As I just said in my previous post we wanted Toni to get some good hands, and Toni always listens to my advices. Toni was on the dealer position, picked up two Jacks and bets 3x BB, the Big Blind decides to put all his chips into the pot, which equals exactly as many chips that Toni has. Toni knows that the guy in the Big Blind is a maniac so he calls.

Toni shows his two Jacks proudly, and his opponent shows AJ, which means Toni is in a big lead. No ace shows on the flop…..turn…..or on the river! And Toni doubles up and now has about 60.000 in chips. This put him in a very good position for the coming levels.

Stay tuned for more action!

EPT Deauville by pokerstars.net has now started its second day, we started the day with 243 players and we are already after 1 hour down to almost 200 players! So it has started in a turbo speed, which is understandable since the blinds just got up to 500/1000 with an ante of 100, which means that it costs 2400 to play a round of poker.

So, to the more interesting parts, Toni Ojala! Toni hasn’t had any spectacular hands yet, and is down to about 28.000 in chips, which is around average. We hope that he can get some cards, because the table he is at is pretty wild with all ins and re-re raises all the time. He is still patient while he is sitting there sipping on his Coca Cola Light..

Soon you will get some good news from the Aussie Millions, and also about Toni!

Day 3 is the day when we are playing down to the money, in the start of the day we had two players who had the chance of getting there. Christian Heich, the german player who won the first side event here in the Aussie Millions 2009. Veli-Pekka Penttinen who has showed us how to stay alive as a shortstack during the whole Main Event, incredible!

Day 3 has been running for about 8 hours, the bubble has bursted, and guess what? Both of our RedKings players made it into the money! Veli-Pekka was of course very happy with this, since he didn’t need to pay for his buy-in, everything now was a very big win. Veli-Pekka struggled through with his shortstack and when it was 47 players left, Veli-Pekka announces that he is all in, he gets a instant call from David Docherty, who shows the monster AA, Veli-Pekka shows A8, he got one 8 on the river, but sadly he has to leave his seat. The good thing is that he also leaves his seat AU$20.000 richer! Congratulations to Veli-Pekka, we will try to get some comments from him later on.

Now. what has happened to Christian Heich? Is he still in?….

Yes he is! Christian has been playing some awesome poker during this Main Event, and today he has really showed us that he is right now one of the top poker players in the world! There are 43 players still in the tournament, Christian has a mountain of chips, worth 570.000! The average stack is 320.000, so where will this end?

Well, if you follow this blog you will soon now!

PS. Only one hour until EPT Deauville by Barriere Poker day 2 starts, where we have Toni Ojala starting with a nice stack!

So, day 1b has ended, and out of the three players we had starting we now have 1 player who made it through to the second day, our pro Toni Ojala.

Toni will bring 31.500 with him to the second day, where he will play together with 247 other players. Toni has had an day without any bad beats, and just moving up in chips during the whole day. It will be interesting to see what Toni can do tomorrow with a stack that is over the average.

Tomorrow there will also be more about Christian Heich and Veli-Pekka Penttinen in the Aussie Million Main Event. It will be very exciting, because at the re-draw for day 3 it became official that they are going to be at the very same table!

Table 8
Seat 1: Bodo Sbrzesny - 110000
Seat 2: Velipekka T Penttinen - 79800
Seat 3: Brett D Murtagh - 164400
Seat 4: Christian Heich - 168500
Seat 5: Zachary A Gruneberg - 188500
Seat 6: William J Zemljaric - 323000
Seat 7: Hoi W Cheung - 85900
Seat 8: Natan Meylakh - 191500

So, I hope you will come back tomorrow, there will be a lot of action!

The last level for the day is now about to start, we have Toni Ojala still in the tournament, he went down to around 24.000, when this hand came..

