Recently, PocketFives.com member Kevin BeL0WaB0Ve Saul chopped heads-up in the high-stakes PokerStars Sunday 500. The tournament drew a crowd of 1,091 entrants and Saul forged a deal heads-up with fellow poker player Alex ArgentinaBoy Queen. Both banked around $80,000 and, for Saul, it marked the beginning of a successful three-day stretch in which he also final tabled a Full Tilt Online Poker Series (FTOPS) event for $30,000 and chopped the Ultimate Bet $100 Cubed with Dan Wretchy Martin.Three-handed, Saul held half of the chips in play before Queen busted third place finisher gmauerer. As a result, the veteran poker player was equal with his opponent and the pair decided to call it a night, crafting an even chop. He told PocketFives.com, “I think it was 3:00am or 4:00am, so I was tired after playing for 16 hours on a Sunday. If it's a friend, I'll usually be open to chopping.” Saul came into the final table of the Sunday 500 in the middle of the pack in chips before going on his run.
Down the stretch, he told PocketFives.com that very few decisions were involved: “I would pick up aces and someone else would have A-K. Then, a few orbits would go by and I’d find kings against someone's queens. It definitely wasn't brain surgery.” The top 162 spots paid out in the event, which broke its $500,000 guarantee by $45,000. He added, “When you have my reputation, you are going to get a lot of chips when you keep getting big hands.” The end result: Saul boosted his bankroll by a cool $80,000 in a Sunday major tournament.
I still have fond memories of the 2007 installment of the World Poker Tour’s (WPT) Bellagio Cup, which Saul took down to the tune of $1.3 million. At that year’s PocketFives.com Party, he gave us a considerable amount of flack for not covering the tournament on PocketFivesLive.com. That event saw Saul outlast Mike “The Mouth” Matusow (pictured at left) heads-up in a final table that also included Shane Shaniac Schleger. Saul finished 308th out of nearly 6,500 players in the recently-completed 2009 World Series of Poker (WSOP) Main Event, cashing for $30,000.
The key news story of the week was Joe jcada99 Cada’s (pictured at right) improbable comeback in the Main Event. Down to less than five big blinds at one point, Cada rebounded to claim the $8.5 million top prize and became the youngest WSOP Main Event winner ever, breaking Peter Eastgate’s one year old mark. On Darvin Moon’s strategy heads-up against Cada in the $10,000 buy-in tournament, Saul told us, “He did what he needed to do: blind aggression at all times. His Q-J call to end things was horrific, though, despite Cada only having 9-9. It was pretty nerve-racking and tilting. I kept screaming at my computer to just finish it already.” Heads-up play took nearly 90 hands and played out two days after the field had been slimmed from nine to two.Event #12 of FTOPS XIV was a $1,060 buy-in No Limit Hold’em Six-Max event that saw Saul take eighth place for $30,000. He recalled that his rail during the four-figure price tag tournament was quite lively: “My rail was absolutely nuts. There were a lot of supporters, a lot of haters, and of course fights among them.” On who turned out, Saul noted, “The rail just grows. Most of the high-stakes multi-table tournament community sweats the big events deep, so you get the usual friends on your rails.”
In September, Saul finished third in the PokerStars World Championship of Online Poker (WCOOP) $10,300 buy-in High Roller No Limit Hold’em event for $337,000. One year ago, he recorded a runner-up finish in the FTOPS $300 rebuy and took home $168,000. Two days before that, he logged a fourth place finish in the FTOPS $1,000 event for $105,000. This year, Saul took down the PokerStars Sunday Second Chance and also claimed the runner-up spot in the Absolute Poker $150,000 Guaranteed. Three months ago, he won Event #11 of FTOPS XIII for a cool $57,000.
Congratulations from all of us here at PocketFives.com to Saul for chopping the Sunday 500.
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