Battleship!
Whether you’re a child of the ’80s or a YouTube junkie with a penchant for old commercials, you’ve no doubt seen the thirty-second spot with two kids sitting face to face, looking as serious and stoic as possible, separated by two machines that, with a modern eye, appear to be laptops.
“You sunk my battleship!” one kid cries to the other with a look of disgust on his face. The “machines” aren’t laptops but the plastic game boards of the Milton Bradley game Battleship.
Battleship still exists today but the brains behind PokerStars.com and the European Poker Tour have taken the concept a step further and applied it to online poker. Take some of the best poker players in the world, online or otherwise, and put them face to face, each behind a laptop, playing No Limit Hold’em against the player seated directly in front of them.
Gone is the anonymity of playing on your couch in your pale blue boxer shorts and that nasty-looking, rarely washed t-shirt from the bar you worked at in your junior year. Gone is the ability to do the Ickey Shuffl e when you’re dealt aces on the button without your opponent being able to see your jubilation. The day old cold Kentucky Fried Chicken in the fridge is no longer at your grasp for those marathon sessions. It’s you and the other guy, face to face, mano a mano, for the chance to advance.
The 2009 PokerStars Caribbean Adventure featured a number of events including the $25,000 buy-in High Roller event and the $10,000 buy-in Main Event. Still, one of the more talked about and prestigious events was the World Championship of Battleship Poker, a $2,000 buy-in event. With so many tournaments with a similar-sized buy-in, why is this title so prestigious?
First, the opportunity to call yourself World Champion of anything carries some weight. Add to that the overall strength of the fi eld. Being the one player to navigate the proverbial minefi eld that included the likes of former World Poker Tour event winners Shawn Buchanan, Victor Ramdin, and Sorel Mizzi, plus Justin Bonomo and 2008 BLUFF Magazine Online Player of the Year runner-up Jon “PearlJammer” Turner is worth some respect. And then there are the past champions of the event; Dustin “Neverwin” Woolf and Mizzi himself both jumped into the spotlight with a win here. So the 64 players who signed up to play had a lot at stake as they chased down the title and the $44,800 fi rst-place prize.
The tournament had some drama even before the cards were dealt. One of the hottest players on the tournament circuit, Sergey Rybachenko, had pre-registered for the event. Only problem was that as the fi rst bracket of sixteen players was set to play, the Russian poker pro was otherwise occupied. Among the chip leaders in the Main Event, he quickly needed to fi nd a solution that wouldn’t detract from his hot run. That’s when the fi eld got a little bit tougher. Unwilling to leave his stack and lose focus on winning the $3 million fi rst-place Main Event prize, he turned to one of his best friends to take his place in the event – November Niner Ivan Demidov.
After making the fi nal table of both World Series of Poker Main Events last year, Demidov has become a force to be reckoned with at the tables whether live or online. Add to that his previous experience as a professional gamer and it starts to become apparent that maybe, just maybe, the World Championship of Battleship Poker is an event strongly suited to the 27-year-old Russian.
Despite everything going for him as the fi rst bracket began, Demidov was quickly eliminated by Joe Serock. The one thing that wasn’t accounted for was outside distractions. Demidov’s long-time girlfriend and fellow professional poker player Liya Gerasimova was at the fi nal table of the High Roller event and Demidov was obviously more interested in keeping an eye on her progress.
One player who may have been amongst the odds-on favorites at the start of the event was Jonathan Jaffe. Coming off of a year that saw him fi nish second at the Foxwoods World Poker Finals Main Event and make the fi nal four of the WSOP $10,000 buy-in Heads-Up World Championship, Jaffe was well established as a diffi cult opponent. Jaffe felt his success in that event, combined with his prowess online, would give him an advantage over some of his opponents.
“It’s interesting. I played this two years ago and most people don’t look up from their computers, which is a little surprising. So it’s almost like full online,” said Jaffe. “If I get a chance I’ll try and watch someone’s hand on the mouse or their face, but it really depends on the opponent. Some opponents I don’t think there’s going to be anything to gain and some I’ll maybe pick up a few things.”
“I’d consider this an online tournament with a slight live twist,” said Jaffe. Despite his confi dence heading into his match-up with Robert Firestone, Jaffe was out of the tournament before he and Firestone reached the third level. Frustrated by his performance, he didn’t even attempt to fi nd the words to articulate his disappointment. A simple thumbs-down gesture from across the ballroom was all that was needed to understand that it didn’t go well. The online-but-live concept lends itself to some amusing verbal exchanges that could only take place in this setting. In a fi rst round match-up William Reynolds was playing Jonathan Dull and was faced with a decision for half his stack. Since players were using their normal PokerStars accounts, their avatars were visible.
