Event 29 of PokerStars’ Turbo Championship of Online Poker (TCOOP) was a $109 NL Shootout tournament. It started with exactly 1000 entries creating a prize pool of an even $100,000. To make it into the money and the second round all you had to do was win your first ten handed sit-n-go. If you were lucky and skilled enough to win your second round sit-n-go, then you made the final table and were one of the last ten players in the tournament. The last player standing was the well known Hungarian online player “twirlpro” (known as “breeth” on most other sites) and he turned his $109 buy-in into a nice score of $18,250. Although this is actually one of twirlpro’s smaller scores (he has numerous scores over $50k including wins in the Sunday Million and the Sunday Brawl) he will get to take home a 24k gold-plated card capper as a TCOOP champion.
The final ten players consisted of amateurs and long-term grinders. With a guaranteed score of $1400 for going out in tenth, no one was going to leave the final table too devastated. With everyone at the final table starting on equal footing with 5,000 chips, it is not surprising that it would take a bit of time for the first elimination. However, with the turbo structure having blinds increase every 5 minutes, it was very surprising that the first elimination did not occur until the 9th level, almost 50 minutes into the match. With blinds at 150/300, MrNegreanu pushed his last 15 BBs of 4400 chips into the middle with A8o, only to cringe when czlol woke up with AKo in the SB and had him covered.
10 minutes later, with blinds now at 250/500, the biggest hand at the final table occurred. -shameLi-, an internet grinder, shoved from UTG with just under 10 BBs with AhJh; josunabot18 called with his last 7 BBs with 9d9h; and twirlpro reraised all-in from the SB with ThTs. twirlpro was already the chip leader at the table with almost 30 BBs and had the other two players covered. The flop came Ad5h4s putting -shameLi- well in front, but twirlpro spiked the Tc on the turn and had both his opponents drawing dead. With that hand twirlpro cemented his chip lead and took out two players leaving only 6 left in the field.
Those 6 players were quickly whittled down to 3 due to short stacks and increasing blinds. When the dust settled the three remaining players were all internet pros. JeanGrae, a Canadian pro; czlol, a Czech pro; and twirlpro, the Hungarian superstar. These three battled for quite a while until a shortstacked JeanGrae finally succumbed in third place when his AQo could not beat twirlpro’s AKo.
On the last hand on the tourney with blinds at 400/800 and stacks at about 20k for czlol and 30k for twirlpro, twirlpro minraised to 1600 and czlol 3-bet to 4000. twirlpro responded by shoving with Ac5c and czlol made an easy call heads-up with 9h9s. czlol was an almost 2:1 favorite to take a commanding chip lead, but unfortunately for him twirlpro’s horseshoe on this day was stuck in a place that no one could find and when the flop came As3c6s czlol’s day was as good as done. The turn and river were blanks and twirlpro went home the winner.