By
Dan
On Thursday, April 19, 2007, two star-studded PocketFivers met on
PokerStars heads up for $1,000. They were the winners of the February and March
PocketFives Monthly Leader Boards, Scott “
emptyseat88” Fischman and Justin “
YourTimeIsUp” Schwartz. In the end, YourTimeIsUp took down the heads up match and padded his wallet just a little bit more. This match marked the culmination of an incredible month for each of these two young guns. YourTimeIsUp notched the second highest monthly PLB score ever and emptyseat88 proved that he can dominate in both the live and online poker arenas.
The heads up battle lasted only a few hands. A flop that gave an open-ended straight draw to Fischman and two pair for Schwartz set the tone. Schwartz comments: “I had J-9 off-suit on the button. The hand is by no means a monster, but position is everything heads up, so I raised it up. I flopped gin, top two pair, and Fischman bet the minimum, one-sixth of the pot. I then raised more than the pot, hoping Fischman would use the logic that I'm reading him as weak and trying to blast him off the pot in position. In actuality, over 95% of the time when I make that raise, I have Fischman crushed because whenever a player calls pre-flop and leads out of position heads up, it usually means he's looking to make a play on the hand. He misinterpreted my raise as weak and not super strong and incorrectly assumed he had fold equity. He over-bet shoved all in with his open ended straight draw and my two pair held.”
Next up for Schwartz could be P0KERPR033, who just took down the PokerStars Sunday Million. Schwartz comments on P0KERPR033’s play: “He has improved a lot as a player since he came up in the rankings. He can be very tricky to play against when he has a stack and he is always fearless. He can tilt you. I think his success in MTT’s comes from being very good at exploiting weaker players. By the time the final couple of tables come around and the field is much stronger, he has, a lot of times, amassed a great chip stack and rides it to victory.”
Schwartz had an amazing month in March to take down the PLB. Most impressively, he came in first in the Full Tilt $400k for a prize of just over $80,000. That alone was worth 660.94 PLB points. All in all, he had five different five-figure cashes in the month and won a total of five tournaments as well. The other big cashes were a win in the Full Tilt Saturday $300, second in the Full Tilt Sunday Mulligan, first in a Full Tilt $150, first in a PokerStars $50 rebuy, and first in a PokerStars $100.
Fischman comments on what it meant to be a PocketFives Leader Board champ for February: “I had to play my ass off to achieve the honor and I was thrilled to find out that it came along with a $1,000 freeroll. It was fun while it lasted, but I don’t see myself winning these types of leader boards again in the future. I will be focusing on live tourneys for the remainder of the year primarily and look forward to meeting some of my online rivals in person!” Fischman got to the match by winning the February PLB (the first month he signed up for the site) and defeating January champion ComeOnPhish last month for $1,000 in our heads up match.
Congratulations to YourTimeIsUp on taking down the PLB match and we look forward to continued success from each of you. Visit the PocketFives Monthly Leader Board for more information.