Full Tilt Poker vs PokerStars Coverage at EPT 9 London 2013

Announcer: Welcome to the Flop Turn River coverage of a heads up full out battle between Full Tilt Poker and Poker stars. The event was a battle between both of the sites, made up of three head-to-head match-ups, each match-up comprises three heads up [Inaudible 00:00:24], where winner of each match-up taking home 50K from the loser. We caught up with both of the captains, Gus Hansen and Dan Illegranu to find out what started all this off.

Gus: I haven’t had exactly too many hooray experiences online, maybe just surfing online, or maybe a fan brought it to my attention that they liked that hand, this and that. That was a good hand for me, and that basically kicked it off, I sent a little tweet, he sent back a real needle. You have to give him credit, that was very well thought out, it did sting a little bit, but that’s how it goes and I’ll survive because I’m a big boy now.

Dan: He started with his needle, and I threw back a needle of my own, then It snowballed, and then I talked to people at PokerStars to see if something could happen along these lines. Something, like I’ve said, I wanted to do for a very long time. We thought it’d be fun and to do it here at EPT Live as the perfect place.

Announcer: The event started here with a match-up between Viktor “isildur1” Blom and Bertrand “Elky” Pelliegh, and we have Mike bringing you the highlights.

Mike: Let’s take a look at some of the big hands In the match between Full Tilt Poker Viktor “isildur1” and PokerStars player Bertrand “Elky” Pelliegh. Elky has a 2-to-1 chip to start this hand, he raises, Isildur calls and they both get just about the wettest flop imaginable. Elky C-bets, Issy raises and neither player waste any time getting the chips in the middle. Elky shows the second nut against Issys open-ended straight draw and flush draw. There’s not much either player could do there, that’s just a cooler and Elky wins the first table. This next hand happens at table three where Isildur has accumulated a small chip lead, Issy raises, Elky makes the call, they see a flop, and it goes check call. The turn goes check call again, and on the river Issy makes an overbet shove, which Elky calls, it turns out Issy had nothing whereas Elky made the straight on turn.

I think this hand Is a good example of Elky using Isildur1s well known aggressive tendencies against him to trap him into losing a lot of his chips, Isildur was unable to recover and Elky won table three shortly thereafter. Our next interesting hand happened on table two with Elky having a sizable chip lead over Isildur1, Isiluder raises, Elky bets and Isildur makes the call. Elky leads out on this dry flop and Issy calls, the turn goes check-check. Elky checks the river, Issy bets, Elky check raises him and Issy folds. This hand left Isildur very crippled, I think this is another example of using Isildurs aggression against him to win a nice pot. Isildur was unable to recover, Elky swept all three tables against Issy giving Poker Stars a one-nothing lead.

Announcer: With Poker Stars taking out the A-lead, Gus had a few words about the first match-up.

Gus: I think on preparation, Stars is going to be the favorite, they’re more methodical, where we are more hands down sit on the table and play, and from watching the match of Elky and isildur it seemed that Elky was a little bit better prepared for what he was going to do, and how he was going to deal with different things isildur might throw at him, where Isildur got a little flustered by the constant min-raise by Elky. I think obviously Elky is just not going to sit down and win three-zero against Isildur, but I think from the play it looked like he had a more though out plan and that could be part of the reason he ended up winning that match.

Announcer: I spoke to Dan and he explained how he picked the PokerStars team.

Dan: Well I’ll tell you how it was done, originally I went to Twitter and asked people who I should pick, and I narrowed it down to five players, obviously Elky, Ike, Vanessa Selps, Jason, and Eugene Chalchalov. Then what I did and this was a great experience for team bonding, I had the five of them all pick two players and put them at one and two. There was a point system, first place rank was two points and then one point, Ike got the most votes, everybody voted for him either first or second and closely in second place was Elky. Obviously it looks like a great pick now since he’s beaten Viktor Glom, I couldn’t have gone wrong, I really had a great stable of people that could all be competitive at this level.

Announcer: Mike has the highlight from the Durrrr and Ike match-up.

Mike: After isildurs defeat at the hands of Elky, it was up to Durrrr to turn things around for team Full Tilt in the match against Stars Pro Ike Haxton. This hand happened at table one, Durrrr raised, Ike three bet, and Durrrr made the call. They see a flop, Ike C-bets, Durrr raises and Ike Haxton goes over the top, Durrrr folds. This hand gave Ike a commanding chip lead and he went on to win table one against Durrrr. Our next hand happens at table two where Ike had accumulated a substantial trip lead over Durrrr. They are only about 20 big blinds deep, so Durrrr is absolutely correct to get it in here with ace jack, unfortunately he runs into the very top of Ikes range losing table two.

The next big hand happened at table three where Ike had a decent chip lead over Durrrr going into the hand. Durrrr raised, Ike three bet, and Durrrr made the call. Ike C-bet, Durrrr raised, Ike went all in, and Durrrr called, and it was top pair for Ike, flush draw and over-card for Durrrr. Durrrr got lucky on the river there to win the hand and to go on and win the table, unfortunately for Durrrr this was too little too late as Ike had already won two tables, making the final score Ike Haxton two, Durrrr one. Going into the final match the score was Pokerstars two, Full Tilt zero.

Announcer: With PokerStars now having won the, the last match-up was just bragging rights for the captains, and 50 thousand dollars. Gus had a couple tactics he wanted to try and outfox Daniel with.

Gus: I have some ideas, obviously I’d like to throw something at him that he doesn’t expect. I’m not quite sure what he does expect, I do have a history of limping a lot in some matches. Am I going to continue doing that? Maybe, maybe not. I haven’t picked a specific scenario and obviously no matter what I start out I have to vary my game no matter what, I’m going to try and throw a couple of curve-balls in there.

Announcer: Here’s Mike with the low-down on this final grudge match.

Mike: In this final Dan IIllegranu “Kid Poker” representing PokerStars faces off against Full Tilt Poker pro Gus Hansen. This hand happened at table two, after only a few minutes of play Daniel raised pre-flop and Gus made the call, on the flop Daniel C-bets, Gus check raises and Daniel calls. The turn is where things get interesting, Gus bets, Daniel raises, and Gus three-bets all in, Daniel makes the call with his top two pair against Gus Hansens top pair with a queen picker, I think Gus really overplayed his hand here giving that they started 150 big blinds deep, in any case Daniel won that hand and that table. This next hand happened at table three where Gus is severely short stacked, he has about 26 big blinds. Daniel opens, Gus three-bets, Daniel four bets all in, and Gus calls with jack nine off suit. Very, very optimistic play of jack nine off suit by Gus. Daniels ace-king to win the hand and the table.

This last hand happens at table one with Daniel having a two-to-one chip lead against Gus. Daniel opens raises, Gus three bets, Daniel four bets. Just get it in guys enough of this. All right they get it in, it’s Daniels kings against Gus’s jacks, there is nothing either of them could have done there differently I think. I think this is a standard cooler, unlucky for Gus, and with that hand Daniel Illegranu wins three of his hands against Gus Hansen, bringing the Poker Stars total to three matches won as against zero matches won for the Full Tilt Pros. This is certainly a dismal performance by Team Full Tilt and an overwhelming victory for Team Poker Stars team.

Announcer: With that new match complete, Full Tilt Professionals cannot be happy with the result, with a rematch already in the offing, we can only hope that Team Full Tilt can come back with a vengeance next time. This is Rob King from Flop Turn River.