“You’d better ponder that one over like your avatar there,” Dull joked, while waiting for his opponent to eventually fold. Reynolds’ PokerStars avatar features a cocksure kid with his thumb and forefi nger on his chin in a thinking man’s pose. The line doesn’t work in a brick-and-mortar setting and lacks the comedic punch when typed into a chat box, but here, it had the railbirds in stitches.
Along with the comedic moments, the opening round had some drama too. While Rybachenko wasn’t willing to leave his seat in the Main Event, Turner and Bonomo, who found themselves in a later starting bracket, were itching for action and headed to the registration desk to sign up for the $2,000 tournament that shared the Battleship’s start time. A little more than two hours into that tournament, organizers were anxiously waiting for the pair to arrive for their respective matches.
After a few nervous moments and a last call over the loudspeakers, both players made their way to the bank of laptops set up for this event and before anybody knew it they were back in their $2k seats playing against live players. Bonomo and Turner, who each made a name for themselves by dominating online poker before moving to the live game, had different results; Bonomo advanced while Turner was eliminated.
After the fi rst day of play the fi eld had been narrowed to eight players. The story was becoming more about Mizzi going for a second title than anything else. Known online as “Imper1um”, Mizzi had beaten the online tournament scene for years before he made the transition to live play and continued to post results. With only three wins between himself and the title Mizzi was now on the verge of becoming the fi rst person to win this event twice. He survived the round of sixteen with a win over Adam Koll and then advanced to the fi nal four after defeating Ryan Garitta. In his semi-fi nal match, Mizzi was put up against New York online cash game player Jared Bleznick, while the other semi-fi nal pitted Bobby Oboodi against England’s Richard Gryko.
Unlike previous rounds, the semi-fi nal and fi nal were a best two out of three. For Mizzi, who cruised to this point in the tournament, his run ended here. Bleznick, known online as Harrington10, won both the fi rst and second match and eliminated Mizzi. For Bleznick the match was anything but easy. “He’s a better player than I am, I got very lucky,” said Bleznick, who felt that the tournament played no different than those he’s beaten on the net. “It’s basically just an online tournament. I’m playing just like I would online, a normal sit-n-go. It’s just that we’re in front of each other, but I think the cards speak for themselves.”
Just like Bleznick, Oboodi swept his way into the fi nal by winning his fi rst two matches against Gryko. Once the fi nal was set, the two players took some time before returning back to for one fi nal confrontation. Bleznick and Oboodi shook hands and the match was underway. The fi rst match had the feel of a heavyweight title fi ght to it and ended after twenty minutes. Oboodi slowly jabbed away at Bleznick, taking small pot after small pot and moved up to a 2.5 to 1 chip lead. After Oboodi opened for a min-raise Bleznick moved all in, and Oboodi called. When the cards were exposed Bleznick was in a dominating position with A-K against the A-9 of his opponent. The board came Q-10-3-A-9 and with a suckout on the river Oboodi was ahead one match to none.
If the fi rst match was a long, drawn-out heavyweight fi ght, the second match was a quick, onepunch street fi ght. Bleznick had taken an early lead when the match came to an abrupt end. Oboodi again opened for a min-raise and Bleznick called to see a fl op of A-2-3. Bleznick led out for 40, Oboodi clicked in a raise to 160, and Bleznick called. The turn brought a queen and again Bleznick bet 40. This time Oboodi made a bigger raise, putting 315 into the middle. Bleznick responded by moving all in and after giving it some thought, Oboodi made the call. With pocket threes Oboodi had fl opped a set, but Bleznick held 4-5 and had actually fl opped a straight. When the river card didn’t pair the board the match was all square.
The fi nal match turned out to be the longest of the three with the lead changing hands on a number of occasions. After nearly 45 minutes, including stretches of slow and cautious play, the match all but came to an end. With blinds at 60/120 Oboodi went back to the min-raise one last time. Bleznick came over the top for another 1,560 and Oboodi moved all-in – for another 32 chips. Bleznick made the call and turned over K-9 against the A-K of Oboodi. Bleznick failed to improve and was now desperately short.
After two quick double-ups Bleznick had a bit of life left in him but with blinds so high there just wasn’t enough time for a comeback. Bleznick busted and Bobby Oboodi, who plays online under the name “BigRedAK”, was a little bit richer. Thanks to a pre-fi nal chop the two made, he walked away with just over $40,000, leaving $30,000 for Bleznick.
“I just wanted to keep pots small when the cards were not going in my favor. When I got some hands I just value bet the hands and I was fortunate enough to get it all in with A-K against K-9 and fl opped my ace and ended the match right there,” said Oboodi. “He made a couple of good plays where he fl oated me just random c-bets and took away from me on the turn or river.” “The title does mean more to me,” said Oboodi of his fi rst live win. “It’s pretty prestigious to win the Battleship. I’m defi nitely happy about it, defi nitely a successful trip in my mind.”
