After being the table captain all the day it ended with a win for Ramzi Jelassi, making him €170.000 richer!

Last hand was K7 vs Q10, where he managed to hit a 7 on the flop, and it held up. The key hand in the short heads up session was when Ramzi was all-in with 44 vs A7, the flop gave Ramzi another 4 and he then had about 90% of the chips..

Now Ramzi will celebrate, but you will soon see more from him, and his own comments will soon be published here at blogs.redkings.com!

Congratulations to Ramzi Jelassi, the winner of IPT San Remo 2009!

IPT San Remo is soon over, there is only 2 players remaining who will fight about the title and the €170.000.

Ramzi was the one who took out the player who finished 3rd, he moved all-in and got called. Ramzi was holding his hand for the day, AK, and his opponent was far behind with A9. The flop came out 3JQ, and the turn showed a 10 giving Ramzi a straight. The river could split the pot, but it was a 4 and Ramzi took Veronese out, he didn’t go away empty handed, he got €68.000!

Ramzi is up against another Italian player in the heads up, Andrea Sapere. The chip counts is not official but it seems like they are pretty even in chips..

Only 1 more!

Again Ramzi raised it up to 125.000 pre-flop, this time from UTG. He got called by Di Cicco from the big blind. The flop came out 924, with two spades. Di Cicco bet out 160.000, and Ramzi re-raised to 380.000, Di Cicco made the call. The turn card was a K, Di Cicco checked and Ramzi quickly moved all-in, and he also got quickly called. Ramzi turned over AK, top pair with top kicker. He was in the lead against Di Cicco’s K5s, so he had a few outs for the river, any 5 or any spade would give him the pot. The river showed Qd and Ramzi took another huge pot!

Only 3 players left, and Ramzi is looking good with around 3.000.000 in chips!

EDIT: Di Cicco actually has 15.000 left in chips.

First Ramzi calls an all-in on the flop of 789, both players had J9 and chopped the pot. A few hands after this Ramzi raises on the cut off, player on the button folds, player on the small blind re-raises, big blind folds and Ramzi goes all-in and quickly gets called. Ramzi shows AKs in diamonds and he is up against AK off suit. The flop brings two diamonds giving Ramzi good odds to win another huge pot. The turn and river doesn’t bring another diamond and again they split the pot.

One more player just left the tournament when he was all-in with Q10s vs AQ. The AQ held up and they are now only 4 players left!

Guaranteed €50.000!

The blinds are huge and everybody is sitting down with 10 - 25 BB. This is a big reason to why Ramzi Jelassi called an all-in on the Big Blind after that Claudio Rinaldi pushed all-in on the cut off.

Claudio showed JJ, and was in the lead against Ramzis A3s, also after the flop it looked good for Claudio as 106Q rainbow came up, but on the turn Ramzi gor the golden card, an A. Ramzi beats out Claudio Rinaldi on 7th position, and boosts his stack up to 1.900.000.

Here is the other chip counts*:
Seat 1: Francesco Veronese 2.060.000
Seat 2: Andrea Sapere 825.000
Seat 3: Massimo Di Cicco 1.105.000
Seat 6: Giuseppe Pipino 460.000
Seat 7: Roberto Pompei 1.090.000
Seat 8: Ramzi Jelassi 1.900.000

*Taken from http://it.pokernews.com

Only 5 more to take out!!

The final table of the IPT San Remo has just started with Ramzi Jelassi as the chip leader. It started with that Ramzi opened every pot the first 4 hands, and could take three of the pots down without any fight.

The 5th hand, Ramzi was luckily not involved in as it ended up with two players going all-in, one with AA and the other one with KK. AA held up and took Domeniconi out, which means that we are only 7 players left..

We will keep an close eye on this final table for you, so stay with us!

The payouts:
1 € 170,000
2 € 100,000
3 € 68,000
4 € 50,000
5 € 39,000
6 € 28,000
7 € 18,000
8 € 13,000

Go Ramzi!

Ramzi Jelassi likes Italy because of many reasons, but the biggest one might be the quality of the poker players, they haven’t fully evolved like many of the other poker playing countries. Ramzi paid €2000+€200 to play in the new Italian Poker Tour, this time making a stop in San Remo.

368 players bought in, and 238 of them made it through to the second day. Ramzi had 44.000, from the 20.000 that he started the day with. Early on day 2 Ramzi made a huge double up, he made a 4-bet preflop on the button with K9 and the flop came out KJ9, his opponent went all-in with 60.000, Ramzi called and his opponent showed A9. Up to 160.000, and here he was in the top of chips.

After this he managed to win an all-in pre-flop with TT vs AJ, which took him up to 400.000 with 45 players left in the tournament. He finished the day with 327.000, together with 34 other players.

