Jan 9, 2008
PokerRoom’s biggest and boldest monthly tournament – The Grand – just keeps getting bigger and bigger, as if it has a life of its own. It has exploded in popularity in recent months, going from drawing a few hundred participants each month to an astonishing 846 entrants who signed up to play in the Grand XX held from December 28th-December 30th!

That meant there was $846,000 in prize money up for grabs, with the winner taking down a bit north of $200,000! That’s a pretty grand payday, especially around Christmas, and the early action was hot and heavy, with every player’s eye on the top prize. The unique structure of the Grand allows for two starting days, with all surviving players bringing their stacks together in a combined field on Sunday, when a winner is crowned.

229 players were skillful and lucky enough to survive to Day 2 on Sunday, and after a few hours the money bubble was reached, with the top 90 spots paying. It’s always painful to land on the wrong side of the bubble but especially in the Grand, as bubbling means the difference of making $0 as opposed to $2,115.

S.Trumper was the unfortunate bubble boy, bowing out in 91st. Our condolences, good sir, and hopefully better luck next time. With the bubble burst, play continued to grind towards the final table, with players dropping here and there.

Five hours into the action, the field had been trimmed to 40 remaining players. CRYME-TYME held the chip lead (and had been at or near the top for quite a few hours), followed closely by haemaelainen, with Bonditto, QuietStormNL, and Mrstree (who had the support of many Pokah railbirds behind her) not far behind.

With the pace of knockouts increasing, only 18 players were left at the next break, with CRYME-TYME still leading the way with about 1,350,000.chips, followed by haemaelainen (900,000) and Mrstree (800,000). Another notable name was still lurking in the field, though, as brendo_8 was still alive and sitting in 8th position, trying to pull off the next to impossible feat of winning back to back Grands!

The next hour of play trimmed the field down to 11th (with brendo_8 eliminated in 16th place), and no one was able to wrest the lead away from CRYME-TYME, who was still the chip lead with 1,500,000 chips, and haemaelainen in 2nd position with 1,300,000.

Due to the short-handed structure of the event, the final table would seat only six, which meant that the two remaining tables played three-handed and four-handed for quite awhile. That’s usually a recipe for the big stacks to prey on smaller stacks and bully them around and this event was no different, as CRYME-TYME and QuietStormNL (the chip leaders at their respective tables) built up big stacks by playing very aggressively before the final table was set.

When the dust settled, here was the lineup and chip stacks for the final table:

CRYME-TYME:2900203 chips
QuietStormNL 1969674 chips
Saage 1500330 chips
Bonditto 861807 chips
Mrstree 753340 chips
gapgapgap 474646 chips

Mrstree would bow out first when her J10s was no match for gapgapgap’s pocket pair of kings, collecting $27,072 for her efforts and the 6th place finish.

QuietStormNL was the next to hit the rails, bounced in 5th (worth $35,532) when his AdKc couldn’t outrun Saage’s 8s8h.

Bonditto’s stack took a big hit when his KK was bad-beat by gapgapgap’s AK (with an ace falling on the flop), and Saage would finish Bonditto off a few hands later when his As 10d outran Bonditto’s pair of 4s (with an ace falling on the river this time). While definitely unlucky there at the end, Bonditto did collect $52,452 for his 4th place finish, which should ease his pain somewhat.

gapgapgap’s run would end with a 3rd place finish ($74,448) when he flopped top pair with Jc 10d on a flop of 6s Jd 8s, and all of chips found their way into the middle versus CRYME-TYME; unfortunately for gapgapgap, his opponent held Ah Jh, and CRYME-TYME’s bigger kicker held up.

That set up a heads-up battle between CRYME-TYME (6,600,000 chips) and Saage (1,800,000 chips), with quite a lot on the line. While both players were guaranteed at least $118,440, first prize was a staggering $203,040, so they were essentially playing a heads-up match for close to $100,000!

It looked like CRYME-TYME would steam-roll his way to victory, getting Saage as low as 1,000,000 chips at a few points, but Saage managed to stay alive, surviving a few all-ins when he had the best of it. Saage seemed comfortable seeing lots of flops while CRYME-TYME adopted the somewhat unusual strategy of often shoving all-in when Saage limped pre-flop or raised a small amount.

Saage had staged a comeback and managed to claw his way to the chip lead (with about 4,700,000 chips to CRYME-TYME’s 3,700,000) when the inevitable happened.

With blinds of 30,000/60,000, CRYME-TYME called from the SB and Saage raised to 150,000. CRYME-TYME once again hugely over-bet the pot, shoving all-in for about 3,650,000 more, but this time Saage insta-called, rolling over AA. CRYME-TYME’s Ac 3h was in very bad shape and there’d be no miracle suckout, with Saage taking down the pot and the victory.

CRYME-TYME collected $118,440 for his second place finish, a pretty massive payday for a runner-up finish and a testament to just how huge the Grand tournament has gotten. Saage’s victory was worth a whopping $203,040, which likely added quite a bit of holiday cheer to his life. It should be noted, too, that Saage won $22,875 for his first place finish in the $70K Euro Grand Prix on December 29th, so he’s been on quite the roll in the last few days!

Congrats to all the winners and players as a whole who made the latest edition of the Grand yet another huge success. Could we possibly see a prize pool of $1,000,000 in coming months? Only time will tell!

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