Law student João Costa has won the PokerStars Portugal Poker Series Figueira da Foz event, taking home €24,640. The 22-year-old topped a 132-player field that generated an €89,630 prizepool.
Costa, who is from Portugal, dominated the tournament from the first to the last hand. He was the Day 1A chip leader, the Day 2 chip leader and only lost his lead for a few moments on the final table. And while you may not think that is unusual, consider that this was his first attempt at a live tournament!
João Costa
After starting the heads-up behind Henrique Custódio, Costa managed to recover ground and win when, after three shoves, Custódio had [ah][7h] against Costa's [6d][6c]. The board held the young man's pocket pair and Custódio finished runner-up for €15,700.
The countdown has come to an end. The first of June has finally come! Our plane to Las Vegas is waiting at the gates of Brussels airport ready to take us to the city of sins. At 6:30 in the morning we start packing our bags. Although we didn't catch a lot of sleep, we aren't really as edgy as we normally are when leaving for a long trip in the early morning.
We arrive at the Airport at about 8:45, well in time. Our flight only leaves at 10:55 so we have all the time in the world to get some food and relax a bit. At that moment we get our first beat of the day. Off all the planes departing that morning, our flight is the only one that has a two hour delay. To avoid getting tilted we decide to upgrade to business class. It's only $500 each to get the upgrade, and for such a long flight, $500 is well worth it. So in the airport, we wait, and wait, and wait, and wait. Christophe goes KO in the VIP lounge and then finally at 12:15 we can go to the departure gate. Flying business class is pretty cool. It was actually the first time we did it on a long distance flight, and to be honest, it tastes like more. The chairs are almost as comfortable as beds and you get served very well. The stewardess asks you if you want a drink every five minutes, you get eatable food and they laugh with every joke you make. Travelling in style, we like.
We have a scheduled stop in Chicago where we have to wait for 4.5 hours to get our connecting flight to Vegas because of the previous delays. And 4.5 hours at an airport, again, is a pretty damn long time. Good thing we find a place where we can charge our laptops. So on some very uncomfortable, almost human-unworthy iron seats, we watch "The Sopranos" and the clock ticks time away a little faster.
Then finally it's time. Our plane is ready to take off. We enter, take our seat, pass out and wake up when the plane hits the ground. This is it. We arrive in Sin City. Now we get a second bad beat: Sybe our friend who is coming to pick us up from the airport has a car accident at 5 miles/hour. Nothing severe, but still the police, ambulance and even fire workers come to the scene where it happened to make sure he can't get to the airport to pick us up. Not a big deal, we just take a taxi, give the driver the address and we are on our way to the house. Oh wait, bummer, the taxi driver is not familiar with the address.
So he starts messing around with his GPS system that he's apparently using for the very first time. This guy is even worse with electronics than our own dad, "Bobbybusto". It's pretty tilting that the last part of the trip gets prolonged so annoyingly, but after some detours, driving in circles for $30, the driver sees the light and boom, ee arrive at the house!
The house we are staying at is amazing. It has seven bedrooms that all have their own bathroom. It has a big kitchen and a nice living room with a knight guarding the place. In the basement we have a chill & relax room with pool table, poker table and a home cinema. Outside we have a big pool, a Jacuzzi and a guest house.
Our house
A nice thing to note as well is that the house comes with a crazy hummer-style limousine named "The Kong" that drives us to the Rio where the WSOP tournaments are played every day.
Riding in style
The next day Matthias - alias "Action-Jackson" - jumps right into a $1,600 Deep Stack at the Venetian trying to go for success on the very first days of the trip. This doesn't really work out. Five hours after sitting down, he busts, gets back up and decides to hit the cash tables. The cashgames in Las Vegas are super-juicy. It's almost like the PokerStars cash game lobby. You can choose from hundreds of games trying to find a money table. The cashgames go very well the first couple of days. Matthias crushes the $10-20 games even taking shots at $10-20-40 in the Belaggio which is a huge game.
Unfortunately he gets unlucky in a big pot to Masa Kagawa, the rich Japanese businessman and high stakes player. This forces him to move back down in stakes and get back to the grind. In the meanwhile Christophe is very successful at the deep $2-5 games. Not seeming able to have a losing session, he's now up a ton and soon moving up to $5-10.
But being a poker player is not only about going strong in cashgames. Like all the other thousands of poker players coming to Las Vegas for the World Series of Poker, we register in multiple WSOP events, as well as Venetian Deep Stack tournaments in order to reach the highest glory, winning a tournament or even better, winning a bracelet!
At the Rio
The poker gods aren't really helping this first week. Everytime we are in stackin' chips mode, the pot for the chiplead goes the wrong way. But there is light at the end of the tunnel. Matt finishes in 94th place in the $1500 WSOP Triple Chance and as we speak is making a deep run in the $2,500 Venetian Deepstack. Will he outlast the entire field and go for king?
It was a long weekend in Australia and what better way to celebrate the birthday of Her Majesty than with a friendly game of poker. It's a game designed for royalty, as kings and queens were tossed around the felt with effortless precision this afternoon. Fifteen loyal servants came together, but they dropped away one-by-one until only one man remained. That man is Sammy Huang and he is now the King of Canberra!
