2021 APAT WSOP Fantasy League

[MintTrav]

Event 55: $400 Colossus No Limit Hold'em

Winner	Anatoliy Zyrin
Runners	9399
Paid	1391
Final Table	9

Player	Position	Points
Jon Turner	481	1
Ismael Bojang	633	1
Yueqi Zhu	842	1
Jeff Sluzinski	1364	1

Selector	Points
John 2	2
Barrie 1	1
Carl 2	1
Chris	1
Jo 1	1

With nearly 10,000 entries to a $400 tournament, you don't expect to find bracelet-winners in the shake-up, but you'd be wrong. Brett Apter was 26th, Barbara Enright 25th and Carlos Chang 18th. Anatoliy Zyrin outlasted everyone, though, to win his second bracelet.
You might also not expect our selectors to find point-scorers in this event, but one of them found two!

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You can't keep Chainsaw out of the news. He got irritated by a slow player and made a couple of dodgy tweets.
He has had plenty of feedback, generally supporting his stance on slow play, but split between those whose call him xenophobic and those who label this an overreaction.

[MintTrav]

Event 56: $10,000 No Limit Hold'em 6-Handed Championship

Winner	Benjamin Yu
Runners	329
Paid	50
Final Table	6

Player	Position	Points
Benjamin Yu	1	25
Nick Schulman	39	1
Ryan Laplante	40	1
Joao Vieira	41	1
Jeff Gross	44	1
Matas Cimbolas	47	1

Selector	Points
Rob	27
John 1	26
Barrie 1	25
Carl 2	25
Del	25
Gareth	25
Jo 1	25
Jo 2	25
Stephen 1	25
Chris	2
Carl 1	1
Jon	1
Luca 2	1
Simon A	1
Simon L	1

This was Ben's 10th cash of the Series, though only his second final table. Joanne "JJ" Liu, who was 13th, has also cashed 10 times, with just one final, but Jake Schwartz seems to be showing up in everything and this was his 12th cash, with an amazing five finals, finishing 2nd, 3rd twice, 5th and 7th.

[MintTrav]

Ben Yu, who used to be a pro break-dancer, found time to show some of his favourite moves to runner-up Nikita Kuznetsov.

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Event 57: $10,000 Limit 2-7 Lowball Triple Draw Championship

Winner	Brian Yoon
Runners	80
Paid	14
Final Table	7

Player	Position	Points
Joao Vieira	5	10
Brandon Shack-Harris	6	8
Dan Smith	9	1
Daniel Zack	12	1
Shaun Deeb	13	1
Mike Matusow	14	1

Selector	Points
Rob	11
Carl 1	10
Jo 2	10
Carl 2	9
Barrie 1	2
Chris	2
David	2
Gareth	2
John 1	2
Karen	2
Michael	2
Aneurin	1
Barrie 2	1
Del	1
Derek	1
Jo 1	1
Jon	1
Nic	1
Richard	1
Simon A	1
Simon L	1
Stephen 1	1
Stu	1
Tom	1

Brian Yoon won his fourth bracelet, and by far his cheapest one, worth only $240k. His previous wins have all been stonkers. He beat fields of 4,700 and 6,700 to win the Little Drop for One Drop for $664k and the Monster Stack for $1.094m, plus a $5k for $633. He has also cashed in five of the last nine Main Events, with most of them being very high finishes - 58th, 60th, 41st and 111th. Lately, he has veered towards 2-7, with three of his last four cashes coming in this game.

Wil Wilkinson, who finished third, is a No Limit 2-7 specialist, but has also cashed the Main Event five times, including being 17th, 25th and 51st. He only has 17 cashes in total, with five in MEs and seven in No Limit 2-7. Wil has no bracelet, but could been a name on everyone's lips if a few cards had landed differently, with finishes in 2nd, 3rd (x 3), 4th, 5th and 7th, with the 5th being in the $50k Players Championship.

Co-incidentally, Jordan Siegel in 7th has also cashed the Main Event four times.

[MintTrav]

Event 58: $1,000 Super Seniors No Limit Hold'em

Winner	Jean-Luc Adam
Runners	1893
Paid	285
Final Table	9

Player	Position	Points
-	-	-

Selector	Points
-	-

There is the Seniors, and then there is the Super Seniors, which is a whole different thing, with its own style of play, and dress, and finding your way back to your table after the toilet break.

Barry Greenstein, Ken Aldridge, Bill Klein and Jack McClelland all played, but the unquestioned star of the show was Doyle Brunson, who showed up for another last tournament. There weren't many well-known names in the cashes, though Sammy Farha and Dan Shak both finished in the top 100.

