Gigabet vs the rest

Faldt lige over denne sjove læsning ...

www.bluffmagazine.com/Magazine/2005_11_26.asp

Online Report: Race for the Ages
by: Adam Small

In August, followers of the internet poker scene got to witness perhaps the most dramatic series of events that has ever occurred in the still-new online industry. What began as a simple bet on whether or not a player known as “GigaBet” would be able to win the monthly TLB (tournament leader board) on PokerStars, turned into a complex fiasco, with many twists and turns and large amounts of money being splashed in the pot.

It started in mid-May with a casual post on the Pocketfives.com poker forum, in which Eric Haber (known in the online world as “sheets”) outlined a proposal for a bet. The specifications for the bet were simply that GigaBet would give 2 to 1 odds that in a given month, he would finish first on the TLB.

The monthly TLB ranking is based on a player's top 20 finishes that month in multi-table tournaments. The formula is fairly complicated for determining the points someone gets after each tournament, but the main idea is that a player gets the most reward for making it through large fields.

Several people jumped at the opportunity to take this bet, and in the end, GigaBet ended up betting an undisclosed amount against a player known on PocketFives as nip/tuck. The bet was simple—if GigaBet came in first on the August TLB, he won, and if anyone else came in first, nip/tuck won. The only other stipulation was that GigaBet had to be able to prove at all times that it was actually him playing on his account. To help out his cause, nip/tuck offered a $5k reward to anyone on PocketFives who could beat GigaBet that month.

Now let's take a step back, as I still haven't explained who any of these people are.

The main player is Darrel Dicken (GigaBet), who is well known as one of the best, if not the very best, tournament players online. While it may have seemed as though this bet was an assertion of his greatness, he claimed that it was not that at all, saying in a post on PocketFives, “I have won the TLB enough times to know that it just takes stamina and solid play, poker genius has nothing to do with it.”

Sheets is a successful player and backer, most well known for hand picking “The Crew” for backing in the 2004 World Series of Poker, where they won three bracelets between them. As he is also one of the top players online, he was expected to contend for the monthly TLB as well.

And speaking of The Crew, one of those bracelet winners started stirring the pot when he heard about this bet. Brett Jungblut, known online as “Gank,” repeatedly declared, “I will win the onth of August on Stars! Gank owns!”

And so it began.

The race was hyped up as though GigaBet and Gank were the primary contenders and everyone else was just playing for third place. Gank took an early lead, making several final tables in the first few days of the month, and then GigaBet came back strong, winning one of the biggest daily tournaments on Stars, a $10 rebuy with well over 1,000 entrants. It looked as though those two would be neck and neck at the end of the month.

Meanwhile, another top online player known as JJProdigy was quietly having a great start to the month, including an early win in that same $10 rebuy tournament. It seemed apparent that several of the best players on PokerStars were determined to upstage GigaBet. The list of top players who appeared to be playing more tournaments than usual included Riverloser, GambleAB, and colson10, all of whom are respected as some of the very best players online. Riverloser even picked up a second place finish in the biggest weekly tournament on Stars, the Sunday $200 buy in, giving him a strong edge in the race.

JJProdigy took the lead though in the second week,

Og PokerStars var sikkert også godt tilfredse...

God historie....

Gad godt se deres økonomiske resultat af sådan et marathon.