Julian Herold
Country: Germany
Age: 24
Events: 51

Hi my name is Julian. I play poker for approximately 7 years now. First 2 years I was a losing/break even player but that changed quickly.

I play mostly SNGs and MTTs, I am also traveling around playing a lot of live tourneys (EPT,CAPT,WSOP). I normally don´t use to participate in these kind of promotions, but as i work for donkr.com and RedKings gave this great promo + one additional package for us exclusively I had to join. I have already played 5 WSOP events this year and busted 3 times with set over set,so don´t expect to much - lol.

Cheers
Julian

Christian Heich
Age: 23
Country: Germany

Christian Heich a Team RedKings pro. He is well-known for his aggressive style, this style gave him the win in the first side event in Aussie Millions 2009 where he took home 150.000 AUD. He plays a lot online at RedKings, and his opponents are always scared when he sits down at the table.

Christian has at the moment when this is written already played a few events in Vegas, but no big positions so far. He will continue playing and look for that prestigious bracelet.

Follow him in the blog!

Benjamin Schaub
Country: Germany
Age: 24

Benjamin Schaub is a very successful online player that RedKings gave the chance to show his skills also on the live circuit. He played for RedKings both in EPT Deauville and in EPT Dortmund, after suck outs and bad beats in those tournaments he is now back on track in the city of Gambling, Las Vegas.

Benjamin or as he is called Benni has rented a house with his German friends and has already been there for a few weeks, he doesn’t know exactly what events he will be playing, but you will soon find out..

Richard Weiss
Country: Germany
Age: 32
WSOP Events: 51

My Name is Richard, i am 32 years old and i live in the wonderful city Berlin. Its the second time, that i represent redkings on a live tournament. The first time was the EPT in Dortmund. It was a great experience to play with the great redkinsg player. And now i play the WSOP in Las vegas. WOW. A dream come true. I am looking forward to see the whole Team RedKings in Las Vegas. It is my first time in vegas and i hope it is not the last one. I knew some other guys who spent their time in Vegas. I will play some other little tourneys and some cashcame sessions and for sure a WSOP sindeevent. The Las Vegas trip is a very nice experience and i hope i will get some nices cashes. Wish me the best.

Richard also played for RedKings in EPT Dortmund, also then qualified through the Mission2RedKings promotion!

Jyrki Ahola
Age: 26
Country: Finland
WSOP Event: 51

I got to know poker through my friends and TVabout 3,5 years ago. I started with limit game and tournaments without actually knowing anything about the game. I continued to do this for a couple of years and managed to win a few. With the winning money I went travelling through Asia. After travelling I started wondering if I could earn regularly through poker. I started to study it more professionally and moved on to cash game. Now after 1,5 years I have moved from NL 10, 5- max play to NL 200 and I am making a income for myself together with studying. My goals in the future is to continue learn this fine game and see where my skills will take me.

Jyrki also played for RedKings in the Midnight Sun in Helsinki.

Vesa Jakobsson
Age: 26
City: Helsinki, Finland
WSOP Event: 51

Hi,

I am a 26 year old grinder from Helsinki. I play SNG tournaments at RedKings with $100 - $599 buy ins, + full and shorthanded tables. You can also see me sometimes at Helsinki Grand Casino playing live tournaments. First time I played holdem about 3 years ago and I have played it full time for a couple of years now. As hobbies I like to travel and play floorball (very popular in Finland and Sweden). Now at the end of November I managed to win the Mission2Vegas pointsrace and I will go at the end of June to Las Vegas and try my luck in the WSOP $1500 Event 51. I will update here how I am doing in Vegas whenever I have the opportunity. So far I have played only a few small live tournaments, so this will be the first big one for me.

Name: Harri Strömberg
Country: Finland
Playing WSOP Event: 54

OK, So I managed to win a place in the RedKings Team to the WSOP side Event through the Mission2Vegas tournament competition. I will play the Event 54 NL HE $1,500 and this will be my first live tournament besides home games, so we will see how it will turn out. I have thought to start pretty calmly and just look around a bit, so I can get into it properly.

Lately I have been playing NL SNG tournaments and played over 3000 SNGoes trying to build up my travel bankroll. I am planning to still play up to midsummer and then go to Vegas after that. See you all there and good cards to all Team players!

Good Luck Harri!

RedKings had two qualifiers for this tournament and Pasi was one of them, here you can read some more about him, and if you continue to read you will also get his report from the tournament that he had to leave yesterday.