As many kings and queens that we saw on the felt of the Casino Canberra today, it was the unnerving number of aces that ended up in the hands of Sammy Huang that ultimately was the story of the day. Flying the flag for the Canberra locals, Huang was a dominant force on a tough final table through a combination of aggressive play and plenty of those wicked aces! His win was well-deserved and it's great to see the ANZPT Canberra trophy staying in home territory.
We started out this afternoon with Germany's Khiem Nguyen leading the way with all eyes on the short stacks to see who would fall first. Naz Sabaei and Mario Ljubicic were quick to go, before young gun Jarred Graham made a surprisingly rapid fall from grace. Graham was unlucky when his ace-king was outdrawn by the ace-jack of Takahiro Morooka and never recovered. Morooka couldn't make the most of his chips after a ruling technicality went against him to see him next to the cashier. Brett Chalhoub was equally unlucky and when David Gorr was eliminated with a king-high flush against Khiem Nguyen's full house, our final table line up was set within 70 minutes of play.
Khiem Nguyen maintained the chip lead and was always a dangerous force on the final table. James Broom entered as the short stack but was relentless in his attack as he endured a rollercoaster ride that would give the weak heart palpitations. Broom had to come from behind on several all-in clashes including surviving with king-ten against Andrew Watson's ace-queen, and then king-queen against George Graziani's dominant ace-queen.
It was the latter hand that left Graziani crippled and led to our first elimination of the final table. Graziani was all in with [ac][6h] against Tristan Bain's [qh][qc] and Tony Kambouroglou's [kh][kc] with the Toothpick taking the pot to land an early double knockout blow.
Andrew Watson lost a race with [ah][qc] against Khiem Nguyen's pocket sevens to be eliminated in seventh place, before a card-dead Luke Edwards couldn't survive with [qc][jd] against Leigh Warne's [ks][5c] to depart in sixth.
While the number of players were quickly decreasing, Sammy Huang's stack was just getting bigger and bigger, as his overbetting style was playing havoc with the small ball approach of Khiem Nguyen and James Broom. Huang picking up pocket aces with some regularity was also helping the cause, as Nguyen was showing visible signs of frustration.
Leigh Warne was next to go went Toothpick Tony woke up with another big pair when his [qs][qh] proved too strong for Warne's [ah][qc] to leave us four-handed.
Huang was the big stack and Broom was still nursing the short stack as a tight four-way battle ensued. The shorties were forced to move all in on multiple occasions, but they couldn't find any callers as the status quo remained for over an hour. Something had to give.
As the blinds ticked over, it was Germany's Khiem Nguyen who finally cracked when he three-bet shoved with [4s][4d] but Sammy Huang woke up with his favourite hand, [as][ac] and made an easy call. Nguyen couldn't find a four as his impressive tournament was halted in fourth place.
James Broom found some swagger when play reached three-handed with his nemesis in Nguyen now on the rails. Broom opened up his game and caught Toothpick Tony red-handed when he squeezed over the top of a raise and call. Broom tabled [ad][8d] as Toothpick sheepishly showed [5d][4c]. The board ran out [9d][td][ks][jh][tc] to eliminate Toothpick in third place as we entered heads-up play with the title on the line.
James Broom had a two-to-one chip disadvantage against Sammy Huang and despite a quirky Canberra heads-up rule that has the blinds in reverse to normal, Broom was confident in his heads-up game. However he forgot that Huang held all the aces!
After a preflop raise, and bet on the flop, Huang overbet shoved all in on the turn on a [jh][9d][qh][7d] board. Broom deliberated for some time before making the call with [qd][5d] for top pair and flush draw, but Huang once again opened [as][ah]. Broom was looking for a queen, five or diamond but it wasn't to be as the [7s] bricked the board to eliminate him in second place and crown Sammy Huang as our ANZPT Canberra champion!
The Canberra local qualified for this event through one of the $22+R 3xTurbo online satellites on PokerStars for the investment of just $42. He's now turned that into a whopping $73,700 in prize money!
Congratulations to Sammy on a wonderful achievement which is sure to create a buzz for poker in our nation's capital.
So now it's time to pack up and head home (subject to volcanic ash) following a fantastic long weekend in Canberra. We've really enjoyed our time here and the poker room seem to really embrace the ANZPT which is fantastic. Many thanks to the tournament staff, dealers and the hospitality crew at the Casino Canberra for making us feel welcome and a part of the team.
Also many thanks to Cole Bennetts for his superb final table photography.
That's all we have for you from Canberra. If you're craving more tournament action, you might have heard of a wee tournament happening in Las Vegas at the moment. They call it the World Series of Poker. Stick to the PokerStars Blog for all the latest news and updates from there.
On the local scene, we have a six-week break before we head to Melbourne's Crown Casino for the first event of Season 5 of the PokerStars.net Asia Pacific Poker Tour. The APPT Melbourne will be a spectacular event with the Main Event running from July 29th until August 1st with online satellites running now on PokerStars.
Thanks for following our coverage at home and we look forward to seeing you in Melbourne. Until then, so long from Canberra!
It was a long weekend in Australia and what better way to celebrate the birthday of Her Majesty than with a friendly game of poker. It's a game designed for royalty, as kings and queens were tossed around the felt with effortless precision this afternoon. Fifteen loyal servants came together, but they dropped away one-by-one until only one man remained. That man is Sammy Huang and he is now the King of Canberra!
