Online Report

The tournament results say he’s number 1. The pros say he’s number 1. Kevin “BeL0WaB0Ve” Saul is the top online tournament player in the world, finally receiving the ultimate recognition for all of the hard work he’s put into the game of poker.

Prior to becoming the number 1 ranked player, Kevin spent many months as a top 10 player, consistently using his unconventional methodology to confuse his opponents and make them fear him at the tables. He’d picked up several very large wins, including two wins of approximately $35k on Paradise Poker and two huge scores at Foxwoods that combined for more than $150k. Rising to number 1 was icing on the cake – the final validation for a career that needs none.

BeL0WaB0Ve is threatened at the number 1 spot by 18-year-old phenom Annette Obrestad, who’s quickly become one of the most feared players on the internet. Annette started off with quite a bit of success in the $100 tournaments on UltimateBet and Full Tilt Poker, and that success grew quickly once she moved into some of the bigger events. She’s undoubtedly gunning for the top spot in the rankings; it should be fun to see these two continue to battle for the top spot.

The online tournaments are still growing at a high rate every month. In January, PokerStars saw their Sunday Million attract more than 7,000 entrants for a prize pool of right around $1.5 million. Similarly, Full Tilt’s $200 buy-in event attracted enough entries to vault their prize pool up above $500k.

Those at Bodog.com want to be a part of all this excitement and they’ve decided to up the ante on their Sunday event. As of the end of January, Bodog’s Sunday $100 buy-in event is now a $200k Guaranteed prize pool. What does this mean? Well, the important thing is that they’ll be giving away a whole lot of money for quite a while. For nearly two years, they’ve had a $100k Guaranteed tournament every Sunday, and it has not once reached the 1,000 entrants necessary to avoid having a prize pool overlay. Now with double the guarantee, online players will undoubtedly have huge amounts of money to go after each weekend.

One other site to keep an eye on is Mansion Poker. They’re relative newcomers on the scene, but they’re looking to become a big player in the online poker industry. The folks at Mansion have been kind enough to offer a lot of value to their players, and now they have a daily $100k Guaranteed tournament that is regularly producing enormous prize pool overlays.

Best of luck to everyone at the tables this month. Adam Small: Chief Editor PocketFives.com

Age: 37 Hometown: Ocean Ridge, FL Family: Married, 3 daughters (ages 2, 5 and 8) Occupation: Executive for hedge fund management firm

My mother was cleaning out some closets recently, and she found the oldest known photograph of me playing poker. I was about 10 years old, wearing a T-shirt that says, “It’s Better in the Bahamas,” and I was playing 7-card Stud against my grandfather. My grandfather was a great poker player, and a great guy. Always cool, funny and unreadable, he got me hooked on the game and taught me some great fundamentals. I’ve been playing ever since.

I got into tournament poker during 2004, and I started having some consistent success during 2005. One of my first breakthrough moments came after I read a book on tournament Hold’em (I won’t push the authors down the stairs by giving the names, but it was the book at the time). I wrote Daniel Negreanu a long email and described several things in the book that I disagreed with; I thought the authors’ strategy was too conservative and predictable. Daniel not only wrote me back, but he agreed with me 100%. That exchange gave me a lot of confidence in my instincts. Since then, I’ve been trying to find my perfect game, but I would describe myself as a loose-aggressive player who likes to see flops, especially early in tournaments. My biggest weakness is probably that I have trouble making big laydowns, and I can be too gambly and loose. I also talk with my mouth full and put my elbows on the dinner table.

I give pocketfives.com, as well as the players I’ve met through the site and through the online MTT scene in general, a lot of credit for helping me develop a real tournament game. Guys like Shawn “phatcat” Luman and Eric “Rizen” Lynch have helped me tremendously. I have a ton of respect for the internet pros – when I look at the lists of ranked players and leaderboards, I see dozens of players who have amazing game. The results some of these players put up are incredible. I basically play evening MTTs a few nights a week; I rarely play the Sunday majors because I am with my family on weekends. My biggest tournament wins last year were Party Supers — I won one outright for about $37k and chopped another one for $27k. Party and Paradise were my best sites, so I am still adjusting to the new landscape, but I like all of the major sites and enjoy the variety. I like high-low games and HORSE as well, though I haven’t played or studied the non-Hold’em games enough to beat them consistently. I’ve played two WSOP Main Events and several WPT Main Events, and my total winnings in those are exactly $0.00. So my live game needs work.

I have no aspirations to be a full-time player. My priorities are my family and my day job. If your wife looked like mine, you wouldn’t want to be on the road all the time, either. I don’t blame the guys who are obsessed and play 70 hours a week – that’s their job, and it’s incredibly competitive. But I think playing full time would take a lot of the fun out of it, and I play for fun more than anything else. That being said, I love to win, and I plan on doing a lot more of that this year (got off to a nice start last night, winning a UB satellite into WPT Tunica).