59 players of the 150 will continue tomorrow at 16:00 CET, 2 of them is still RedKings players as both our qualifiers made it through the day.

Ville Forss, 94.200
Niko Petro, 15.900

We have been playing for 6 hours, with dinner break, and we still have our two qualifiers in the game.

Niko Petro, 32.000
Ville Fors, 15.000

The 150 registered players has sat down and started playing with the chips.

Ville Forss has got a tough table with the super Swede Oscar Silow, and the Super Finn Voitto Rintala.

Niko Petro has been a bit more lucky with the draw, as most of the players on his table is not any superstars.

Buy-in: €2850+€150
Starting stack: 20.000

Ville Forss, 20.000
Niko Petro, 20.000

The winter in Finland is tough, but weather has never been something that stops a good game of poker. This is exactly what we have to look forward to when Helsinki Freezeout starts today in Casino Helsinki at 16:00 CET.

You have already got a preview on the two RedKings qualifiers that will participate, and you can read more about them is the previous post.

We will be offering you a unique live reporting, following the big stars, and of course our two own qualifiers.

Stay inside today, no need to freeze, when you instead can just follow the Helsinki Freezeout! Stay tuned..

Its time for live poker again in Helsinki, Finland and RedKings is sending 2 qualifiers to the €2,850 Main Event. On thursday 49 players started the qualifier to get the 2 seats available and after many hours of battle we had our two winners; Ville Forss and Niko Petro.

To get you more acquainted with our 2 players, we have managed to get a small player profile of both of them.

Ville Forss

This 31 year old poker enthusiast who first got in contact with Texas No Limit Holdem in 2005.

After this he has learned the game by watching poker from TV and from the internet. He has also read a couple of books and has a poker book by Aki Pyysing on his shelf. However he is more a practical player so he has paid a lot to learn this game.. and still does if the game is not going well.

He has played some live events before especially at his home town Pori, but the casino in Helsinki is also not an unfamiliar place as he has also made it to the money in some of their tournaments.

The objective of this tournament is to finnish in the money (1st) but he wont take any preassure about this as long as he does not get dehydrated..

His favourite food is macaroni caseroll (LIHAMAKARONILAATIKKO in finnish)

Niko Petro

Niko started playing poker already about 8 years ago, but did not start playing regularly until 2006. Among his studies he also plays ice hockey so sometimes is hard to find time for everything.

He has quite a few poker books on his shelf but the book that he remembers the best is “Winning poker tournaments one hand at a time”.

He has already played live in Helsinki, Tallinn and EPT Varsaw last October so his goal is of course winning the whole thing.

His favourite food is peppersteak and brain mushroom sauce (Korvasienikastike in finnish).

Good Luck to them both!

The winner for the Helsinki Freezeout 2009 is Finnish Jani Valkeinen. He beat in the Heads Up another Finn Ilari Sahamies who is known as ziigmund in the high roller tables. For this win Jani will get €201.096 and Ilari €125.126. In the final hand Ilari went all in with 99 against Janis AA. This time Aces were not cracked. The best Swedish player was yesterdays chip leader Rifat Palevic who finished third with €83.630 winnings. He went all in against Ilari with AK and had Ilaris A4 completely covered, only for the 4 at the turn to change that.

This years tournament was one of the best ever and you can see that Helsinki is becoming a big poker city attracting international players world wide.

Good Luck to all the winners and see you at Deauville next week.

The tournament started well as I managed to double up during the first level. Blinds 50 - 100 with a starting stack of 20.000. I am on the button with AA. I raise to 300. SB calls and the BB raises to 1250. I raise to 5100 and the BB goes all in. I call, and the BB shows AK and I win the pot. After this I was pretty much card dead for the rest of the tournament. I tried as best as I could to steal some pots and I managed to do that quite well.

