There were more than 34,000 tournament entries on the opening night of the 2021 Turbo Series at PokerStars, with some top names among the winners. Read how it all went down…
TURBO TAKES
Dattani bests the High Rollers: Portugal’s Michel Dattani has hopped around Europe looking for a place to play online poker, most recently settling in Malta. And it’s thanks to the itinerant player, who goes by “FreelancerZZ” on PokerStars, that the Maltese cross appears on the Turbo Series leader board this morning. Dattani last night took down the first $5K event of this series, booking a win of more than $150K. Dattani was the last player standing from a field of 166 (including 49 re-entries), which featured all of the online game’s top names. But with Rui “RuiNF” Ferreira, Juan “Malaka$tyle” Pardo, David “MissOracle” Yan, Joni “bustoville” Jouhkimainen and Jon “apestyles” Van Fleet all perishing from the final table in eighth through third, respectively, it left Dattani heads up against “CrazyLissy” of Russia. The pair struck a deal, with CrazyLissy actually getting a tiny bit more money at that stage, but Dattani’s heads-up victory gave him the money left on the side and the outright win. Dattani ended with $152,744 to CrazyLissy’s $144,863. That will probably stand as the biggest win of the series until the Main Events get cracking.
Rudolph up and running: Barely a weekend goes by without some form of major tournament win for Christian “WATnlos” Rudolph, and he kicked off Turbo Series in familiar fashion. The Austria-based German tamed the bumper field in Event #4, a $215 NLHE tournament, which attracted 2,712 entries (inc. 603 re-entries). Rudolph was the only player in the top 13 who re-entered, but it proved to be worthwhile. He ended up defeating Bulgaria’s PaPi7o92 heads up and winning $79,272.
PLO title goes to “setsing79”: The first “Phased” event played to its winner on Sunday night, with Russia’s “setsing79” beating Brazil’s “gabsdrogba” heads up, after those two and “tarantaleo”, of Bulgaria, struck a three-way deal. In total, 1,911 players entered during the phases of this PLO tournament, of which 315 made it to Day 2. Only 227 ended in the money, with “[BnS]Tjuger” bursting the bubble. The remainder did battle for the $250K guaranteed prize pool, before the aforementioned trio became the last three in the game. They arranged an equal split, taking $26,553 each, and leaving the mandated $2,500 on the side. setsing79 picked that up, adding $29,053 to the ledger.
LATEST RESULTS
Name | Entries | Prize pool | Winner | Country | Total prize |
Event #1 $55 NLHE, Series Starter | 3,406 | $170,300 | Gaul4200 | Austria | $24,472.31 |
Event #2 $11 NLHE, 8-Max, PKO, Hyper | 12,091 | $124,175 | TheNizzleRat | UK | $11,030.24†|
Event #3 $5,200 NLHE, 8-Max | 166 | $830,000 | FreeLancerZZ | Malta | $152,743.58* |
Event #4 $215 NLHE | 2,712 | $542,400 | WATnlos | Austria | $79,274.22 |
Event #5 $109 PLO, 6-Max, Phase 2 | 1,911 | $250,000 | setsing79 | Russia | $29,053.35* |
Event #6 $22 NLHE, 6-Max, PKO, Short PKO | 6,216 | $124,320 | Nearunek | Poland | $11,665.51†|
Event #7 $55 NLHE, 6-Max, Mini Sunday Supersonic SE, Hyper | 5,362 | $280,862 | -Open$hove- | Hungary | $39,946.65 |
Event #8 $530 NLHE, 6-Max, Sunday Supersonic SE, Hyper | 802 | $408,635 | AxelwOw~ | Russia | $68,932.61 |
Event #9 $55 NLHE ,$125K Gtd | 2,031 | $125,000 | robbalaaaaax | Sweden | $18,705.44 |
†inc. bounties
*denotes deal
STAT TRACKER
The series got off to a flyer, with prize pools pushing $3 million and tens of thousands sitting down to play. Here’s where we’ll track all the important stats for the series.
Entries: 34,697 (inc. 4,043 re-entries)
Prize pools: $2,855,691.17
First place payouts: $435,823.91 (inc. $8,161.60 in bounties)
Tournaments completed: 9
Tournaments starting today: 8
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TWITCH WATCH
It was a relatively quiet start to Turbo Series for the PokerStars streamers, and even when Spraggy made a decent call to double up in the $215, his celebration was delicate and muted. Have a watch:
COUNTRIES LEADER BOARD
There were two titles each for Austria and Russia overnight, with the rest of the wins sprinkled across Europe. The rest of the world hasn’t woken up yet, but give them time.
2 titles – Austria, Russia
1 – Hungary, Malta, Poland, Sweden, UK
TODAY’S ACTION
There are another eight tournaments starting today, including the insanity of a rebuy event, plus some PLO and a Win The Button. There’s also the first “Time” event, which will take no more than 1 hour to play through. Here’s a good run through of what variants are available during Turbo Series.
Here’s today’s full schedule (times are ET):
10:00 – Event #10 $22 NLHE, $65K Gtd
11:30 – Event #11 $215 NLHE, $200K Gtd
13:00 – Event #12 $11 NLHE, Rebuy, $150K Gtd
14:30 – Event #13 $109 NLHE, 6-Max, PKO, Win the Button, $350K Gtd
16:00 – Event #14 $215 5-Card PLO, 6-Max,$60K Gtd
16:30 – Event #15 $11 NLHE, 8-Max, Time KO, $20K Gtd
17:30 – Event #16 $55 NLHE, 8-Max, $125K Gtd
19:00 – Event #17 $11 NLHE, PKO, $50K Gtd