Now we are at day 3, the day when they play down to the final table. Ramzi early got up to 500.000, but then dropping half of his stack with QQ vs AJ all-in pre-flop. This didn’t stop Ramzi and he fought his way back to 500.000, now with only 14 players left.

Ramzi likes to make a few moves, and he made one where he 3-bets his opponent all-in and his opponent calls, which Ramzi didn’t like as he was holding 9Ts, and he was up against AQ. The flop showed a 9 and it held up, this took him up to 1.000.000 in chips with only 10 players left!

The 9th player fell, and they now gathered all the tournament chips to one table, just to see who would be the 9th one to leave the tournament and not get in to the official final table tomorrow.

Ramzi was involved in the last hand of the day when he was holding 45 on a board looking like this 4K7 - 4 - A, giving Ramzi trip 5s, his opponent “De Nardi” had AQ, and his top pair was just not good enough.

This means that Ramzi Jelassi is going to the final table as the chipleader with 1.258.000 in chips!!

Have a look at the payouts:
1 € 170,000
2 € 100,000
3 € 68,000
4 € 50,000
5 € 39,000
6 € 28,000
7 € 18,000
8 € 13,000

And the players:
Seat 1 Francesco Veronese 986.000
Seat 2 Andrea Sapere 838.000
Seat 3 Massimo Di Cicco 1.015.000
Seat 4 Niccolò Domeniconi 968.000
Seat 5 Claudio Rinaldi 651.000
Seat 6 Giuseppe Pipino 631.000
Seat 7 Roberto Pompei 1.016.000
Seat 8 Ramzi Jelassi 1.258.000

The final table reporting will return tomorrow at 15.00 CET… GO RAMZI!

The Main Event in the Finnish Championship was last year won by our Team RedKings member Toni Ojala. He was of course in Helsinki to defend his title this year, which would had been one of the most extraordinary things you could accomplish in the world of poker.

The Finnish Championship 2009 wasn’t really what people expected it to be, usually they fill up the 220 seats that they put the cap on. This year there were only around 80 players trying to steal Tonis title.

Toni managed to go through from the first day and on the second day he had a stack of 70.000, when the average was around 49.000 and 31 players left. Maybe he would do a back to back final table?

Toni was going for the title, and not for a high position and sometimes you have to live with the risks of playing that sort of game. Toni went out in 22nd position, of course very disappointed, but we still know that he is one of the best tournament players in Finland.

Toni is now going to Barcelona to play in EPT Barcelona on the 5th of September!

Toni hasn’t been playing much Omaha in his career as a professional poker player, but when the finnish championship was in town he decided to sit down in the €1000 Omaha event. He has plans to start playing more and more Omaha the coming year.

He did very good in the tournament, but there is not much to do when you get this hand:
One player raises pre-flop, Toni calls with KT98, player in the blind also makes the call. The flop comes out 567 with a flush draw. Both Tonis opponent check, and Toni bets 4,000, the player in the blind put Toni all-in and Toni calls with his nut straight. Now, here is the bad beat, the player that put Toni all-in thought that he has a flush draw, but he didn’t. He only had a pair of 6s, on the turn there is a Q giving his opponent a two pair and on the river there is another 6 giving his opponent a full house beating Tonis straight.

The day after this Toni played in a €300 NLHE event, and again he shows that he is one of the top players in the world by finishing in 5th position out of 100.

Today the main event of the Finnish Championship starts, and Toni will try to defend his title from last year.

It is not only Toni that has started this season, Ramzi has flown over to Cannes, and today he is playing in day 1b in IPT San Remo. As we speak he is on his balcony in Cannes having a big breakfast..

Good luck to both of them!

The finnish championships of Poker start today with the PL Omaha Event.

The buyin is €1000+€50 and the tournament is expected to have over 100 players thus making the prizepool over €100.000. The tournament starts at 17.00 local time and Team RedKings will have 1 member among the 100.

It is our online qualifier Juha Voutilainen from Rauma, Finland who battled through 2 stages of qualifiers to meet the Finlands finest Omaha players.

For the championships, here is the time table if you are interested in going to the Grand Casino Helsinki:
Wed 26th 17.00- SM Omaha PL 1000+ 50 €, Freezeout, Seats 135, 2-day event (Team RK: Juha Voutilainen)
Thu 27th 16.00 - Texas No Limit 300+ 20 €, Freezeout, Seats 100
Fri 28th 17.00 - SM Texas No Limit 2850+ 150 €, Freezeout, Seats 220, 3-day event (Team RK: Toni Ojala + qualifier)
Sat 28th 16.00 - Texas No Limit 600+ 30 €, Freezeout, Seats 100 Sun 29th 16.00 - Omaha 5 Pot Limit 600+ 30 €, Freezeout, Seats 96

Will Toni defend his title?

Stay tuned for more updates..