Three stories from the cafeteria at PokerStars Towers including the results from the PokerStars Festival in Hamburg, Lex ‘RaSZi’ Veldhuis proving he still has it with a mighty fine win on Twitch, and Daniel Negreanu explains why he isn’t a fan of Thanksgiving.
Given the impact that German poker players are having on the global scene, it would be daft if a native didn’t win the PokerStars Festival Main Event in Hamburg this weekend.
Ulrich Pauls ensured we avoided a drift into daft by taking down the first prize of €105,850 in the €1,100 buy-in event. The 36-year-old from Hamburg nearly didn’t play. Before the Main Event, Pauls was one of the unhappiest faces of the 2,609 entrants from 54 different countries who created €1,170,138 in prize money.
But he went for it, like walking into a barbershop, saying, “Take it all off.”
Pauls, who had never cashed in a live event tracked by Hendon Mob up until his win, came into the final table riding shotgun. The Pole, Michal Lubas, was in the driving seat. A second Pole, PokerStars Team Pro, Marcin Horecki, played the role of the most famous face of the final table but fell very early.
The Main Event attracted 567 entrants, dwarfing the 367 that appeared last season, and ensuring the decision to create a €500,000 Guarantee didn’t make PokerStars look like a photosensitivity sufferer basking in the desert.
Final Table Results
1. Ulrich Pauls – €105,850
2. Michael Lubas – €66,220
3. Jan Sigel – €47,410
4. Behzad Zarnegar – €36,960
5. Bo Rundström – €28,980
6. Andrei Nodea – €22,770
7. Karolis Domarkas – €16,990
8. Marcin Horecki – €11,770
9. Rudolf Koster – €9,290
The former United Kingdom & Ireland Poker Tour (UKIPT) Champion, Daniel Stacey, finished 12th.
Andre Haneberg wins the High Roller
Outside of the Main Event, the €2,200 High Roller was another target that people wanted to hit hard. The event attracted 100 entrants, and Andre Haneberg defeated Kim De Han, heads-up, to take the €46,380 first prize.
The result ranks as Haneberg’s largest score to date eclipsing the €39,000 he banked for finishing runner-up to partypoker ambassador Anatoly Filatov in the €2,200 High Roller at the partypoker MILLION High Roller at the King’s Casino back in June.
Final Table Results
1. Andre Haneberg – €46,380
2. Kim De Han – €32,210
3. Martin Wendt – €21,300
4. Jamila von Perger – €16,670
5. Eric Henning – €13,440
6. Adnan Dizdarevic – €10,480
7. Varahram Vardjavand – €8,290
8. Frederik Jensen – €6,460
9. Grzegorz Derkowski – €4,890
Lex Veldhuis proves there is life in the old dog yet
You need a lot of motivation to grind 10-15 hours of online poker per day, or maybe you just need one twat to ignite your boosters?
Before the weekend broke, Lex ‘RaSZi’ Veldhuis was competing in the $1,050 buy-in PokerStars Thursday Thrill, streaming to his loyal audience on Twitch, when a troll appeared from under his bridge to call Veldhuis old.
“Lex quit poker; you don’t got it in your anymore. You’re life’s with your girl now; you’re too old for this, you don’t got the fire in you anymore.”
15 hours later and Veldhuis proved that he still has it by winning the thing for $55,000 in front of 9,000 enthused viewers.
“Winning a tournament on Twitch feels like becoming Olympic champion,” Veldhuis told PokerStars’s Stephen Bartley after his win.
I’m not sure Olympic champions are that old, Lex.
Daniel Negreanu is not a fan of Thanksgiving
I had to ask.
I was about to sit down for my first Thanksgiving dinner on U.S. soil, and I had no idea what my American brethren were celebrating.
“What’s Thanksgiving for?”
The responses varied wildly.
The children explained how we were celebrating the arrival of the pilgrims in the 1600s. One adult told me that it was a celebration of the harvest. And then someone else in the room said to me that it is a celebration of the earliest white settlers, who eventually went on to massacre the native Americans.
And so I was prepared when Daniel Negreanu took to Twitter to share his Thanksgiving thoughts.
When I think of Thanksgiving I think of murder, rape, genocide of natives killed by white pilgrims armed with evil weapons. A destruction of a culture & its people. Not as happy as “football & Black Friday” but at least its the truth https://t.co/BsfkJ6NXHF
— Daniel Negreanu (@RealKidPoker) November 23, 2017
Over 400 people responded to the tweet with most of the comments apparently coming from a place of confirmation bias, which I expect from a community who hope to see pocket aces every time they peek at their cards.
