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Bad beats are nothing to be scared of at Unibet Open Riga!

If you bust out of Unibet Open Riga on a really nasty beat, there may be some consolation for you – €4,000 worth of consolation, in fact. We’ve been tracking bad beats all season in the Unibet Open Live Main Events, and whoever’s suffered the worst one at the end of the 2001 tour will receive an incredible Rolex Submariner watch.

The nastiest beat we’ve seen so far was dealt to Simon Wilenius at Unibet Open Malta – his kings full was beaten by Pierre Milan’s quad queens. Ouch.

Are you thinking to yourself, “Standard”? If you think you run worse than Mr. Wilenius, you need to try your luck at Unibet Open Riga. Direct buy-ins are open now, and satellites are running daily from freerolls up – see the How to Qualify tab above for full details. We wish you the best of luck in the Unibet Open – but if things go really wrong in the tournament, you could still walk away a winner with a very nice bit of wrist candy to show for your trouble…

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As we head towards the final two legs of this year’s Unibet Open Tour, there is more at stake than ever at the top of the Leaderboard.

More than €70,000 has already been collected towards the Leaderboard prize pool, and there is still time to pick up valuable Leaderboard points – but you had better get your skates on if you want a share of the cash!

There are three ways to accumulate Leaderboard points:

• Play Unibet Open Online 6 on November 13th.

– All ten players who make the final table will be awarded Leaderboard points. Online qualifiers are running daily, from freeroll up.

• Play Unibet Open Riga.

– Just playing the tournament will get you 10 Leaderboard points, and the better you do, the more points you’ll get. Qualifiers are running daily.

• Play on Unibet.

– All players who earn 10,000 VIP points between our last event (Unibet Open Dublin) and the start of Unibet Open Riga will get an extra 10 Leaderboard points.

The top ten places on the Leaderboard will pay out, and with the total prize pool expected to top €100,000, you’d be a fool to miss out on your shot. Full rules for the Leaderboard can be found here here and you can see what you’re up against here. Good luck, and see you at the tables!

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UOO5 champion Henrik Hecklen. Photo courtesy of Hypepoker

The ten finalists were rewarded not only some very hefty cash prizes, but also some all-important points towards the 2011 Unibet Open Leaderboard.

The event drew 101 runners, and Hecklen’s win earned him a whopping €9,090.

Particular congratulations also go to Unibet Ambassador Paul Valkenburg who finished in eighth place winning €1,212 and eight Leaderboard points, and to Unibet Open Dublin Team Challenge winner Sampo Ryynanen who finished in ninth place for €909 and six Leaderboard points .

The next online event will take place on November 13th.

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Can’t wait until Riga? Never fear, as you need look no further than your laptop to get your Unibet Open fix. That’s right – the time is almost upon us for UO Online 5!

UO Online 5 starts at 19:00 CET on October 2nd, and there’s a guaranteed €25,000 prize pool up for grabs – not bad for a €300+20 buy in. And there’s still time to qualify for as little as €2+.20 in our daily satellites – just go to the Unibet poker lobby and look up > Tournaments > Unibet Open. Blinds are 20 minutes, and the structure is the same as at the Unibet Open Live events.

To qualify for UO Online 5, you’ll need to satellite or buy into one of these tournaments:
• Mon-Wed 22:00 CET: €55+5 daily UOO Final Satellite (use UO ticket or cash to buy-in)
• Thu-Sun 22:00 CET: €100+10 UOO Final Satellite (use UO ticket or cash to buy-in)

There’s an extra incentive as well – making the final table in a Unibet Open Online will earn you some all-important Leaderboard points. With 5% of the prize pool in every Unibet Open live event withheld for the winners of the Leaderboard at the end of the season, it’s worth your while to collect those points. Click here for the Leaderboard rules and points distribution.

Alexander Debus, winner of UO Online 4, earned himself €7,500 and 40 Leaderboard points in August – could you be the next UO Online champion? There’s only one way to find out.

