PartyPoker’s Premier League is about to kick off this week in Las Vegas. Today we profile 3 of the qualifiers for the Premier League play-offs. These guys have qualified playing online at PartyPoker and now have a chance of winning the seat in the Premier League main event but are also in the running for the professional poker sponsorship and a place in the TeamParty.
Copacabana
I have played in the WSOP Main Event twice and in various EPTs including EPT Monte Carlo Grand Finale. My experience was exceptional but unfortunately I wasn’t able to win one of these bigger tournaments thus far. It’s a great feeling to play with other well known poker players and to have a shot at millions of dollars in prize money.
I was able to win an EPT Side Event in Monte Carlo 2007 with around 450 players and finished 11th in the Party Poker Cruise 2008.
I don’t have any special expectation for Premier League Poker event, I will see what hands I will get dealt and go from there. My goal is to win this qualifier and then move on to win the Party Poker Premier League! I didn’t do any special preparations for this trip thus far, my game is in shape and I will try to do sport and eat/sleep well before the tournament starts.
I would love to meet the best NL Cashgame players like Phil Ivey, Tom Dwan and Phil Galfond. It would be nice to get to know them better and maybe even talk strategy with them. I played with most good players online but only know a few of them in person.
The experience itself will be a nice change of pace because I usually play high stakes NL online and have become a lot less involved in offline tournaments in the past year. I was 2 times in Vegas and slowly I get a sense how to stay in shape and have a good time there while staying productive, so I expect a wonderful time!
Playing this qualifier and having a shot at playing with the best tournament players and winning huge sums of money while getting a shot at a sponsorship deal with Party Poker is a really unique chance for me. The sponsorship deal would change my life even more than a high finish in the Premier League, because I could divide my focus in poker between playing the biggest offline tournaments available and also playing the highest cash games online.
A win in the Premier League would also help my reputation as a great poker player and boost my chances to become a dominant player in the offline circuit. Winning all this money wouldn’t change my life drastically, I am already a well accomplished player but it could help getting even more financially secure and could change my focus in poker more towards offline tournaments and less towards online cashgames. Furthermore I love the game of poker so accomplishing a prestigious tournament win means at least as much to me as the prize money does.
TlLTEDFlSH
I am a french Canadian player who has been playing poker online for 5 year now. I have been playing on your site almost exclusively for the past few years. I was originally a limit player multitabling 100/200 up to 8 tables and doing really good at it.
I’m very good at limit/NL/SNGs and PLO. I’m also making vids for a new french coaching site and I will probably have a blog there too talking about my poker/life experiences. I won over 1 million on PartyPoker the past few years along with winning a Sunday Million 2-3 years ago and placing 3rd a week before that in a Friday special for a total of over 120k, all on PartyPoker.
I am a very good poker player. Lifetime I don’t have many live tournaments for the only reason that my overall ev/hour was much higher at the online tables than it would have been by going from city to city to play tournaments.
Now that I am settled pretty good, I would like to play more events on the circuit and be a bigger part of the community. As you might know, I am going to be part of the Premier League show filmed in February. I think I would be a good addition to your team.
I don’t know what else I could do to get me more spotlight but I’m definitively ready to do it. PartyPoker has been my family for a long time and I definitively hope that you guys will take a deep look into my application. I would like nothing more than being able to proudly represent the web site that has been my home for all these years.
swell112 (play money winner)
I don’t normally play online very much at all, but I was watching a poker show one night in the fall, and an ad came on for Partypoker, announcing the freeroll for the seat in the qualifier to the Premier League Tourney.
Within a night or two, I had made it into the top 10 or 20, those that were to move on to the next round. I really don’t remember much of that tourney at all. As best I can recall, I got decent cards it went smoothly.
The most distinctive memory I have of the tourney a couple of weeks ago, the one I won to get to Las Vegas, was that many of the seats at the tables were in fact vacant. Many of the qualifiers just didn’t show up. I think I recognized that sooner than a number of the others, and so played as if it was a very short-handed table, which it was, and was able to accumulate a significant stack by frequent blind-stealing.
At one point early on, I was the chip leader, I think, but I went up and down considerably. When we got to the final table, I think I was 3rd or 4th. The chip leader had a relatively massive stack.
Later on, after I had made some progress, at one point, s/he and I were in a hand. I had a strong draw, but s/he bet out; I called. The turn was a brick; again s/he bet, I called. On the river, again a brick; s/he checked, as did I, with nothing.
As it turned out, though, s/he was on a total bluff, somehow couldn’t fire the third bullet, and I won the hand, with just the high card. We were then about equal in chips, or maybe I was then the leader. There were more wild swings, but in the end I was fortunate to prevail.
I’m mostly a live, cash-game player. I hope to survive without overly embarrassing myself. My experience is largely in limit hold’em and omaha, cash games. As best I have been able to understand the format, it seems that the emphasis will be on short-handed play, and no-limit of course, so I have been trying to educate myself in that kind of play, largely by playing some 6-max sit and go’s.
I would love to meet Howard Lederer and Andy Black to explore the Buddhism and poker connection. Daniel Negreanu and Brad Booth to explore the Canada and poker connection. Jennifer Harman to see if she is as fundamentally a decent person as she seems on television.
Probably it will be a deeply humbling experience. Hopefully I will be able to emerge with head held high, not dreading the sight of the felt.
You will be hearing a lot more about PartyPoker’s Premier League Poker and our online qualifiers in the upcoming days and weeks. Stay tuned to the PartyPoker blog.
