Poker Articles

It’s hard enough to win one Sunday Major these days. With some of the best online poker players in the world as competition, you have to scratch and claw your way through enormous fields in pursuit of victory. Floating on a houseboat in the middle of Lake Meade this week is Eric basebaldy Baldwin, who took down the Bodog $100K on Memorial Day weekend. It was the second time in May he’s won the tournament, an impressive feat that has bolstered his confidence and skill headed into the 2008 World Series of Poker. Baldwin won a total of $47,200 for his two wins, which came on May 4th and May 25th. PocketFives.com caught up with Baldwin to learn about his victories and what we can expect from this prodigy in the future.

Baldwin comments on his second Bodog $100K win in three weeks: “My biggest online cash was winning the Super Tuesday on PokerStars last year right before the 2007 World Series of Poker. However, the tournaments on Bodog are a little different. They generally have much softer fields. You throw in the fact that the $100K is the biggest weekly tournament held on the site and you get a lot of soft players. It’s Bodog’s equivalent of the Sunday Million. With the WSOP right around the corner, you need to be good at playing against some bad players.” The tournament on May 4th attracted 756 entrants; the May 25th $100K attracted 618.

The tournament regularly boasts an overlay of $20,000 to $30,000, making it a hidden jewel among the Sunday majors. It’s a major reason why Baldwin and others flock to the site every week to enter the $109 tournament: “I was laughing at my friends. We’re all staying in a house in Las Vegas. We’ll usually swap a percentage in tournaments that we play. They always make fun of me for cashing on UltimateBet and Bodog a lot and I’m trying to convince them that they need to play on these two sites. None of them played this past weekend, so I got to keep all of the cash. It helps us curb variance and have someone to sweat.”

Prior to his May 4th win, Baldwin had taken second and fourth in the $100K in the past seven months. He finished second on October 28, 2007 for $14,300 and then took fourth on March 6th, 2008 for $3,760. He’s truly been a dominant force in this weekly event, the hallmark of Bodog’s tournament offering. He comments on his most recent opponent heads up, fin2win: “He was competent, but folded way too much heads up. He open-folded his button half the time and that allowed me to grind him down.” Basebaldy is a ranked player on PocketFives.com.

I had the privilege of spending time with basebaldy at the 2006 WSOP. He comments on his plans for the 2008 event: “We’re trying to work out a bet. I’m going to be playing the no limit preliminary events and I’m living with five other guys. We’re trying to get a prop bet going against any other house. It has to be verifiable that the people in the other house are actually living together and not just an all-star team. We’re going to bet $10,000 per man and we can escrow the money if we need to. We’ll choose 10 tournaments to play in and we’ll use the PocketFives PLB calculator for any cash that someone has. At the end of the WSOP, we’ll add up our scores.” The high stakes action that will add even more pressure to playing in the largest poker tournament on the face of the Earth.

In the meantime, Baldwin is relaxing on Lake Meade, a trip planned in order to relax right before the WSOP: “There isn’t much going on in the poker world in May. We were all in a house in April during the Bellagio event and we came out this week after the Sunday tournaments. The WSOP is a long grind, so we want to make sure we’re fresh.” When asked if there was a computer onboard the houseboat in order to play online poker or keep up with the world, Baldwin commented, “We brought one, but we forgot the wireless card.”

Congratulations again to Eric “basebaldy” Baldwin, two-time winner of the Bodog $100K in May.