Terms and Conditions:
• Each player may only win one seat to any Unibet Open Online event
• All satellite qualifiers will receive a tournament specific ticket feeding directly to the next Unibet Open Online event.
• Tickets to the event are not transferable and may not be exchanged for cash.
• Tickets won to a specific event may not be exchanged for a package/seat to a future Unibet Open event.
• If you win a ticket and you’re unable to play the event, your prize will be forfeited
• €25,000 guaranteed prize pool.
• The top 10 finishing positions of the Unibet Open Online will be awarded leaderboard points towards the yearly Unibet Open Leaderboard. Check the Unibet Open website for further details: http://www.unibetopen.com/leaderboard/.
• Unibet reserves the right to change these conditions at any time.

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The third stop on this year’s tour saw the Unibet Open team descend on Ireland’s capital Dublin for the first time in Unibet history. The Citywest Hotel and golf resort just outside the city became the glamorous home for four days to our numerous online qualifiers as well as a strong-looking contingent of Irish players, all hoping to take down the coveted Unibet Open title and over €100,000 for first place.

With four or more events scheduled to run every day between Thursday and Sunday, there was a huge amount of choice for all the players, including a raucously entertaining team event between some of the Dutch and Finnish players. With regular turbo events, a couple of Omaha events and even a ‘flip’ tournament (in the form of blind Omaha – which drew huge crowds!) there was enough to cater for every kind of player.

The biggest draw for the players, naturally, was the Main Event. The €1,500 NLH freezeout drew a considerable field of 260 runners with more players from the Netherlands than any other single country. Two Dutch success stories from recent Unibet Opens faced contrasting fortunes in the early levels. Mateusz Moolhuizen (Unibet Open Malta champion) was a very early casualty on Day 1a but Pim van Riet, who finished third in Barcelona, quickly became the chip leader after his aces held against a flush draw to double him up early on. From then on, van Riet would consolidate his huge stack, eventually finishing with 222,300, good enough for the chip lead at the end of Day 1a.

The Day 1b field was somewhat heavier on the big name pros than Day 1a. EPT Grand Final winner Pieter de Korver made an appearance, as did four WSOP bracelet winners: Jorg Peisert, Marcel Vonk, Scott Shelley and local hero and Irish Open champion Marty Smyth. On top of this, James Sudworth, Dara O’Kearney and Marvin Rettenmaier all also put in an appearance -although for the latter of these it would be nothing more than a cameo as the young German busted very quickly. Joni Joukimainen was among those who fared better than Rettenmaier – the Finn (who won the team event the day before) managed to finish the day with 95,000, well above average. Also above average at the end of Day 1b were Marty Smyth (70,800) and former Unibet Open winner Henri Ojala (57,400). But these stacks were all dwarfed by another Dutchman at the top of the leaderboard as Joey Vittali finished with 193,500 – going into Day 2 second in chips.

82 players came back for Day 2 on Saturday but with only 30 places being paid, it was going to be a battle as more than half our players would still be going home with nothing more than a story to tell their family and friends. The casualties came thick and fast early on, the talented Will Dorey among them as he ran Kings into George McKeever’s Aces. McKeever, a well-known local player, hit a rush of cards and suddenly found himself on over 200,000, up there among the chip leaders. Pieter de Korver had returned on the second day as a short stack and although he managed to score a few early double ups, it proved to be a false dawn – he eventually ran Jacks into John Gallagher’s Aces, ending the EPT winner’s dream of picking up a Unibet title to add to his trophy cabinet.

Unibet Open Prague winner Henri Ojala was looking to be the first player to win a second title and he got it in good with As-Kc against Dalil Masaud’s Ks-Js but the board ran out 5s-Qh-4s-2h-Qs making a flush for Masaud, and the Finn could only politely wish everyone good luck as he left the tournament. The big names continued to fall – Marty Smyth, the last bracelet winner in the field, was soon to follow Ojala off the stage, the number of Irishmen in the tournament dwindling significantly as the bubble approached.