Jean-Luc Adam, who won the tournament, was late to the game of poker, being taught by his son a couple of years ago. He taught him too well, as they went to St. Maarten for a WSOP Circuit Series in 2019 and Jean-Luc won an event and a WSOP Circuit ring. His son Cedric won one as well less than a week later, but he was still beaten to it by Jean-Luc. Cedric finished 10th out of 2,778 in #33 (the Ran-Ran event) but Jean-Luc has outshone him once again.

We had no-one in the points.


Jean-Luc Adam and his nipper

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Sammy Farha finished Day 1 as one of the leaders, and ended up 66th, so clearly he can still play.
He wan't looking like the stereotypical Sammy we know though. He has changed hugely in appearance in just a few years.

[MintTrav]

Also cashing in the Super Seniors was David Dao, the doctor who was assisted in leaving a plane a few years ago, after refusing to leave an overbooked flight as he was scheduled to open a hospital. He ended up with concussion, a broken nose, missing teeth and an undisclosed settlement rumoured to be nine figures. I'm planning to fly United Airlines whenever possible in the hope of a repeat incident.

[MintTrav]

Event 59: $1,000 Tag Team No Limit Hold'em

Winner	Mike Ruter & Samy Dighlawi
Runners	641
Paid	97
Final Table	9

Player	Position	Points
Daniel Buzgon	73	1

Selector	Points
Aneurin	1

It was interesting to see Nipun Java and Nikita Luther, 2017 and 2018 winners of the Tag Team, both from India, finishing near the top once again with new partners, with Nikita getting really close in 15th place.

Pro's were scarce in the results of this event, the most notable being the Xuan Liu / Melanie Weisner team that finished 18th.

Most interest in this event centred around the team that finished third, the father-daughter combo of David & Amanda Botfeld, the amateurs with no WSOP cashes who stole the show. While that much is true, Amanda is far from the poker innocent she has been painted. She has written a poker book A Girl's Guide to Poker, as well as several articles about poker on CardsChat https://www.cardschat.com/news/author/abotfeld/.

She is Senior Instructor & Curriculum Coordinator at Poker Power (aka Poker Powher) https://pokerpower.com/, "a community led by women for women with the primary goal of utilizing the game of poker to build confidence, challenge the status quo, learn strategy and assess risk". “It's really about teaching capital allocation, strategy, risk and giving women the practice and the time to build confidence at the table, because the poker table is like the boardroom table.” Poker Power's Advisory Board consists of Jennifer Shahade and none other than Xuan Liu and Melanie Weisner, so this event was a triumph for Poker Power and gave them all a chance to catch up and discuss fashion and hairstyles and stuff girls like.

[MintTrav]

Event 60: $50,000 Poker Players Championship

Winner	Daniel Cates
Runners	63
Paid	10
Final Table	6

Player	Position	Points
Paul Volpe	3	15
Eli Elezra	4	12
Christopher Brewer	5	10
Matt Glantz	7	1
Nick Schulman	8	1
Daniel Negreanu	9	1

Selector	Points
Luca 1	16
Stephen 1	16
Simon A	15
Barrie 2	13
Luca 2	2
Nic	2
Rob	2
Aneurin	1
Barrie 1	1
Carl 2	1
Chris	1
David	1
Del	1
Derek	1
Gareth	1
Jo 1	1
Jo 2	1
John 1	1
Jon	1
Karen	1
Richard	1
Simon L	1
Stephen 2	1
Stu	1
Tom	1

The most prestigious event of the Series started with four players. It's a good job they showed up. 43 players had entered by the end of Day 1 and 39 went through, with Jake Schwartz and previous PPC Champion Matthew Ashton amongst the four casualties. Another 20 joined on Day 2 to make one of the smallest fields of the Series. A few players signed into their first event of the year, but reigning champ Phillip Hui wasn't amongst them and remains absent this year.

The biggest talking point was a fold made by Ryan Leng when the game was three-handed. He had check-called a bet on the Flop after hitting his A. He bet 600k on the river and then folded when Cates moved in for 300k more. Leng had the biggest stack at the time and was getting 11-1 on the call, but put Cates on two pair and folded. In fact, it seems that Cates didn't put Leng on an A, and was value-betting his K. Leng has been severely criticised, and has admitted that it was a mistake to fold, putting it down to tiredness caused by lack of physical fitness.

