Online Report
There’s a new name at the top of the PocketFives.com Online Tournament Player Rankings, though he’s been in the top ten for many months. Sorel “Imper1um” Mizzi of Toronto has been pulling off some amazing results in both the online and live arenas; and amazingly, barely a week after he chopped the Irish Open with Roland de Wolfe and Marty Smyth, he ascended to the Number One spot in the online rankings.
Sorel has seven five-figure cashes online in 2007 as of mid-April, including a $90k win on Full Tilt in their FTOPS (Full Tilt Online Poker Series), and cashes for $39k and $41k on PokerStars. Congrats to Sorel on setting the bar for online tournament players, and for proving once again that the best online tournament players are a force in the live arena as well.
Another great story about a top online player winning in the live arena is the story of Jared “TheWacoKidd” Hamby, who is this month’s feature player. Jared won two events in the span of a week at the Bellagio, taking down over $500k in winnings. “Waco,” as most of his poker friends call him, has been a well-known name in online poker for over a year, achieving a ranking up in the twenties at times on PocketFives.
One of the most exciting up-and-comers in the online poker world is Andy McLeod, who’s knocking on the door of the top ten. Andy’s stats are right up there with the very best, particularly in the year 2007. He’s twice won the Full Tilt $1k Monday night tournament (in back to back weeks, mind you), and those wins added up to over $98k. He also has taken down the UltimateBet $200k Guaranteed, the PokerStars $150, the PokerStars $100 rebuy, the Full Tilt $300, the Full Tilt $150, and a number of other tournaments. All but the UltimateBet win occurred after the new year. Andy’s most recent big finish was a second place in the “Sunday Warm-Up” on PokerStars, which now has a guarantee of $350k in the prize pool every week.
The World Series of Poker is coming up, and after last year’s barrage of bracelets for top online players, we expect more of the same this year. We’ll be looking forward to letting the world know, once again, what online players can do.
Best of luck at the tables, Adam Small Chief Editor PocketFives.com
Jared Hamby aka “TheWacoKidd”
I started playing poker with friends when I was 13, after I moved to Texas. We would play a few times a week from middle school on through high school. We played a lot of 7-card Stud variations – wild card and split pot games like Low Chicago, 7-card Hi-lo Split, Baseball, and others; and this is where I discovered my love of poker and gambling in general. But we very rarely played any Texas Hold’em, and if we did, I don’t think we even used blinds.
I started playing Hold’em about three years ago when I went out to a local cardroom in the Waco area. I began with $1/$2 PL, $3/$6 Limit and the occasional $55 freeze-out with about 40 people. A few months after that, I found out I could play online; I started playing some $5/$10 Limit and some sit-n-gos and was hooked. I then played “pro” for over a year, playing Limit only, mostly 10/20 and 15/30 on Party Poker, where I was doing fairly well. I played a tourney here and there, but it wasn’t until November 05, when I won a random tournament, that I got hooked on MTTs. Since then, I have made MTTs my main focus.
In the first few months I enjoyed lots of success and was making way more than I ever imagined I could make playing Limit ring. I did well enough to be ranked on PocketFives.com within two to three months, and I haven’t looked back since. I started playing online tourneys almost every day and then started live with the WSOP, where I bricked off several events and was running real bad until I managed to cash in my first ever Main Event, giving me some good experience.
I played only a few more live tourneys until the start of this year when I made a point of playing on the live circuit and went to the PCA and LA. I didn’t cash but was feeling good about my live game and thought it was only a matter of time before things went my way. Well, it all came together in April at the WPT Five Star World Poker Classic where I won two events, beating two well-known live pros in the process. I turned around a 10:1 deficit heads up and beat Jeff Shulman to win Event #3, and then in Event #7 beat Kathy Liebert for another win.
The two wins totalled around 500k, which will now allow me to play many more live events in the near future. I have already purchased a house in the Vegas area, so I will just invest most of the rest of my winnings — after I purchase a few things, of course — into poker. Jared