Hand-for-hand, it took just a few minutes for the bubble to burst in a three-way cooler. Soren Knudsen had moved all in preflop with a short stack holding Ad-Qd before Boris Kuzmanovic reraised all in from the cut-off with pocket Kings – and then Sebastian Skuja called all in from the big blind as well with Aces! Kuzmanvoic had the other two players covered and when the board came 2s-6h-Ks-6d-Js, he eliminated both. Knudsen went out 31st while Skuja’s one silver lining was that he’d just made the money and picked up €2,340 for his efforts.

With money now guaranteed to all the remaining players, the lull in eliminations disappeared again as British player Paul Vas Nunes took over the chip lead and became the first player to break the million mark after knocking out Jonas Nielsen with Tens versus Nines. Vas Nunes increased his chip lead with two tables left. He flopped the nut straight with Q-T against Herve Decker’s second pair to push his chip stack up even higher – at one point he had double the stack of the next man.

Last Irishman standing John Gallagher was knocked out in 12th place when he ran Td-8d into Emil Pedersen’s Ad-Tc, an ace on the door making it a disappointing finish for the home nation, unable to get a player on to the final table. There was some disappointment for the Netherlands, too – Day 1b chip leader Joey Vitalli became the final elimination of Day 2, narrowly missing out on a final table appearance. He and Paul Vas Nunes both flopped top pair but Vas Nunes’ kicker was better – Vitalli hit the rail in 10th place and Vas Nunes and went into the final table with a big chip lead.

Seat 1: Pim van Riet – 527,000
Seat 2: Paul Vas Nunes – 1,483,000
Seat 3: Tommy Almqvist – 618,000
Seat 4: Boris Kuzmanovic – 705,000
Seat 5: Morten Kjaer Jensen – 257,000
Seat 6: Peter Harkes – 583,000
Seat 7: Thomas Svengaard – 181,000
Seat 8: Emil Pedersen – 397,000
Seat 9: Marcel Scherjon – 419,000

Tommy Almqvist hit a big early double up through Kuzmanovic with Aces against A-J to jump into second place but it wasn’t too long before we lost two of our short stacks, both of them Danes. First Thomas Svengaard lost a flip to Almqvist (A-K no good against 9-9); soon after, Morten Jensen’s J-T proved no help to him against Kuzmanovic’s pocket Fives.

Marcel Scherjon was eliminated next. He got it in good with pocket Aces, all in preflop against Emil Pedersen’s Tc-8c – but the latter made two pair, leaving Scherjon crippled. Scherjon soon moved in with fives but found Kuzmanovic dominating him with eights, and busted out in seventh place. Despite knocking out these two players, it was Kuzmanovic himself who would be out in 6th place. He pushed over the top with pocket Fives against a Vas Nunes raise. But pocket Fives proved to be unlucky once more as the Englishman called with pocket Tens. The 2-2-J-7-4 board changed nothing and the Croatian left with €19,000 as consolation.

Emil Pedersen’s 3d-3c managed to hold against Peter Harkes’ Ad-Kd in a make-or-break flip which allowed the former to triumph and put Harkes out in fifth place. A couple of hands later and Pedersen was in the middle of the action once more, all in with Ah-9h against Almqvist’s 3c-3h, this time for a huge 1.6 million pot (with 5.2 million in play). This time Almqvist spiked a set on the flop and won the pot and Pedersen was left with just 60,000 chips to his name.

Incredibly this was the start of an amazing comeback as Pedersen doubled up four consecutive times as well winning a couple of substantial pots to go from a micro-stack to the chip lead with over 2.1 million. Meanwhile Almqvist had become short and ended up calling all in with Th-5h – actually ahead against Vas Nunes’ 9-2 offsuit, but a 9-7-5-9-Q board spelled the end for the Swede and he had to make do with €27,000 for his fourth place finish.

Pim van Riet, who came third in Barcelona, replicated his result here when he 4-bet shoved A-8 into Vas Nunes’ A-K. The Dutch player had a fairly quiet final table but his result here has put him at the top of the Unibet leaderboard with two online events and one live event to go.

