i lost 20k chips, not that i know ofExclusive: nah its his account i played it

[PMJackson21 0]

Definitely Marcel.Plus, you gotta love how he said something like "If you need to buy/sell W$ go to tradepoker.com"...Lee politely told him to shut up, wonder how much he got paid to say that...Noah was plugging tradepoker the other day also.

It was not Marcel but, Noah Boeken or Exclusive playing on Marcels account. Here's the chat from the stars 100-200 game.

That makes sense; some of the chat seemed beneath Marcel.Patrick