[MintTrav]

Event 61: $600 No Limit Hold'em Deepstack Championship

Winner	Cole Ferraro
Runners	3916
Paid	588
Final Table	9

Player	Position	Points
-	-	-

Selector	Points
-	-

Twenty-two-year-old Cole Ferraro had his first ever recorded cash in September, winning $4.7k for finishing 7th in a $400 tournament at the Wynn. He is now playing his first WSOP and it's going okay.

He started by winning $13k for a 58th-place finish out of 5,326 in the Millionaire Maker, but that was just for warm-ups. He then entered the $1k Freezeout, which attracted 1,358 entries, and two days later he was heads-up with the chip lead. Holding KK, he got Dalibor Dula all-in pre-flop with A5, and almost closed it but for an Ace on the River. Cole ended up as runner-up, banking $123k. He had a couple of small cashes since and now he's won the Deepstack against almost 4,000 players for a cool $252k.

A new star has been discovered, and he has the bucks to enter whatever he wants, though all his results so far have been in big field low buy-ins. Cole is near the top of the Player of the Year table and is heading the No Limit Hold'em Leaderboard. And he would have even more points and two bracelets if it wasn't for an unlucky River. Not a bad first Series.

588 players cashed in this and we didn't have any of them.

[MintTrav]

Event 62: $1,500 Pot Limit Omaha Hi-Lo 8 or Better

Winner	Kevin Gerhart
Runners	725
Paid	109
Final Table	8

Player	Position	Points
Mike Matusow	25	1
Adam Owen	58	1
Robert Mizrachi	64	1

Selector	Points
Stephen 2	2
Carl 2	1
Chris	1
Del	1
Jo 1	1
Jon	1
Karen	1
Michael	1
Nic	1
Simon L	1

A second bracelet of the Series for Kevin Gerhart, bringing him up to four in total. He has won at both ends, a $10k and a $1,500. This guy has more bracelets in him.

This was another close one for runner-up Dustin Dirksen, who was 4th in #49, the $10k NL2-7. In the past, he has been 2nd, 4th, 5th and 6th and now he's had two more top-four results, but the bracelet is still getting away. Surely he'll get there sooner or later.

[MintTrav]

Event 63: $500 Salute to Warriors No Limit Hold'em

Winner	Eric Zhang
Runners	1738
Paid	261
Final Table	9

Player	Position	Points
Jeff Sluzinski	81	1

Selector	Points
Chris	1

Another first-Series player wins a bracelet.

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Event 64: $5,000 Mixed No Limit Hold'em/Pot Limit Omaha

Winner	Eelis Pärssinen
Runners	579
Paid	87
Final Table	8

Player	Position	Points
Dan Smith	15	1
Daniel Zack	18	1
John Racener	46	1
Yuri Martins Dzivielevski	57	1
AP Louis Garza	62	1
Yueqi Zhu	66	1
Erik Seidel	70	1

Selector	Points
Barrie 1	2
Carl 2	2
David	2
Jo 2	2
Aneurin	1
Barrie 2	1
Carl 1	1
Derek	1
Gareth	1
Jo 1	1
John 1	1
John 2	1
Karen	1
Luca 1	1
Michael	1
Nic	1
Stu	1

This was a rare visit to live poker for Eelis Pärssinen. All you high-stakes online PLO regs will know that EEE27 is a two-time Supernova Elite who has been hugely successful at the highest stakes and was the biggest winner in PLO cash games on PokerStars in 2018-2019. In 2020, he won the online EPT Super High Roller for $540k and recorded five top-3 finishes in five days in Party's PLO Poker Masters, including winning the Super High Holler for $440k. He also has plenty of NLHE results, including taking down the FTOPS Main Event. We probably won't see him again for a while.

His heads-up opponent, Noah Bronstein, has been 4th three times and 3rd three times in bracelet events, but never higher, so it was a step forward to record his first 2nd place. It's nice to see a player making progress.

You can tell the Main Event was coming up after this, with previous ME stars, who haven't been around much this year, showing up in the cashes, including Hossein Ensan, Cliff Josephy and Chino Rheem.

[MintTrav]

Event 65: $1,000 Mini Main Event No Limit Hold'em

Winner	Georgios Sotiropoulos
Runners	3823
Paid	574
Final Table	9

Player	Position	Points
Ismael Bojang	106	1
Daniel Buzgon	156	1

Selector	Points
Aneurin	1
Carl 2	1

This was a third bracelet for Sotiropoulos, but a first "proper" one, with the others being for a WSOPE and an online.