With Van Riet’s exit, Paul Vas Nunes held a 3:2 chip lead against Emil Pedersen but the heads up battle took less than ten hands to finish. With the blinds at 25,000/50,000 Pedersen opened to 110,000, Vas Nunes made it 300,000 from the big blind and Pedersen then 4-bet to a cool 1 million. The rest of the chips quickly went in and it was Vas Nunes’ against Pedersen’s , a classic flip. The board came – Vas Nunes successfully dodging a substantial number of outs to win the €105,300 first prize and become the first British player to take down a Unibet Open.

With that all wrapped up, we’ll see you next in Riga in December!

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Busted out of the tournament on a bad beat?

If you’re beaten at one of the Unibet Open Live events, be sure to report it to the floor manager.

The player with the worst bad beat at the end of the year will receive an incredible Rolex Submariner watch worth over €4,000!

* please note that it is the responsibility of the player to report their bad beat to the floor manager.
* The player with the worst bad beat in one of the live events at the end of the year will receive the Rolex watch

The bad beat to beat right now is:

Simon Wilenius, Unibet Open Malta 2011

Players in the Hand: Pierre Milan and Simon Wilenius

Simon’s story:
Blinds were 100/200. Milan raised under the gun for 550, guy in utg +2 call, I 3-bet to 1875 from cutoff -2, Milan 4-bet and made it 4875ish, guy who limped folded, I toke my time, we had played a couple hands with each other so a little history between us. Then I 5-bet All in with around 30.000ish. He thought long and called….

Wilenius:
Milan:

Board:
Turn:
River:

[HAND:20110902114838942]

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Congratulations to Alexander Debus from Germany who won Unibet Open Online 4!

The top ten players were rewarded not only with a cash prize but also with points towards the 2011 Unibet Open Leaderboard
The event drew 69 runners.

The next online event will take place on 2nd October 2011.

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Unibet Ambassador Dan Glimne

Article by Dan Glimne

Inevitably, just like in any other game involving the element of chance, good and bad luck play their part in poker; and our obsession with it can sometimes go beyond most limits.

One classic anecdote in this regard concerns Jack Straus, the 1982 world champion. It is the mid-1980’s and Jack is in the middle of a poker game one evening at Binion’s Horseshoe in Las Vegas – and stuck for a couple of thousand dollars, after suffering some severe bad luck. There is a phone call for him and Jack goes over to the poker manager’s desk to take it; this is before the age of mobile phones. At the other end of the line is an old friend of Jack’s, who is making his last call from Death Row in one of the prisons down in Texas.

“Jack”, says his friend sorrowfully, “the Governor denied my pardon earlier today, so I’m afraid it’s the electric chair for me tomorrow…”

“Yeah, yeah”, Jack impatiently interrupts him, “Just wait until you hear what an unbelievably lousy day I’ve had at the tables…”

The Main Event in this year’s World Series of Poker was a short affair for me: some five hours or so of Day 1, and then I was out. When I hit my best hand of the day, a full house, a Japanese player on my immediate left had slow-played a pair of Kings to sneakily hit a higher full house, which cost me half of my stack to find out; and the rest of my stack vanished when I hit my second-best hand of the day, a King-high flush… which of course right at that moment was up against an Ace-high flush. Bad luck, bad play, bad timing? Whatever the combination of the three, it sent me to the rail.

Play poker long enough, and you will see not only the improbable but also the nearly impossible happen. Mathematically, when playing hold’em, the worst bad beat you can suffer at any given moment is being outdrawn on a 1-in-990 shot: if after the flop you have the stone-cold nuts, and your opponent’s only chance of outdrawing you is hitting the perfect turn card AND the perfect river card in succession. In other words you can have a 99.9% chance of winning the pot, and still lose it. That is the reality of poker.

