Chad Batista is M8king Moves Up the Leader Board
By Shawn Patrick Green
Chad "m8kingmoves" Batista snuck into the top-10 spots on the Online Player of the Year (OPOY) leader board recently when he decided to start making final tables of every online tournament in sight. What's the best way to start such a run? By taking down the first-ever monthly $1 million-guaranteed tournament on Full Tilt, of course.
Playing as jse81, Batista plowed through 2,320 other entrants to snag the almost $213,000 top prize and earn himself 1,440 OPOY points on July 15. That same day, he finished deep in two tournaments on PokerStars, playing as lilholdem954: third place in one of the daily $100 (with rebuys) tournaments, for almost $16,000, and 15th in the
Sunday Warmup, for more than $2,400.
Batista's success continued over the next week when he made the final table of the $1,000 buy-in
Super Tuesday tournament on PokerStars (eighth place, for $8,000), and took down one of the daily $100 (with rebuys) tournaments the next Sunday, earning almost $30,000.
When the dust had settled, he'd earned 1,948 OPOY points in just over a week, which vaulted him into seventh place in the OPOY standings with 2,974 points. Batista is certainly living up to his nickname.
'We've Got Charlie! In the Trees!'
Juan Maceiras "Vietcong01" Barros is yet another name bounding up the leader board. Like many of the other names on the illustrious list, he started his meteoric rise by bagging the PokerStars
Sunday Million and then practicing some excellent follow-through.
In an almost unprecedented run, the very next week after Barros took down the
Sunday Million on July 8, earning $157,154 and 1,440 OPOY points, he took down PokerStars' second-most coveted Sunday tournament title, that of the Sunday Warmup. He pocketed $83,000 for that win and earned 960 more OPOY points.
Barros currently sits just shy of the top 10 on the leader board in 14th place, with 2,544 points. With his aptitude for taking down big-field tournaments, it seems like it'll be only a matter of time before he rushes to the top.
Two New Tournaments Create Shockwaves
PokerStars recently instituted two new, innovative tournaments that are making quite an impact.
The first is the
Sunday Hundred Grand, an $11 freezeout tournament with an unprecedented guarantee of $100,000 and a first-place prize of $18,000-$19,000. The tournament already has broken world records twice. Its first run had 15,000 entrants (which was actually the entry cap that PokerStars placed on the tournament), making it the biggest real-money poker tournament of all time, in terms of entrants. Then, the very next week, the tournament attracted 17,501 entrants (after PokerStars upped the player cap to 17,500, and a glitch of some sort allowed an extra player), which again broke the record. This record is likely to stick, however, unless PokerStars ups the cap again or experiences another registration "glitch."
The other big tournament is the
High Stakes Showdown, a $10,300 buy-in heads-up tournament with a 16-player entry cap. This tournament is absolutely stacked, with notables such as Sorel "Imper1um" Mizzi, Scott "emptyseat88" Fischman, and heads-up specialist Steven "stevesbets" Jacobs. Stevesbets won the first-ever run of the tournament and current OPOY leader Imper1um won the second run, both earning $72,000 for their accomplishment against the tough field.
World Championship of Online Poker Coming Soon
This year's
World Championship of Online Poker (
WCOOP) at PokerStars is almost upon us. The 23-event series runs Sept. 14-30 with tournaments including five-card draw, deuce-to-seven triple draw, seven-card stud, Omaha, H.O.R.S.E., and, of course, a slew of hold'em variations.
The guarantees over the 23 events add up to $15 million in combined prize pools, with the no-limit hold'em main event alone guaranteeing $5 million, the largest-ever guarantee for an online tournament. As a comparison, last year's
WCOOP guaranteed $10 million over 18 events. Poker pro (and current
Card Player Player of the Year points leader) J.C. "area23JC" Tran won last year's main event, earning more than $670,000.
Satellites are running already on PokerStars for the 23 events, and the site is offering $1.5 million in free entries from freeroll satellites.
Chatbox Cunning
Quick strategy from online poker's top pros
Kevin "BeL0WaB0Ve" Saul
"I would venture to say that there are very few excellent players online who haven't made any friends at the table, don't know anyone at the table, don't discuss hands with anyone, and make poker a completely solo project. It's just not very likely. I think that to be successful in this game, you need a good support system around you to help you develop your game."
"If you have to go to showdown with every one of your hands, or even the majority of your hands, you're not going to win a tournament. You have to be able to chip up without showdown."
"My first piece of advice would be to make sure that, if you're going to play poker, you have your priorities in order as far as not overextending yourself at all and keeping your personal life and personal money away from poker. Keep that money and your poker bankroll separate so that you can differentiate between the two, because a lot of the common mistakes that players make are related to that."
"I liked bluffing people off of hands, and a lot of times I got more pleasure from winning a pot by making a nice bluff than actually getting somebody to pay off a huge value-bet. For me, now, when you can maximize value for a big hand - when you have aces and flop a set or something - that's harder to do than to bluff somebody off of a hand."
