Online Report
The new PocketFives.com Online Tournament Player Rankings are based on three components: 1) A leaderboard that calculates a player’s top 40 scores over the past year across several sites (higher weight is given to more recent scores), 2) A “Pro Poll” where numerous top internet players rank their peers, and 3) A player’s ranking from the previous week. The last component is to ensure that longer-term results will be factored into the rankings, by allowing a player’s previous ranking to affect his/her current ranking.
ONLINE POKER UPDATE
If you were reading this column six months ago, you might remember that we’d occasionally highlight a “Newcomer of the Month” who had burst into the rankings scene and was getting a lot of attention. In the October 2006 issue of Bluff, that newcomer was Sorel “Imper1um” Mizzi, who had been learning from many of the top online players and had quickly become a force to be reckoned with.
Nowadays, Imper1um is not a rising star, nor is he the “dark horse” in any tournament — he’s become a household name for all followers of online poker, and some of the results he’s put up are flat-out sick! On February 15th, he took down a $200 event that was part of the FTOPS (Full Tilt Online Poker Series). This was a $90k cash, and it was the biggest of his career. Just ten days later, he had three five-figure cashes on PokerStars in the same day, and those cashes combined for over $80k!
A new player in the top 10 is Isaac “mr. menlo” Baron, known on ‘Stars as WestMenloAA and on Full Tilt as mjorgenson13. This 19-year-old online superstar has been beating high stakes NL games for quite some time — he can often be found playing $50-$100 and above. Many of his cash game counterparts don’t venture into the online tournaments, but Isaac has made a point of being one of the very best at both. With a $254k win in the PokerStars Sunday Million, he’d already won more than a lot of successful players have in their entire careers. He had ten other five-figure cashes between November and February, including five cashes over $20k.
In more general online poker news, PokerStars recently had a special guarantee to commemorate the one-year anniversary of its weekly $1M guarantee. The guarantee was $1.5M for its $215 buy-in event, and the prize pool actually surpassed $2M after an astounding 10,508 people put up their buy-ins – the largest field in poker history for a $200+ event! In the end, the top five finishers made a deal that left each of them with a six-figure payday.
Check back next month for all the latest news on the Online Poker Scene.
Good luck, everyone.
Adam Small
Chief Editor
PocketFives.com
PLAYERS TO WATCH
1) Annette_15 – An 18-year-old Norwegian poker phenom, Annette has become one of the most talked-about players online, having quickly risen to the top of the rankings. Relentless aggression at the tables has led her to numerous five-figure wins, and her peers now rate her as one of the three toughest players to have at their table.
2) Imper1um – Known on PokerStars as zangbezan24, he had a Sunday to remember recently, winning the $100 rebuy, taking second in the $200 Second Chance event, and taking fourth in the $200 rebuy. Overall, in February, he cashed for over $200k in online tournaments.
3) t soprano – Switches between cash games, sit-n-gos, and tournaments on PokerStars; and he also crushes the multi-table tournament scene across the board. He chopped the UltimateBet Online Championships Main Event in 2006, receiving $168k.
4) BeL0WaB0Ve – Kevin Saul, who has been crushing online tournaments for years. A high volume tournament master, he had two large cashes at the World Poker Finals in Foxwoods last year, which combined for $156k.
5) Atimos – Plays on ‘Stars as Jovial Gent, under which name he won the $1M Guaranteed for more than $250k in November of 2006. He’s currently in possession of the top PLB score for the rankings, partly due to a recent win in the Bodog $100k Guaranteed.
6) phatcat – Known as “slimshaggy” on PokerStars, he is one of the few part-time players near the top of rankings. In February of this year, he took down the $1k Monday night tournament on Full Tilt for over $47k.
7) Tmay420 – Tim West, a high volume player who has crushed all over the online scene, particularly on Party Poker and Paradise Poker. At just 21 years of age, he’s already put up some strong live results, including some of the preliminary Bellagio Five-Diamond Events.
8) Roothlus – A regular deep finisher in some of the toughest tourneys on the net, he continues to use a tight-aggressive style to outlast his opponents. His consistency is shown through a regular stream of large wins – he has at least one five-figure score in all but one of the months in which we’ve been collecting data for the rankings.
9) mr. menlo –
10) PearlJammer – Jon Turner, who converted from primarily playing live to becoming an online tournament professional in late 2005. Since that time, he’s been one of the most consistent winners around. Recently he won $44k for first place in the Monday $1k buy-in event on Full Tilt.
Shawn Luman aka “PhatCat”
I started playing online poker in 2004, although I had been playing poker since high school when we would have the occasional game with friends. I played a lot in college, too (before the days of online poker ? yes, I’m old!) when we had a semi-regular game at my house that would typically start after I got off work at 11 and often last until after the sun came up. I’d go to sleep at 9 or 10 in the morning, sleep through all my classes, get back up to go to work at 5, and then do it all over again. Despite this ridiculous schedule, I did finally manage to graduate with a degree in accounting (even with a decent GPA).
After that, I got a job with a CPA firm and the poker days were gone for quite a while, as I toiled in the grunt work of being a staff accountant at a large regional firm. There were a lot of long, hard hours and the position didn’t pay as well as it seemed it should, but I learned a lot in the process and obtained my CPA license. I later went on to get a job as the controller for one of our clients and have been there ever since; I have a great job with a growing company.
Then in 2004, one of my old college poker buddies was telling me about the online poker rooms and how the whole poker boom was increasing its momentum. I jumped into it and was blessed (or cursed) to final-table one of the first multi-table tournaments I entered on Party Poker. This just seemed way too fun and easy and I proceeded into the biggest tourneys there were at the time, quickly losing everything I had won. I began a regular process of depositing $50-100 at a time, playing over my bankroll, and redepositing when I ran through it (sometimes multiple times per day).
This routine went on for a year or so without my having any real knowledge of
The online poker world has changed so much during this short time and the number of excellent players out there is mind-boggling. A portion of the rankings at Pocket Fives is determined by a “Pro Poll,” where all the ranked players have an opportunity to rank the top 100 subjectively, and I find this one of the most difficult tasks I undertake each week because the top 100 are so talented. And there are another 50+ who I feel could easily be in the top 100 as well.
Poker has been a great and profitable hobby for me as I continue to enjoy my day job. It is a good way to relax and escape the stress of work or everyday life, although there is nothing I enjoy more than spending time with my wife and 4-year-old son and the rest of our extended family. Good luck all.