UTG makes a raise 4x BB, 3 players calls, one of them Toni. Flop comes out K-x-x, the UTG raiser checks, so does Toni and one of the callers, the last caller makes a bet of 1800. Toni is the only one calling, and the river shows J, Toni checks and so does his opponent. The river comes out an ace, Toni bets out the potsize of 7.000, the opponent is thinking a bit and folds. Toni mucks and takes down the pot. Toni told me after the pot that he had JJ, and turned the set, but he also said that he knew he lead already on the flop because he had a read on the opponent he was playing against.

Toni is now up to 31.000 with one hour left of day 1B. Looks like Toni will have to go up “early” tomorrow again to play day 2!

Toni is at the same table as he has been for the whole day, and of course he still likes it. You can also see that by looking at his chips, he now is up to 28.000 in chips, and the average in the tournament is 19.700. We started the day with 345 players, and we now have 179 players still in the tournament after six levels. Next level is just about to start, with 200/400 blinds and 50 in ante.

The EPT Deauville by Pokerstars.net, has so far been a big success, it has a record of participants in the EPT this season (if you don’t count in the PCA). 645 people paid in the €5000 + €300 euro to join. The winner will get €851.400, and of course we hope that is going to be a Finn, named Toni Ojala.

For you readers who follows the blog, and plays poker at the same time, don’t miss out RedKings new Wednesday Night Tournaments, tonight with an $1000 added to the prize pool and a Ipod Touch to the winner, with a small buy in as $10+$1. It starts at 21:00 CET, so you still have some time to register! Check more details here

Don’t think I have lost it just because of the title, it actually does have with poker to do. Things were looking down for Team RedKings here in Deauville, when both Benjamin and Sampsa went out. So we have our only hope in Toni Ojala.

So, to the Anna Kournikova part, Toni had about 12k behind him when he picked up the hand AK (also called Anna Kournikova), he called a raise pre flop, and the the flop comes out Axx, his opponent raises, Toni re-raises and gets the call, turn is low card, and his opponent bets out again around 2000, Toni re raises to 4500, opponent calls. On the river Toni gets all his chips into the pot and gets the call. His opponent shows AQ and Toni wins on the kicker, and Toni doubles up to 25.000!

But Anna Kournikova is beautiful, don’t you think?

Is going to have two RedKings players in it. We had two who started day 2, and they both made it through to the third day. Christian Heich is saving 168.500 chips in his plastic bag over the night, Christian has been up and down all day, in the heights of almost 400.000 chips. Our Finnish qualifier Veli-Pekka Penttinen has had a perfect curve today, moving slowly upwards, which is confirmed by that he is ending the day with the best chip stack he has had over the whole tournament, 79.800.

There are now 86 players still in the tournament, out of those 86, 64 players will get to the money. Everybody’s goal is the AU$2.000.000 in first price. Christian has shown before that he knows how to win here in Australia, so we really hope for another win!

Good Luck to Veli-Pekka and Christian tomorrow, you will get updates from their progress in the tournament during day 3 here in the blog!

Benjamin Schaub. Benjamin played stable all day without any big swings in his stack, he was hoping for a big swing when he got dealt the beautiful hand of two aces. He tried to slowplay them a bit pre-flop, and got three callers. The flop comes out J high, with three clubs. Benjamin bets out, and gets a re raise from one of his opponents, Benjamin puts him on a AJ with the Ace of clubs, so he moves all in. His opponent doesn’t think about it and snapcalls with QJ, with Q of clubs. So Benjamin is ahead with his two aces, but the pokergods wasn’t with him and the river shows another club that gives his opponent the flush.

We will definitely see more from Benjamin in the RedKings shirt in the future, and this was just a warm up on what to come.

Benjamin goes to the bar, and I am going to root for Toni as much as I can. He is now our only hope in the EPT Deauville by Pokerstars.net!

I am sad to say that Sampsa Hytönen, our finnish qualifier has been beaten out from the tournament. He never really got the chance to build a big stack, and 3 hours in to the tournament he had to leave his place and walk out from the tournament area, of course very dissappointed.

Now he has made his first appearance on the EPT tour, but I am sure it is not his last. We wish him luck in the future, and soon we maybe will see him in a RedKings shirt again!