Do not remember exactly but I beliewe I have played poker somewhere around 5 years.
Friends were already playing the game at that time. And after some time looking at their back I created own account and started playmoney tables and later continued to sng’s and MTT’s.
This last several years and then I switched to cash games.

Currently I am not playing that much what it was earlier. But I have switched back to SNG and MTT multitabling. Upcoming midnight sun main event is biggest buy-in what I have ever played and I really wait for it. Goal is of course to win it but field may not be easiest possible..
Live play experience is not that strong as I have only approx 20 “entertainment” cash game visits at few casinos and one live tournament experience. Lets see how it goes and if get far enough then hope some luck on turnpoint hands.

I am working at the telecom engineering and Poker is pure hobby for me.

Tournament report:

First three hours prior dinner break was pretty boring and I played only maybe 5-6 hands.

First little bit bigger pot where I involved was when I had ATo in early middle position, blinds 100/200, hit 600 bet and get called from late position. Flop was A8x, all spades. I cbet that with 2/3 pot and get called. Turn was 8 and I checked, villain checked.
Pot on turn was ~4k of chips. River was spade and now 4 spades on table.
I checked and villain hit small 700 bet. I reraised to 2400 and faced ~7000 rereraise which I folded. This was some sort of brain-fart from me when I changed my hand to bluff when I had very slight but enough showdown value to call that 700 “minibet” into 4000 pot.
That could go into inexperience of live tournaments. In the online games I would had snap called that river to check possibly but unlikely bluff. And not start to reraise when only better hands will call/reraise more. Now I had chips ~15k. Horrible play from me.
Only good thing was that it did not pay too much from my stack

Other little bit bigger hand during that 3 hours was when UTG raised to 550 and blinds were 100/200.
two player in middle called and also SB called. I was in BB with AKo and reraised to 2200.
Others folded and SB called. Pot on flop was ~6000. Board was something like Q57r.
Hit cbet and SB folded. Now I was in 22k of chips.

In addition to these I split one pot with AJ against same hand AJ. Also played maybe 2 pots from blinds with crap which I needed to fold on flop when there were no hits, no draws and overcards on table and cbet normally comes.

Last hand before dinner was basic setup, my KK against AA. I was in early position and reraised to 600.
Late position reraised to 1800, I rereraised 4000 and other guy hit all-in ~13000.
I am not 100% sure if I should had fold this as I propably had pretty tight image as have played only few hands and could there be anything else than AA when he hits all-in.
Well, I think I havent folded KK ever in preflop and didnt do so in this case either.
No help from board and fall down to 8k. Btw, only one king was red…

After dinner same continues that 93o, J5o etc cards which can not be played when I have no hurry to home and all hands were raised before flop and can not naturally raise those from early positions. Expect one pocket 77 which I got. I raised that and get called from middle. Board was AJx, Hit cbet, get called. Turn was blanko, I checked and villain bet 3k, which I decided to fold when I was pretty sure my great 77 was beaten.

Finally get 99 in SB, blinds were 200/400. Button opened to 1200. Easy decision to go to all-in 5,5k, BB called with KQ and also button called. Flop was AK7. BB bet 5k, button folded, no 9 on turn or river and that was it.

Good Game Pasi!

Today RedKings Summer Holiday promotion starts tonight with a huge $500 FREEROLL with bounties.

The Summer Holiday Series consists of 6 fantastic tournaments with huge guarantees or money added. The top 5 players from each of these tournaments will be issued with a ticket to the Final Freeroll on Thursday 11th June. The top 10 winners in the Final Freeroll will walk (or fly) away with a great prize!

Another way to get into this final freeroll with limited places is to beat out one of our THREE bounties tonight!
Here they are:
RK
RK
jougi420 (This one is only for you blog readers, no one else has been informed!)

That last bounty is Jyrki Ahola, who qualified for to play with Team RedKings in the WSOP through the magnificent promotion “Mission2Vegas”. Here is a short presentation about him:

“I got to know poker through my friends and TV about 3,5 years ago. I started with limit game and tournaments without actually knowing anything about the game. I continued to do this for a couple of years and managed to win a few. With the winning money I went travelling through Asia. After travelling I started wondering if I could earn regularly through poker. I started to study it more professionally and moved on to cash game. Now after 1,5 years I have moved from NL 10, 5- max play to NL 200 and I am making a income for myself together with studying. My goals in the future is to continue learn this fine game and see where my skills will take me.”

