This week, the PocketFives.com Podcast welcomes Florida resident Andrew bankrollme87 Touchette (pictured at right). He’s one week removed from taking down the $1K Monday on Full Tilt Poker for a colossal $65,000. Back in November, he final tabled the Main Event of the Full Tilt Online Poker Series (FTOPS) for $90,000. Also appearing on the show is Kevin ImaLuckSac MacPhee, who is fresh off a win in the European Poker Tour (EPT) Berlin Main Event, which came complete with an armed robbery. Let’s take a look at this week’s installment of the popular poker podcast.
Touchette has had a significant amount of success in recent months. In the first half of March alone, he banked $86,000 in tournaments that are tracked for the PocketFives.com Online Poker Rankings. Touchette told the PocketFives.com Podcast about the roots of his recent success: “I hang around in general with a lot of really good players. I live in South Florida and I hang around with people like Tristan Cre8ive Wade (pictured at left) and Stuart THEDONATOR Patterson… Those players really help my game. I had a lot of leaks about a year ago, but I think that just playing with them has really helped me a lot. It gives me a lot of confidence playing with players of that caliber.”During the 2009 World Series of Poker (WSOP), Touchette cashed in a $1,500 No Limit Hold’em tournament and, in addition to his aforementioned online poker accolades, won the Full Tilt $100 rebuy in early November for $54,000. On what changes he’s made to his game, Touchette revealed, “I think I’m getting better at putting people on a specific range. I used to be really spewy with calling. Six months ago, I would be check-calling a lot because I wasn’t really comfortable building a big pot with a marginal hand in a marginal spot. Recently, I’ve just been doing my best to go with my reads.”
Three years ago, Touchette’s poker career consisted of nothing more than $10 home games with friends. He told the PocketFives.com Podcast, “I played a lot of poker, but nothing that competitive. A friend of mine introduced me to online poker… I had maybe $119 in my PokerStars account and played a $114 nine-man turbo sit and go one night and shipped it. The next day, I played the $10 rebuy while going from class to class. I ended up chopping it for $8,000.”
When Touchette first played online poker for real money, PokerStars was his only destination. However, Felipe improved Montenegro (pictured at right) was instrumental in bringing the youngster over to Full Tilt Poker. Montenegro began backing Touchette in smaller online poker tournaments before the prodigy final tabled the Sunday Brawl for $50,000 and went off on his own. Now, much of his success has come on Full Tilt Poker, while his largest PokerStars in the money finish totals $17,000.This week and next week on the NBC franchise “Poker After Dark,” the first cash game of 2010 is airing. The episode features Victory Poker pro Antonio Esfandiari, DoylesRoom pro Todd Brunson, Chris Ferguson, UB.com front man Phil Hellmuth, cash game aficionado Brandon Adams, and Mike “The Mouth” Matusow. On the special two-week long series, Touchette commented, “It’s kind of a boring lineup for a ‘Poker After Dark’ cash game. They’re only playing $100/$200, which isn’t that high for a televised cash game. For the most part, they’re all pretty nitty except for Esfandiari. Hellmuth isn’t playing well and everyone is needling him and he’s needling everyone else.”
MacPhee (pictured at right) fields a bevy of member questions about his illustrious career, which recently included a €1 million payday for winning the EPT Berlin Main Event. On his schedule leading up to the 2010 WSOP, MacPhee told PocketFives.com Podcast listeners, “I’m definitely not taking any time off. If anything, I’m going to be working harder. Once you have a live major under your belt, you want to attack the Player of the Year standings and set yourself up for a sponsorship deal.” Two suspects in the casino heist were in custody at the time of writing.Check out the rest of this week’s PocketFives.com Podcast featuring Touchette and MacPhee.
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