No talk of deals. No debates about ICM chop or chip-count chops. Just utter silence and total domination, letting the chips fall where they may (as it were). In the 2013 Turbo Championship of Online Poker Event 39, $82 FLHE (6-max), the chips all fell to LCFG-NPDA. That player notched every single elimination at the six-handed final table en route to a dominating victory.
Precisely 1,400 players registered for Event 39. Their buy-ins totaled $105,000. The final 30 tables of the tournament would be in the money and guaranteed the minimum payout of $136.50. Four-figure payouts started with two tables left; five-figure payouts were reserved for the runner-up and the champion.
Seven members of the Red Spade Brigade - Team PokerStars Pro and PokerStars Team Online - entered Event 39. Three were still in the hunt as the money bubble approached. Team Online player Richard "Tzen1" Veenman came up just short, crashing out in 198th place. Team Pro Martin "AABenjaminAA" Hruby squeezed in under the wire. He busted out in 171st place for a minimum-cash.
That left Team Pro Marcin "Goral" Horecki. Horecki loves these PokerStars tournament series, and with good reason. He does incredibly well in them. Today in Event 39, he pushed all the way to a 32nd-place finish, good for $425.25.
Despite that admireable finish, Horecki would have to look to another TCOOP for a five-figure score. In Event 39, that honor would go to two of these six players.
Seat 1: Gawil (954464 in chips)
Seat 2: osten (407664 in chips)
Seat 3: SikaTrx (897093 in chips)
Seat 4: LCFG-NPDA (1822139 in chips)
Seat 5: MaxErosAmore (1937855 in chips)
Seat 6: fileasfog (980785 in chips)
Level 39: 80k-160k limits
Average: 1.17 million (7.5 big bets)
Moving day comes early
There was a wide distribution of stacks to start the final table. LCFG-NPDA and MaxErosAmore were the leaders but by no means safe from an early exit. On the other end of the spectrum, osten - a WCOOP winner last September in a $320 Stud event - would need to make an early move in order to have any shot at winning the event. That move came on the second head of the final table:
SikaTrx, crippled by that loss, went out in 6th place the next hand with [kc][9d] versus LCFG-NPDA's pocket 6s.
Limits moved up to 100k-200k and threatened to turn the final table into a three-horse race. Both fileasfog and Gawil were extremely short-stacked. They had fewer than two big bets each. fileasfog doubled up with [ac][kc] on the button against big blind osten's [ah][9d]. Three bets went in pre-flop to get fileasfog all-in and a king on the flop basically ensured victory.
Gawil was not so lucky against LCFG-NPDA. Three bets were in pre-flop again, enough for Gawil to be all-in with [ad][9h]. LCFG-NPDA showed down presto, [5s][5c], and claimed the pot on a [4s][th][kh][6h][tc] board. Gawil earned $4,305 for 5th place.
Two big pots in a row knocked osten out in 4th place, underscoring just how big the limits had become at the final table. MaxErosAmore opened the button with a raise to 200k, then called osten's big-blind three-bet to 300k. osten bet the [8h][5h][4d] flop and the [qs] turn. MaxErosAmore called each time. On the river [2c], osten checked then called a bet of 200k from MaxErosAmore, who showed down [9s][4s] for a pair of fours. Osten mucked.
The next hand, down to 462k, osten got all in pre-flop on a series of raises against LCFG-NPDA. LCFG-NPDA had the best hand, [kd][2d], but osten was drawing live with [jd][8s]. The board blanked out, allowing LCFG-NPDA to notch another elimination with just king-high.
LCFG-NPDA closes it out
LCFG-NPDA continued to apply pressure to the remaining players, fileasfog and MaxErosAmore. Things were going so well that LCFG-NPDA amassed more than 5 million chips, with the remaining 2 million split between the other two players.
The end came for MaxErosAmore first. LCFG-NPDA opened to 240k from the small blind; MaxErosAmore defended. LCFG-NPDA bet the ace-high flop, [ad][jc][5d], and the [9d] turn. MaxErosAmore called both bets, taking the two players to the [7h] river. LCFG-NPDA checked, then called MaxErosAmore's last 66k bet. Neither player had anything, but LCFG-NPDA's [kh][ts] nothing was better than MaxErosAmore's [qd][8h] nothing. MaxErosAmore was gone in 3rd place.
That hand gave LCFG-NPDA about a 9-to-1 chip lead at the start of heads-up play with fileasfog. Worse for fileasfog was the fact that fileasfog's stack of 663k represented about 3 big bets at the 120k-240k level.
Despite that handicap, fileasfog climbed as high as 1.46 million in chips before LCFG-NPDA rattled off five straight winners to close out the match and the tournament. On the last hand, the two players capped the action pre-flop. fileasfog was all in after one bet on the [qd][qh][jc] flop. LCFG-NPDA called with unimproved [ah][9c] and was once again ahead of an unimproved opponent, as fileasfog produced [kd][3d]. The [as] turn improved LCFG-NPDA to a pair of aces but gave fileasfog a few survival shots on the river. The [5h] that came wasn't one of the cards fileasfog needed.
Six players came to the final table of TCOOP 2013 Event 39. Five were eliminated. LCFG-NPDA dominated the final table from beginning to end, notched all the eliminations, and claimed a first COOP victory.
TCOOP 2013 Event 39 $82 FLHE (6-max) results:
1st: LCFG-NPDA ($17,325.00)
2nd: fileasfog ($13,020.00)
3rd: MaxErosAmore ($9,712.50)
4th: osten ($6,720.00)
5th: Gawil ($4,305.00)
6th: SikaTrx ($2,887.50)
Time's running out on TCOOP 2013. Check out the point standings and the remaining events at the TCOOP home page.
Dave Behr is a freelance contributor to the PokerStars Blog.