The CoinPoker World Cash Game Championship concluded on January 12th .
The winner was Owen Messer, with his friend SeaLlama coming in last.
Kevin "TaxHere" Paquet and riggedeck played the most hands, the latter becoming the most stable player of the championship. Throughout the entire distance, the regular from Bulgaria was in the top 3 or close, and 4 days before the end he was even leading.
In the final sessions, the Bulgarian player lost a fair amount, while Prodigy, on the contrary, played the end very confidently. Following the challenge, Owen published his chart on 2+2:
Onlookersrecalled his June post, in which Messer published his own rating of top regs:
– Hi everyone, this is PR0DIGY from ACR, my personal top 10 looks like this:
DavyJones922
LLinusLLove
SeaLlama
Barak Wisbrod
ja.sam.gale
Darrell Goh
makeboifin
dudd1
Taisto Janter
Daniil
Linus Loeliger, who took 3rd place, confidently led at the very beginning of the challenge, then went into deep minus, but managed to bounce back and at the end of the year he again entered the ranks of leaders. However, he deliberately refused to fight for victory, since after the Christmas break he did not play a single hand. Daniil Vasiliev also practically did not appear at the tables after the New Year.
It is interesting that the top losers of the championship were three regulars—SeaLlama, ja.sam.gale and dudd1.
At the very beginning of the championship, Prodigy, SeaLlama and DKaladjurdjevic commented on one of the sessions. In that broadcast, SeaLlama also called himself the best player in the world.
The fourth from the end was CD9K. In his telegram channel, Jayser wrote that this was his student:
– There is a very interesting event going on in the world of online cash right now – Cash Game World Championship, where re-wars are played at the CoinPoker tables for the title of the best cash player and a Rolex watch for $50,000.
Among the players is my student Kenan CD9K, who started training in 2021, playing nl200, and finished in 2023, playing up to nl5k online and nosebleeds in the Macau offline. Also playing at the tables is MuneZ, my friend and long-time partner, so we will keep our fingers crossed for them!
In a blog post on RunitOnce, CD9K asked readers not to worry too much about him:
– I play Coinpoker challenge for fun+to learn+ I think I'm a slight winner in some lineups
Obviously this will look like cope but I think I ran really bad in the challenge, though I did make some mistakes deep. I did however run like 100k over EV and have won more on ACR this month so it's not as bad as it looks (-125k$ Coin, ~ +150k$ ACR)
One thing that's a bit annoying is I faced some RTA accusations and other ghosting accusations in the past few months. So I tried to play fast but I've heard that a lot of people (think or are) exploiting timing tells on me
Also, a lot of HS guys work in teams, share reads/showdowns/notes etc. But I have only ever worked solo, is a bit of a challenge in theses games
But yeah, learning a lot from this games and a lot of self exposure involved
If Linus completely ignored the second half of the championship, then Viktor Kudinov, on the contrary, entered the game only this year. As a result, he took 6th place and became the main star of the chat.
At the end of the championship, Sergei Nikiforov thanked all his opponents for a pleasant time.
The essence of the last dialogue on 2+2 was explained by Prodigy:
– Sanba is 83o, zas (Ed. – Kudinov's nickname on PS) is famous for his 3-/4-/5-bets with this hand. So I called with 88 because of sanba blockers.
In the first days of his participation in the challenge, Victor Kudinov visited Invoker's stream, where he spent several hours answering questions from the chat.
“I’m a professional high-stakes card player, unemployed for the last six months,” Enlight introduced himself at the very beginning.
– How do you like playing offline?
– Overall, it's not bad. True, it's too boring, especially after high stakes online. But there are some advantages – there is time to think, a very relaxed pace of play. Enjoyment of offline directly depends on the composition at the table. Fortunately, high-stakes games are mostly played by nice people.
– Where can I follow you?
– I don’t have any social networks, because nothing interesting happens. The usual life of a skuf – wife, child. I watch TV series with them and play board games, sometimes I play cards for money where it’s expensive and safe to do so.
– Will you have time to fight for the top 1 in the challenge on CoinPoker?
– No chance, the championship will end on the 12th, and I have played only 1,000 hands ( Ed. – Victor ended up playing 16,300 hands, to fight for the win you need to play at least 20,000 ). I play just to stay in shape. I won’t even have time to fight for the top loser. So far, the one losing the most is C9DK, a young and talented reg. There are a lot of young people there, some of whom play quite well. And I, due to laziness, didn’t really prepare and didn’t watch any streams. I analyzed a few hands and didn’t study the theory too hard. Roughly speaking, I may not be at my peak in terms of skill, but I had a good rest.
