Just what Dale Philip is doing playing this tournament today I don’t know. You see Philip, a Scotsman, who’s spent the last few years living in Thailand, is a member of Team PokerStars Online. And today, I’m sure it can’t have escaped your attention is Sunday, which whilst it’s an odd day to start a poker tournament on is also the day the world and his wife plays online poker. Not only that today is the final day of SCOOP! “Ha yeah it’s quite funny that the Team Online guy is playing live and the Team Pro players are playing tomorrow so they can play SCOOP,” Philip said to me when I mentioned this to him.
And Philip, like most members of Team Online earned their place in the roster due in no small part to the amount of time and volume they put in on the felt. In fact earlier this year he blogged that he had over a million FPPs (frequent player points) in his PokerStars account. He went on to blog that as he’s naturally thrifty (well he is Scottish) and that the concierge service offered to anyone Supernova or higher on PokerStars is the best value for FPPs that he was going to pay for all his travel and accommodation using his FPP balance.
Well he’s hit a snag in Croatia, the way the concierge service works is you pay for a flight or accommodation (or whatever) up front, then send the receipt and they’ll reimburse you the cost and take the appropriate number of FPPs from your account. The Scotsman, who’s renting an apartment for the frankly scandalously low rate of €44, can only pay for it in cash so it’s scuppered his plans somewhat.
He’s had an interesting day on the felt here so far with many ups and downs, he’s a frequent tweeter so you can read all about it below. He told me about one particular hand though where: “I raised with pocket eights and the big blind called with what turns out to be aces. I flopped a set, rivered quads and got three streets of value. It wasn’t a full double up, I reckon I got about 75% of my stack in the pot. But if raises like he should and I flat I’d have got a full double up.”
As for the rest of his day it’s gone like this:
26k from 20k starting stack at the first break, going into bb150. Table VPIP average about 40%. #EurekaCroatia
— Dale Philip (@Daleroxxu) May 26, 2013
Going in the wrong direction. Lost the last 6 pots I played. Have 11k (from 20k starting) at 2nd break. Going to BB300. #EurekaCroatia
— Dale Philip (@Daleroxxu) May 26, 2013
Have 42k now. Dinner break in 20 mins. They’ve made us a free hot buffet. Bottled water and fruit juice free all day too. #EurekaCroatia
— Dale Philip (@Daleroxxu) May 26, 2013
He’s now returned from dinner,we’re about 20 minutes into Level 7 and Philip has dropped down to 32,000.
Tournament Update: Just 59 of 103 players remain here on Day 1A, the plan as it was at the beginning of the day is to play nine levels and we’re approaching the midway point of level seven. The chip leader is still Georges Yazbeck, whilst notable eliminations include Simeon Todorov and Will Dorey. The average stack is 34,900.
PokerStars Blog reporting team in Croatia: Nick Wright. Photos by Ivan Dabac.