Race for the Ages
By: Adam Small

In August, followers of the internet poker scene got to witness perhaps the most dramatic series of events that has ever occurred in the still-new online industry. What began as a simple bet on whether or not a player known as “GigaBet” would be able to win the monthly TLB (tournament leader board) on PokerStars, turned into a complex fiasco, with many twists and turns and large amounts of money being splashed in the pot.

It started in mid-May with a casual post on the Pocketfives.com poker forum, in which Eric Haber (known in the online world as “sheets”) outlined a proposal for a bet. The specifications for the bet were simply that GigaBet would give 2 to 1 odds that in a given month, he would finish first on the TLB.

The monthly TLB ranking is based on a player’s top 20 finishes that month in multi-table tournaments. The formula is fairly complicated for determining the points someone gets after each tournament, but the main idea is that a player gets the most reward for making it through large fields.

Several people jumped at the opportunity to take this bet, and in the end, GigaBet ended up betting an undisclosed amount against a player known on PocketFives as nip/tuck. The bet was simple—if GigaBet came in first on the August TLB, he won, and if anyone else came in first, nip/tuck won. The only other stipulation was that GigaBet had to be able to prove at all times that it was actually him playing on his account. To help out his cause, nip/tuck offered a $5k reward to anyone on PocketFives who could beat GigaBet that month.

Now let’s take a step back, as I still haven’t explained who any of these people are.

The main player is Darrel Dicken (GigaBet), who is well known as one of the best, if not the very best, tournament players online. While it may have seemed as though this bet was an assertion of his greatness, he claimed that it was not that at all, saying in a post on PocketFives, “I have won the TLB enough times to know that it just takes stamina and solid play, poker genius has nothing to do with it.”

Sheets is a successful player and backer, most well known for hand picking “The Crew” for backing in the 2004 World Series of Poker, where they won three bracelets between them. As he is also one of the top players online, he was expected to contend for the monthly TLB as well.

And speaking of The Crew, one of those bracelet winners started stirring the pot when he heard about this bet. Brett Jungblut, known online as “Gank,” repeatedly declared, “I will win the onth of August on Stars! Gank owns!”

And so it began.

The race was hyped up as though GigaBet and Gank were the primary contenders and everyone else was just playing for third place. Gank took an early lead, making several final tables in the first few days of the month, and then GigaBet came back strong, winning one of the biggest daily tournaments on Stars, a $10 rebuy with well over 1,000 entrants. It looked as though those two would be neck and neck at the end of the month.

Meanwhile, another top online player known as JJProdigy was quietly having a great start to the month, including an early win in that same $10 rebuy tournament. It seemed apparent that several of the best players on PokerStars were determined to upstage GigaBet. The list of top players who appeared to be playing more tournaments than usual included Riverloser, GambleAB, and colson10, all of whom are respected as some of the very best players online. Riverloser even picked up a second place finish in the biggest weekly tournament on Stars, the Sunday $200 buy in, giving him a strong edge in the race.

JJProdigy took the lead though in the second week, and he was starting to look more and more like a champion. Gank and GigaBet were not far behind.

At the end of the second week, a major twist occurred. The winner of the Sunday tournament was “El Capitano,” an account owned by Marcel Luske but operated by his young protege, Noah Boeken (known online as “Exclusive”). This win was worth 1,864 TLB points, and to put that into perspective, the TLB winner in most months has around 5,000 points for the entire month. Neither GigaBet nor JJProdigy had a win of more than 800 points in the month of August.

A few days after this win, a new bet was made between two other PokerStars players, ThorLaden and bigslick789. The bet was $100k straight up, with bigslick789 winning if and only if GigaBet finished first for the month. ThorLaden’s plan was to take control, and he immediately contacted Exclusive, who agreed to let them use the El Capitano account to try and defeat GigaBet, so long as he got a piece of the action. And so ThorLaden, Exclusive, and four other top players set out on a mission, switching off who was playing on the account so that it was in action nearly 24 hours a day. They were making a run, but JJProdigy was on a run of his own, having already amassed over 5,400 points with a week to go in the month. Gank and Riverloser had fallen behind, and it appeared that JJProdigy and El Capitano were the two that were most likely to upstage GigaBet.

GigaBet, who actually skipped a portion of the month for a live event, came back strong, but it was too little too late. He only was able to pick up five wins worth over 200 points (as opposed to 15 by JJProdigy), and he finished the month with a TLB score of 4,323.

Others who put up solid totals included sheets (4,857), gank (4,107), and Riverloser (4,069).

Despite the nonstop play by the El Capitano team, they finished in second place with “only” 5,966 points. The winner was JJProdigy with a ridiculously high total of 6,274.

This was an amazing accomplishment by JJ, who played on his own throughout the month and had two major disadvantages against El Capitano: the Sunday win and the fact that six people were playing the account for the last half of the month!

“I know a lot of people didn’t consider me in the top 3 favorites, even with a week left,” he told me. “The only thing I really cared about was proving all the doubters wrong.” He sure did prove that, coming out on top of the most juiced up TLB competition ever to take place in online poker.

The number of tournaments played in the month was absolutely astounding, particularly for GigaBet, who participated in 671 tournaments. In one month! JJProdigy and El Capitano played in 555 and 528 tournaments respectively.

It will have to suffice to say that this article only scratches the surface of all that went on, and that there was quite a number of bets involved, many of which may never be uncovered. Nip/tuck and ThorLaden managed to come out ahead on some very large wagers, and for the majority of the online community, it was just a great time to watch a heated competition between the top players to prove who is, in fact, the best.