The CoinPoker World Cash Game Championship concluded on January 12th.
The winner was Owen Messere, while his friend SeaLlama finished in last place.
Kevin "TaxHere" Paquet and riggedeck were the players who played the most hands, with the latter becoming the most consistent player in the tournament. Throughout the competition, the Bulgarian regular was in the top 3 or close to it, even leading with just four days left.
In the final sessions, the Bulgarian player lost a considerable amount, while Prodigy, on the other hand, played very confidently until the end. After the challenge, Owen published his chart on the 2+2 forum:
Viewers were reminded of a June post in which Messere published his own ranking of the best regs:
Hi guys, I'm PR0DIGY from ACR, and my personal top 10 is as follows:
- DavyJones922
- LLinusLLove
- SeaLlama
- Barak Wisbrod
- ja.sam.gale
- Darrell Goh
- makeboifin
- dudd1
- Taisto Janter
- Daniel
Linus Loeliger, who finished in 3rd place, started off confidently leading the way at the beginning of the challenge, then had a big slump, but managed to recover and by the end of the year he was back in the leader's group. However, he chose not to compete for the title, as he did not play any more hands after the Christmas break. Daniil Vasiliev also barely appeared at the tables after the New Year.
Interestingly, the biggest losers of the championship were three regulars: SeaLlama, ja.sam.gale and dudd1.
At the start of the tournament, Prodigy, SeaLlama and DKaladjurdjevic commented on one of the sessions. During that broadcast, SeaLlama even called himself the best player in the world.
The fourth worst placed was CD9K. On his Telegram channel, Jayser revealed that this was his student:
There's a very interesting event happening in the online cash game world right now: the Cash Game World Championship, where epic battles are being fought at the CoinPoker tables for the title of best cash game player and a $50,000 Rolex.
Among the players is my student Kenan CD9K, who started his training in 2021 playing NL200, and finished in 2023 playing up to NL5k online and nosebleeds in Macau. Also playing is MuneZ, my long-time friend and partner, so let's cheer for them!"
In a post on RunItOnce, CD9K asked readers not to worry too much about him:
I'm playing the CoinPoker challenge for fun, to learn, and I think I'm a small winner in some lineups.
Obviously this might sound like an excuse, but I think I was very unlucky in the challenge, although I did make some deep mistakes. However, I ran about $100k above EV and made more on ACR this month, so it's not as bad as it sounds (-125k on CoinPoker, ~+150k on ACR).
One thing that bothers me a bit is that I've faced some accusations of RTA and ghosting in the past few months. So I've tried to play fast, but I've heard that a lot of players exploit my timing tells.
Also, many high stakes players work in teams, sharing reads, showdowns, notes, etc. But I've always played alone, which makes these games even more challenging.
But ultimately, I'm learning a lot from these games, and this experience has been a great test of self-knowledge.
While Linus Loeliger completely ignored the second half of the championship, Viktor Kudinov, on the other hand, only entered the competition this year. As a result, he finished in 6th place and became the main star of the chat.
At the end of the championship, Sergei Nikiforov thanked all his opponents for the good moments shared.
Prodigy clarified the latest debate that took place on the 2+2 forum:
Sanba is 83rd, and zas ( Editor's note: Kudinov's nickname on PokerStars ) is famous for his 3-bets, 4-bets and 5-bets with this hand. So I called with because of blockers.
In the early days of the championship, Viktor Kudinov appeared on Invoker's stream, where he spent a few hours answering questions from the chat.
"I'm a professional high stakes player, unemployed for the past six months." That's how Enlight introduced himself at the beginning of the broadcast.
– Do you like playing live poker?
– Overall, it’s not bad. But it’s very monotonous, especially after playing high stakes online. There are some advantages, of course – there’s more time to think, the pace of the game is much more relaxed. How much you enjoy live poker depends a lot on the composition of the table. Fortunately, in high stakes games, most of the players are pleasant people.
– Where can we accompany you?
– I don’t have social media, because nothing interesting happens. I lead a normal life – wife, son, we watch series together, play board games. Every now and then I play live cash games, but only where it is expensive and safe to do so.
– Will you have time to compete for the top 1 in the CoinPoker challenge?
– No way. The tournament ends on the 12th, and I’ve only played 1,000 hands [ Editor’s note: In the end, Viktor played 16,300 hands, but to compete for the title, he needed to play at least 20,000] . I’m just playing to stay in shape. I won’t even have time to fight for the title of biggest loser. So far, the biggest loser is C9DK, a young and talented regular. There are a lot of young players in the field, and some of them play very well.
