This past weekend, one PocketFiver raked in over $50,000 by making the final table of both the $200 rebuy and Sunday Million on PokerStars. Peter "#1Pen" Neff finished third in the $200 rebuy for nearly $19,000. He also placed sixth in the Sunday Million for nearly $33,000 in what Neff called, “the most disappointing $33,000 you can win.” A top-ranked player on PocketFives.com, Neff sat down to discuss his phenomenal Sunday in which he won over $50,000 on PokerStars. In the $200 rebuy, Neff had a huge stack from the beginning, getting up to around 20,000 after the first hour. His chip stack eventually ballooned to over 45,000, the chip lead, with five tables left before he went card dead. Neff comments: “I was fairly card dead from five tables down to 12 people left, just stealing blinds here and there, but no really big hands. Luckily, the early chip lead was enough to keep me up there.” Down to 11 players remaining, Neff doubled up with pocket queens versus pocket tens and entered the final table second in chips. He knocked out PocketFiver Riverloser with A-K versus A-J to leap to 500,000 in chips, a pretty big chip lead. Down to three remaining, Neff’s run began to unravel: “I took a pretty bad beat with blinds of 6,000/12,000: im1uponu raised to 36,000 from the small blind and I pushed with pocket sevens from the big blind. He called 140,000 more with A-4 and hit an A on the river. That one hurt.”
Down to around 350,000 chips in the $200 rebuy, Neff made a stand with blinds of 8,000/16,000: “I raised with A-9 from the small blind against LukeFromB13 and he pushed and just barely had me covered. I called and he had A-J and it held up. I had been raising his small blind a lot, especially when I was the chip leader. I was just leaning on him, so I thought he was making a stand against me with a wide range of hands.” Neff busted out third and took home $18,873.
In the Sunday Million, Neff was the chip leader with 11 players remaining before losing a four million chip pot when the small blind pushed with 10-4. Neff called with pocket fours, but a 10 on the flop crippled Neff’s chip stack. He entered the final table with a stack slightly above average (8 million chips) and saw action on the very first hand: “I raised with K-Q one off the button to 720,000. I believe blinds were 150,000/300,000 and the small blind re-raised to 1.6 million, which was pretty small. I had position on him and knew he was one of the worst players at the table. The flop came nine high and he moved all in for 6 million into a 3.2 million pot, so I was forced to fold.”Down to around 6 million chips, Neff’s strategy was “to play as many hands as I could, but not too far out of my range of standard plays. I ended up not playing too many hands at all because I was card dead and just didn’t have any situations to raise. The chip leader was to my right and was opening a lot of pots, so there weren’t too many opportunities to steal blinds.” After doubling to 9 million chips by winning a coin flip with pocket eights versus A-Q, he would eventually bust with 7.5 million chips with blinds of 400k/800k after pushing with A-2 and being called by pocket sevens. Neff walked away with $32,991.
#1Pen comments on his night as a whole: “It was a great feeling. I had people supporting me the whole time, saying how I could set records and maybe win a Presto award if I won both. There’s always a little disappointment when you don’t win a tourney, but it was pretty cool to get through the largest field in the Sunday Million [6,672 entrants] to the final table and then the toughest field in the 200 rebuy [195 entrants] at the same time.”
PocketFives.com congratulates Peter “#1Pen” Neff on his big night on PokerStars and look forward to big things in the future.
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