In general, I wanted to play the whole thing, but I only returned home from Macau at the end of November, had a couple of weeks of rest and immediately went to the Bahamas. I returned before the holidays and spent all my time with my family, and the challenge just went on a Christmas break.
The championship itself seems interesting, but for now I have no desire to support CoinPoker. I know too little about this room, and the community has already been burned when they started supporting GG with all their might. Now we need to be more selective.
There is no NL500+ play outside of the challenge. And I don't understand what their marketing plans are. The challenge idea is understandable and funny, but I wouldn't praise CoinPoker for it. They were basically given the idea, they themselves haven't done much. Their entire impact is to open tables, which is not very difficult, and give a $50k watch to the winner. But for the amount of marketing they received, that's not money.
When the challenge was paused, they immediately opened tables with rake ( Ed. – within the framework of the challenge, the game was played without rake ), they do not make any concessions. For now, this is an ordinary room, but we will see what they will do. At the moment, I am not ready to provide them with serious support and I do not understand the regs who do this. Their software is very mediocre, there is no VIP traffic, and these are interconnected things.
– What is the most effective way to work on a game?
– It depends on what stage of your career you are at. At the start, you need to try to work independently as much as possible. If it is a solver, then make independent locks. If not a solver, work a lot in flopzilla. The main task is to perform as many manipulations with ranges as possible, so that the maximum amount of information is constantly deposited in the head.
You can analyze the marked hands in Flopzilla and write down your thoughts, and then look at these same hands in the solver to compare the decisions made later.
It is very important for players of mid-limits and above to understand the tendencies of the field. The pool is not very large, so it is necessary to analyze both individual opponents and the entire pool, uniting players according to certain patterns. But the primary task is to force your brain to navigate the ranges and their changes as best as possible.
What you definitely shouldn't do is memorize pictures from the solver. Our task is not to memorize ready-made solutions, but to understand how they are achieved, how these solutions are affected by range changes, what sizings to choose, and so on.
It is very important to be able to prioritize when working on a game. Pay the most attention to the most common situations in which the most money is played. Some rare situations can be ignored altogether.
– Do they give you an invite to GG VIPs?
– They don't. If I wanted, I could have ghosted someone, I was offered an account on the very first day, as soon as the changes came into effect. I refused, and there is no game there anyway. If there was any traffic, I am sure the tables would have instantly drowned in ghosting. But GG is doing well anyway, there is a ton of traffic at lower limits, where players diligently knead the rake. They got a huge PR and a vote of confidence from the fact that all the top players played with them. People saw that the professionals were ready to keep millions in the room. They got all the trump cards they could, and now they don't need the regs. And some of the top players won a lot, some didn't, but you can't say that the NL5k+ player pool withdrew some astronomical money from GG. But the room got a colossal marketing boost, which is now obviously no longer needed.
– Tell us about your heads-up matches with Makeboifin.
– We didn’t play much. At first I had an edge because I was in good shape and he was playing after a long break. Then he got back into shape and I started getting dealt lousy hands, and the edge went to him. I think it’s possible to beat him, but it would have taken too much effort, and it wouldn’t have brought any significant income. I doubt I would have beaten him with a high win rate, so I just gave up. Heads-up has never been my favorite discipline, I like playing 3-4 max more. And I don’t want to spend so much time on poker to compete with the strongest in heads-up. Now it makes sense to grind super hard and develop only if you really love poker. I still have love, but I love my family more. I still want to remain an elite player, but I don’t strive to be the absolute best anymore.
– Is it possible to beat Linus in HU?
– Of course. Linus is very good, but there are players who are no less strong. He stopped playing with Berri and AsianFlushie.
– How do you like the play of SeaLlama, who calls himself the best player in the world. How close is that to the truth?
– I haven’t played him much in the last year. When I did, he was okay, but I wouldn’t call him the best. He made a decent profit in games against the strongest regs on ACR, but they didn’t get enough distance. In games with a close edge, you need to play hundreds of thousands of hands to draw objective conclusions. And it’s unclear whether he’ll be able to get that distance at all, since the future of high stakes online is unclear.
He's definitely a solid reg and has developed very quickly, but only time will tell how ready he is to take his place in the elite.