But out of pure laziness, I didn't prepare properly or watch streams. I analyzed a few hands, but I didn't study the theory in depth. In other words, maybe I'm not at my best, but at least I got a good rest.
I wanted to play the whole tournament, but I didn't get back home from Macau until the end of November. I had a few weeks off and then went to the Bahamas. I got back before the holidays and spent all my time with my family. By the time the tournament came back from the Christmas break, it was already over.
– What do you think of CoinPoker?
The tournament itself looks interesting, but I have no desire to support CoinPoker at the moment. I know very little about the room, and the community has been in trouble in the past when they blindly supported GG Poker. Now we need to be more discerning.
There are no NL500+ games outside of the challenge, and I don't understand what their marketing plan is. The idea of the challenge makes sense, but I don't think CoinPoker deserves any praise for it. They basically got the idea and didn't do much of it themselves. The only thing they did was open up the tables, which isn't hard at all, and give away a $50,000 Rolex to the winner. From the marketing they got, that's not money.
When the challenge was paused, they immediately opened raked tables ( Editor's note: during the tournament, the tables were raked-free ), without any concessions. For now, they're still a regular room, but we'll see what they do in the future. I'm not willing to give them any significant support at the moment, and I don't understand the regs that make them do this. Their software is pretty average, they don't have any VIP traffic, and those two things are intertwined.
– What is the most effective way to study the game?
It depends on the stage of your career. In the beginning, it is important to work alone as much as possible.
If you use solvers, learn how to lock in ranges and test different scenarios on your own. If you don't use solvers, spend a lot of time studying Flopzilla. The main goal is to constantly manipulate ranges, to absorb as much information as possible.
You can analyze marked hands in Flopzilla and write down your ideas, then review those same hands in the solver to compare the decisions you made.
For mid-stakes and high-stakes players, understanding the field’s tendencies is essential. The player pool is not that large, so it’s important to analyze both individual opponents and the field as a whole, grouping players according to specific patterns. But the priority should be learning how to navigate the ranges and their changes.
What you definitely shouldn't do is memorize ready-made solver solutions. Our goal is not to memorize graphs, but to understand how they are generated, how changes in ranges influence decisions, which sizings to choose in different spots, and so on.
It is also very important to know how to prioritize your research. Focus on the most common spots, where the largest volume of money is played. Rare situations can be ignored.
– Do you have an invitation for GG VIPs?
– No. If I wanted to, I could have ghosted someone, since I was offered an account the first day the changes went into effect. But I declined, and there's no game there anyway.
If there was traffic, I'm sure the tables would be full of ghosting. But either way, GG Poker is doing well because there is a lot of traffic at the lower limits, where players basically feed the rake.
GG Poker gained huge visibility and trust because all the top players played there. People saw that the pros were willing to keep millions in the room. They got all the trump cards possible, and now they don't need regs anymore.
Some of the high stakes players made a lot of money, some didn’t, but overall, it’s not like the NL5k+ pool took a huge amount of money from GG. On the other hand, the room got a huge marketing boost, and now it clearly doesn’t need it anymore.
– Tell us about your heads-up matches against Makeboifin.
– We didn’t play much. At the beginning, I had an advantage because I was in good shape and he was coming back from a long break. Then he got back into the swing of things and I started getting some horrible hands, so the advantage passed to him.
I think it is possible to beat him, but it would take a lot of effort and would not bring in any significant income. I doubt I could beat him with a high win rate, so I simply gave up. Heads-up has never been my favorite discipline, I prefer to play 3-4 max.
I also don't want to spend so much time playing poker to compete with the best in heads-up play. Nowadays, it only makes sense to grind hard and develop if you really love poker. I still enjoy the game, but I love my family more.
I still want to remain an elite player, but I no longer strive to be the absolute best.
– Is it possible to beat Linus heads-up?
– Sure. Linus is very good, but there are equally strong players. He stopped playing against Berri and AsianFlushie.
– What do you think of SeaLlama’s game, who calls himself the best player in the world? How close is that to the truth?
– I didn't play against him much last year. When I did, he was okay, but I wouldn't call him the best.
He made a decent profit playing against the strongest ACR regs, but he didn't have enough volume. In games where the edge is small, you need to play hundreds of thousands of hands to draw objective conclusions.
And it’s unclear whether he’ll be able to reach that volume, as the future of high stakes online gaming is still uncertain.
He is undoubtedly a solid regular and has developed very quickly, but only time will tell if he is ready to take his place among the elite.