Has it happened? Of course: On Day 1A of the 2006 Main Event of the WSOP, one player got his chips all in with a pair of Fives against another with a pair of black Eights, upon which the flop was 5-5-6 with two spades. Nothing less than quads, versus a mere weak overpair; has the player with four Fives won the pot? No, as the turn was the 7 of spades… and the river the 9 of spades, giving the player holding 8-8 a straight flush. Now that’s as bad a beat as it gets.

Another famous hand, but from Day 1 of the 2008 Main Event of the WSOP, had the American player Justin Phillips with K-J of diamonds up against the Japanese player Motoyuki Mabuchi holding A-A. The board came A of hearts, Queen of diamonds, 9 of clubs… and then 10 of diamonds on the turn and A of diamonds on the river, and of course the money went all-in since Mabuchi had quad Aces but Phillips had caught the perfect turn and river to make a royal and bust Mabuchi. Ooops.

But wait, it can actually get even worse. Here is an anecdote told by former world champion Greg Raymer to journalists when he visited Oslo in 2005 – and I am not about to argue about how true it is, I am just quoting him:

It is a cashgame in Las Vegas, and two players are all-in before the flop. Even though they do not have to (as it is a cashgame), they turn up their cards: one has 7-7, the other has A-A. The dealer turns up the flop… which is 7-7-x!
“Oh well”, the player with the Aces mutters. “I’ve still got two more Aces in the deck.”

“No, you don’t”, replies a third player at the table. “I folded an Ace with a weak kicker when you guys went all in.”

“So did I”, says a fourth player. “There are no more Aces left in the deck.”

Right then, it happens; at the adjoining table a player wins a huge pot, jumps up to shout with joy… and bumps into a passing waitress so that her tray, drinks and all, spill out over the table with the upturned Sevens and Aces and cause the dealer to drop the cards in hand; in short, everything is a total mess. Once things have been mopped up, the floor manager is called over to take a decision. He calls for a new deck, orders the exposed hole cards and the flop to be restored, and the rest of the cards to be shuffled together and the turn and the river to be dealt out to finish the hand. And of course, the turn is… the third Ace, and the river is… the fourth Ace, giving the pot to the player who now has quad Aces.

As the Danish writer H.C. Andersen once said, some stories are so good that they deserve to be true.

And in this year’s Unibet Open live series, with two more events to go in Dublin and in Riga, there is a special “award” for suffering the worst bad beat of the series: a specially engraved Rolex watch, as a consolation prize. And the candidate so far? It is this hand, from the Barcelona Unibet Open:

Player A raises with 7-7, player B reraises with K-K, player A calls, and the flop is K-8-7 rainbow. Both players have hit their sets, and of course all the remaining chips go in, via a flurry of bets and raises. The cards are tabled: 7c-7d versus Kc-Kd, and Player A is drawing thin indeed: no re-draws to any improbable flushes or anything else, so his hope rests on one single card in the deck, the remaining Seven. Player B with the three Kings has a massive 96% chance of taking down the pot… but of course that fourth Seven hits on the turn, followed by a blank Queen on the river.

As you can see from the above WSOP examples, there is however plenty of room for “improvement” when it comes to improbable bad beats in the two remaining Unibet Open events! And with my luck in Las Vegas this year to go by, I would not be surprised to find out that it is me in the end wearing that Rolex on my wrist, while I bore my friends and poker colleagues with yet another war story from the green felt.

But my favourite bad beat story of all time, and a guaranteed true one at that? It has to be this one, from the early 1990s and once again the legendary casino Binion’s Horseshoe in Las Vegas. In a single-table satellite to the Main Event of the WSOP, there are now only two players left, heads up: former world champion Jack Keller, and Todd Brunson, son of the famous Doyle Brunson. Todd Brunson is holding the A-K of diamonds, Jack Keller the Queen of spades and the Jack of clubs, all the chips go in before the flop, and the flop is… Queen of diamonds, Jack of diamonds and Two of clubs, giving Keller top two pair but Todd a monster draw. The turn card is… the Ten of diamonds, giving Todd Brunson a royal straight flush!! Keller gets up to shake Todd Brunson’s hand and congratulate him on his victory – but is it all over? Has Keller lost the satellite? Is it really game, set, and match?

