Recently, the GSOP Grand Slam was held on the Ongame Network, which includes sites like Betsafe. According to Mexico’s Kevin Civel Vandersmissen (pictured), a transplant from Belgium, it was a special tournament designed to reward GSOP event winners and came with a $5,000 buy-in for everyone else. At the end of the day, Vandersmissen raked in $84,000 and officially landed in third place.

“I was pretty happy with the score,” Vandersmissen told PocketFives in an exclusive interview. “It’s always nice to have a very good Sunday. The $84,000 score comes at a good time too because I’m going to play in all of the Euro live events starting with the Irish Open.” The latter kicks off on Friday in Dublin. In 2012, Vandersmissen, a member of Team Ivey, won its Main Event for $553,000, one of three six-figure live scores he owns.

The final table of the GSOP Grand Slam was stacked and included the likes of ninth ranked whereisdonnyand longtime PocketFiver wywrot (pictured). Vandersmissen assessed, “You know when you’re playing in a $5,000 tournament online that the field is going to be pretty tough. But, I could still see enough value in it because of the qualifiers and all of the winners from those GSOP events who are probably not used to playing in those fields.”

In the beginning of the Grand Slam, Vandersmissen struggled in 3bet pots and shed 25% of his stack right off the bat. Then, he grinded back up until a hand came up where he opened with 7-6 in the cutoff and received a call from the small blind. The flop was 10-9-8 with two spades and Vandersmissen got check-raised. The turn was a blank and his opponent bet out. Vandersmissen just called and the river completed a possible flush.

“That wasn’t the card I wanted to see,” Vandersmissen said of the river. “My opponent bet 50% of the pot, while he had a pot-sized bet behind. I tanked for two minutes and called because there was something fishy about the bet-sizing considering he had a pot-sized bet behind. I called and he showed 8-8 for a flopped set. I didn’t expect him to have that hand. It was a pretty light value bet.”

That hand sent his chip stack soaring and he said that he coolered other players and won coin flips to move to 77,000. On the bubble, he dropped to around 50,000 in chips and then lost two pots against short stacks. From there, he recalled, “I doubled up again on the bubble with queens against A-K, so I was very happy to win that flip. Once in the money, everything went very fast because people got short after a 60-minute bubble.”

At the final table, he shared a hand against whereisdonny where Vandersmissen limp-called with Q-9 suited in the small blind. The flop came Q-9-X, giving Vandersmissen top two pair, and the action went check-check. The turn put out a possible backdoor flush draw, Vandersmissen bet, and whereisdonny called. The river completed the flush. Vandersmissen checked, planning to call most bets, and whereisdonny jammed for twice the pot.

“I ended up folding after going into the tank for a long time,” Vandersmissen said of his action in the hand. “I really want to know what he had there, but I felt I was beat.”

What to do with $84,000 other than play tournaments like the Irish Open and various WPT and EPT events? “I also want to go to the WSOP for seven weeks,” Vandersmissen said.” It’s hard to believe that we’re just two short months away from the beginning of the annual poker festival in the Nevada desert.

In January, Vandersmissen won the PokerStars Sunday 500 and officially walked away with $77,000. Needless to say, 2013 has been a pretty fruitful year for the Belgium native: “I’m pretty happy with how my game is right now. I didn’t play much online before I moved to Mexico, but I started to play a lot again because of the good time zone Mexico has, so my game has gotten much better in the past six months. Right now, there are still some small things to work on like my 8- to 13-big blind game, but that’s going to be a plugged leak soon.”

By the way, if you want to play on the Ongame Network and don’t already have an account with Betsafe, you can sign up through PocketFives’ linksand make a deposit to get two free months of PocketFives Training with the sign-up fee waived, a $100 value. Get started here.

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