Beat him out and get a place in the summer holiday Final Freeroll where you can win a $1000 travel agency voucher for your dream vacation! And remember you claim your bounty by commenting here in the blog.

My name is Christoph Dierkes, I’m 45 years old and live and work (as a lawyer) in Düsseldorf, Germany. I started playing poker (hold’em) about 2 years ago on a holi-day and was immediately fascinated by the game (many years ago, in the early 80ies, we used to play 7 card stud with some friends, but we did not really know what we were doing, I suppose). The first thing I did when I came back from that holiday was, to buy a book to learn (unfortunately not a too good one). I looked for occasions to play live, because I did not want to play online (cause I’m such an old man!). I found one of these small live tournaments and made it to the last 2 tables of 140 players. I thought, hey, I understand the game! There I got to know my good friend Yvonne, who got me into the “scene” here in Düsseldorf.

I studied more, better books (Harrington, lately Hansen’s “Every Hand revealed”, “Kill
Everyone”) and still play about 2 - 3 times a week, mostly private or other small live SnGs or tournaments in Düsseldorf and around. My “biggest” tournaments so far were few 200 - 300 € Buy-Ins in the Casinos in Duisburg and Dortmund. Very rarely I play Cash Games (No Limit or Limit in the casino in Duisburg). I won some very small tournaments and, as a personal Highlight, a Heads Up Match against Dr Michael Keiner at the Poker Fair in Cologne 2008 (with 2 times quads in one heads up match!).

I qualified for EPT San Remo in a RedKings live tournament in Düsseldorf. I heard about it from my friend Yvonne, she was invited there by Horst Koch, otherwise I wouldn’t have known, because there was not much advertising for the tournament. So I still have to thank Yvonne, because I would have missed a great chance. Com-pared to other live or online qualifying tournaments, the chance to win in Düsseldorf
was rather good. Besides that, the tournament took place in a good location, a big and well known hotel here in Düsseldorf, and it was very well organised by Anatoliy Peev from RedKings (thanks Anatoliy) and Horst Koch from GPPA and DPL. So, if you have the chance to join a RedKings live tournament in your area, take it, I can recommend it to everyone.

The tournament started with Sit n Go’s with 10 players, that you had to win to qualify for the evening final. I did not know many of the other players, because most of them were not from Düsseldorf. There were some very good players, but - to my surprise - also a few beginners or other players with obviously little or no live experience who sometimes made strange moves. Fortunately, you had the chance to play more than one table and so I qualified for the evening final. It started with 44 players. I began to play tight, but in the first level played a big pot with a pocket pair of 88 on a board 4x 7x 9x turn 8x river 10x, my opponent placed a big bet, I did not give him a jack or a 6 on the moves he made before, so I called and won (he had bluffed all the time with KQ). From that hand on it went quite well, with no dramatic big wins or losses until the final table. I started with average stack. It was the typical rollercoaster. When we were down to 5 players, I was the short stack, but finally made it into the heads up with Lutz. From what I knew from one of our SnGs (which he won), the evening so far (he won the bounty on Horst Koch) and the final table, he was a good and aggressive player. We started with similar stacks (about 440k each with blinds 20/40k, I think). In the very first hand I had QQ in the Big Blind, but Lutz did not even limp. The next hands, he went All-In almost every time, and I could not call once, so I was small very soon. Then I got back into the game. Two times there was a split pot when we had the same hand (one of them both pre flop All In with A9, the other one pre flop raise/call and then checked till the river with K4 ore something like that). I do not really remember the hand when I called his pre flop All In and won almost all of his chips, I guess it was AJo vs. KQo. Then, in the last hand, he was down to 60 k and could not bring the full BB of 80 k. I had to call only 20 k with any 2, but of course was not happy to find 73o. When Lutz did not hit anything, a lucky 7 on the river brought me to San Remo!

Of course I’m a bit excited, cause it’s my first big tournament. I tasted the EPT at-mosphere last month in Dortmund, and it felt great. My friend Yvonne had qualified for Dortmund, unfortunately she lost a big pot in one of the first levels with Aces against a set (bad luck!) and did not survive day 1. I hope I’m luckier in San Remo. Nevertheless, only these few weeks ago I thought, “one day” I will play an EPT Main Event myself, and now, thanks to RedKings, my dream has come true just for the very next EPT. I will go for it and do my best.

Yours Christoph