No… the river card is a second Jack of diamonds!! “I had never seen anything like that, and still haven’t to this day”, writes Doyle Brunson in his book “My 50 Most Memorable Hands” when he recalls that hand which he witnessed as a spectator. The floor manager of course has no choice but to step in and declare the hand void and the chips returned, so that the match could continue.

As the saying goes, ”It aint over till it’s over.” Goes to show you that sometimes not even a 100% chance of winning the pot is enough. See you in Dublin and Riga, fellow optimists and pessimists alike!

[HAND:20110808140440383]

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“The Vic” will be hosting a UK exclusive live satellite for Unibet Open Dublin at their prestigious Poker Room in London. There be a guaranteed Unibet Open Dublin Package worth €2500 up for grabs and there will be no registration fee for the UO Dublin Satellite!
All monies collected will go into the prize pool, as part of fantastic promotion “The Vic” is running throughout August: no registration fees for any of their tournaments!
Unibet Open Dublin Live Satellite:

• Location:
  

  “The Vic” Poker Room, London.

• The Grosvenor Victoria Casino, 150 – 162 Edgware Road, London, W2 2DT
• The Tournament Starts: 20:30 August 19th 2011 (Alternates First Three Levels)
• Buy-in: £150 No Registration
• Type: No Limit Hold’em Freeze-out
• Starting Stack: 7500
• Clock: 25 Minutes
• First place is guaranteed a Unibet Open Dublin package worth €2500. All other monies will generate Unibet Open Dublin seats worth €1650.

Unibet Open Dublin Package €2500:

• Main Event Seat €1650
• 4 Nights accommodation at The 4-star City West Hotel
• Invitations to both Unibet Open Parties (Welcome drinks and Saturday night party)
• Breakfast & dinner during the event
• €300 towards travel money

More info: http://www.europeanpokerevents.com/UO-Dublin-Live-Satellites.php

Satellites will also be announced in Dublin & Cork – details to follow shortly.

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20,000 starting chips in the Main Event

Playing the main Event you will receive 33% more chips at the start of the tournament than in the past. The 20,000 starting stack will give players a greater opportunity to play more hands and enable players to take greater chances in increasing their chipstack at the beginning of this exciting tournament!

Unibet Flips Championships

The event format is heads up and it won’t take much skill and ability, just good old fashioned luck, and I’m sure being in Ireland you’ll be able to borrow the “luck of the Irish”!
For anyone who doesn’t know what flips are here is a quick description. (Its heads or tails) We sit you down facing your opponent. The dealer takes the customised Unibet/EPE coin. Player one calls Unibet or EPE and the dealer flips the coin. Whichever side lands face up is the winner, the contest is best of three and progresses to the next round.

Type of game: Flip of a Coin
Registration starts: 4:30pm
Tournament starts: 6pm
Starting chips: 1
Buy-in: €135 + €15 Registration
Blinds: Best out of three
Maximum: 64 players

Unibet Team Challenge Event

Type of game: NLH Team Event Shoot-Out
Registration starts: 4pm
Tournament starts: 6pm
Buy-in: €300 + €30 Registration
Starting chips: 10 000
Maximum: 64 (8 teams of 8)

The Unibet Team Championship will be a 64 player shootout tournament. The first part of the tournament will be the team event where one player from each team will battle it out against players from the other teams. That is one player from each team on one table, eight tables in total. Each player will be awarded points depending on their finishing place. The team with the most points will win the title of “Unibet Team Champions” as well as scooping the team Prize money of €9,600 (€1,200 for each team member). Teams of 8 will all need to be residents of the same country to compete, so bring your national pride!

As well as the team prize the players will also be playing for individual prizes. The winner from each of the eight tables will progress to the final table. The players will be battling it out for the individual prize pool listed below.

Team Prize Pool: €9,600

Individual Prize Pool: €9,600

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