I was dropped from the tournament 8 minutes before the end of Day 1.
Blinds 600 - 1200 with ante 100. My stack was around 50k which was a bit above average. UTG+2 raises to 3000. I call from middle position with par of 8s. They raise next to me to 9000. That gets folded to me. I know the raiser and I knew that he could be holding almost anything so I decide to call. FLop QQ10. I check and he bets 8000. I think that without a Q he cannot call if I push, so I go all in. He shows AQ and I am out.

I am a bit annoyed about the last hand, but other than that, It was nice to play in the tournament and see the other poker players that I know.

Day 2 is now over and today we will play the final table. There are now
9 player remaining from which 3 are swedish and the rest finnish players. At the end of day 2, the biggest increase in stacks came from the swede Rifat Palevic who managed to knock out quite a few players.
Another player who is on a roll is the second swedish player Eric Pettersson who managed to knock out yesterdays chip leader Jens Kyllönen to place 17. Ilari Sahamies is still in the race and stands now in place 3. and is the best finnish player remaining.

Here are the chip counts and final table places:
Jani Alasuutari 134K
Jani Mikkola 329K
JR Lampila 280K
Jani Valkeinen 281K
Eric Pettersson (SWE) 960K
Jussi Nevanlinna 230K
Rifat Palevic (SWE) 1095K
Mikael Johansson (SWE) 528K
Ilari Sahamies 647K

The winner of the tournament will take down more then €200.000 which is a record win in Finland.

Day 1 finished during the night and now we have still 88 players remaining in the tournament. The leader at this point is Jens kyllönen with 148k in chips.
Some chip counts:
Table 1:
Jani Sointula 46k

Kari Somer 45k

Table 2:
Ilari Sahamies 35k

Table 3:
Mika Paasonen 47k

Table 4:
Jaajo Linnonmaa 65k
Aki Pyysing 33k

Table 5:
Eric Pettersson 108k

Dave Jakobson 25k

Table 6:
Lassi Harmonen 106k
Jani Valkeinen 123k

Table 12:
Juha Helppi 38k
Johan Storåkers 26k
Per Hildebrand 42k

Table 13:
Jens Kyllönen 148k
Kimmo Kurko 18k
Johannes Fonnesberg 125k

Table 14:
Amin Asikainen 26k

Unfortunately as you can see, there are no longer any Team RedKings members in the tournament. Toni Ojala went down on a open ended straight flush draw against a top pair after the flop. Toni was the favourite but he did not get any help. Jani was getting short stacked so he pushed with KJ just to find the opponent holding a QQ. No help again for Jani.
Jorma Nuutinen was the best Team RK player but eventually he dropped as well.

Next time we will get action for our Team RedKings members next week, when they play at the EPT Deauville.

The first day of the Freezeout has started very well but still with not much action. 3 hours has been
played and there are still 207 players remaining. I talked with the Tournament organizer from the Casino who said that he did not think that there would have been such a turnout.
The tournament is full with 224 players all together, thus making the prizepool €638 400.

The tournament has gathered many of the top finish players, including Ilari Sahamies, Voitto Rintala, Jani Sointula, Sami Kelopuro and Teresa Nousiainen. I had a quick word with Ilari Sahamies who said he is having a good month at Full Tilt so he was feeling fairly confident about this tournament. He gave the other players a bit of an advantage by arriving late to the tournament.

The tournament has attracted a lot of foreign players as well. One noticable player is the Polish rocker Michael Wisniewski who is the singer of the Ich Troje band. He can be noticed from his red hair.
Unfortunately the player is not a RedKings player. Swedish players have also made the trip over the gulf and their number in the finnish tournaments is increasing. Unfortunately Jonas Molander could bot participate this year, but Johan Storåkers is here keeping the Swedish flag high.

At this moment it is hard to get all the results from the tables as some tables are not open to public. I can tell you that all Team RedKings members are still in the tournament. So far Toni Ojala has 16k in chips, he had increased his chip stack well over 20k, when he lost a big pot with AK suited against QQ. But still, patience is the key for him.

The dinner break for the first group is coming up soon. They will split the group in two where the other half will eat and the other will play and then vice versa the next hour.

More to follow…