The Holland Casino in the heart of Amsterdam hosts the Masterclassics of Poker once a year, a tournament (or festival, more accurately) run so efficiently, with such a good structure, that players from all over Europe (and a few from further afield) make an annual pilgrimage to play. Attendance has been good for years, and 2007 saw it reach capacity – a few visitors who’d thought they’d just see some sights or lounge in some cafes before moseying on to register found their dreams of spending €5k to play in the Main Event crushed by their own holiday-style procrastination. No more were the ‘famous one-hand turnovers’ being run to fill the last places (‘famous’ because it’s €500 a pop to last-minute yourself into the event) – and well-known players like Jan Boubli, Dave Colclough, Patrick Bruel, Peter Roche, Juha Helppi and Henning Granstad squeezed in ten-handed next to Dutch superstars like Marcel Luske, Rob Hollink and Noah Boeken. Into the mix were cast a small but strong selection of British players – Jeff Kimber, Alan Smurfit, Praz Bansi, Mickey Wernick, Julian Thew, Devilfish and JJ Hazan (last year’s runner up) included. Another finalist from 2006, Jerome Bradpiece, made it back to Amsterdam, although he ‘did a Hellmuth’ after losing his entry ticket and having to wait on the rail to be seated for half of the first level. With all 428 players starting at once, the casino was packed and railers soon joined the throng making it difficult to see what was going on in the early stages. Like so many other major tournaments nowadays, the Masterclassics isn’t making it terribly easy for independent press to get in amongst the action, but there was enough of it occurring near the rail to keep us entertained. It turned out that four days was (just) enough time to cull the field down to a winner, but it was close. Lucky that there was enough Pressing of the Red Button by players in the early stages – Jerome recalled one player who bluffed on all three streets with Ace high to eliminate himself in Level One… it took about another 48 hours for Bradpiece himself to bust, however.
Noah Boeken (right) got off to a bit of a shaky start, sharing a table with Karl ‘Mantis’ Mahrenholz in the High Roller Room (there were so many tables they had to be spread throughout the mazelike casino). But the young Dutch player, who wins our Dubious Hoody of the Year award, played strongly throughout the middle stages of the tournament, eventually making it back to the final table he knows well from previous years, having finalled in multiple Masterclassics events. A similar veteran of the Dutch poker scene Rolf ‘Ace’ Slotboom looked all set to go deep, but had, in the end, to content himself with finalling in the Omaha event as well as two other Hold’em side events. He got the best entrance music, though. For anyone who’s never been here, there is a big show to accompany every final table. At the risk of creating a few finalist spoilers, I am going to reproduce Dana’s description of the intro ceremony: “Well, they haven't quite shuffled up yet, nor, indeed, dealt, but we have just witnessed an astounding entrance-type ceremony, involving all the finalists being held in a little pen at the top of the stairs while their names and achievements were individually read out to an ooh-ing crowd. After each player had been introduced, a song started to blast out and they grandstanded their way across the casino floor through a kind of parted sea of spectators towards the TV table. I really can't tell whether they got to pick their own entrance music, because it was seven random dodgy trance selections, "Can You Feel It" for Joris Jaspers, and some kind of Prodigy-esque heavy metally type number for Tristan McDonald. Benjo maintains that it's all off of a single Europop CD acquired by the casino in 1992.”
The reverse fortune (good start, not quite finishing at the top) happened to Dave Finney, popular moustachioed player, who eliminated Peter Eichhardt on day one and held on to his intimidating stack for a good while thereafter. Also Mickey Wernick, star of the first of the TV tables (which rotated the players and ran almost straight through the event – edited and shown in Holland almost immediately) along with his Bluesquare teammate Karl Mahrenholz – he eventually cashed in 33rd place, however. We also lost Adam Heller, whose stack had looked promising for a while especially near the start, as well as Simon Hennessey, the death of whose ipod presumably had terrible knock-on effects.
It was around the middle of Day Two that we started to remember where the popular players requested by update-watchers were sitting, and took note of the growing stack of a certain American Michael Martin. Young Martin, perma-railed by Brandon Schaefer, whose stamina for such activity was frankly astounding, was Climber of the Day on Day Three, and definitely the first to top half a mil. More on him later. Meanwhile it was Swede Micke Norinder who held the limelight as he grew a fantastic stack and bullied and amused opponents in equal measure. The amiable Norinder’s stack was never compromised, and he made it look easy as he breezed to the final. Grinder of the Day was Pete Linton, whose stack peaked at just 27k but proceeded to drop to zero as he ran Tens into Kings as play slowed during the final hours. Other contenders for this honour was another finalist from ’06, Keith ‘The Camel’ Hawkins (left) and ‘Level 20’ Rumit Somaiya. They ended up finishing 34th and 23rd respectively.With 60 returning for the third day, there was a notable pack of players with considerably more comfortable stacks than the rest. Among them were Peter Dalhuijsen, Micke Norinder, Ilari Sahamies, Tony Bloom, and a certain Tristan McDonald (reported as Justin McDonald by Dutch authorities who seemed to have a bit of difficulty with his name). Tristan turned out to be a rarely-playing amateur from the UK whose success in high-level events belies his relative lack of experience. Playing just a few tournaments a year (the Masterclassics being one of them – he was runner up in ’06) he caught our attention making a pretty sick laydown on the TV table the previous day. In a fourway pot he flopped a flush but passed the thing after two players (one short) moved in. Some agonising-looking dwelling from McDonald, but as is so rarely the case, a genuinely difficult (and correct, as it turned out – another player had flopped the nut flush) decision. It was amiable Frenchman Eric Larcheveque who won that hand, and had somehow developed quite a stack during the day – enough to propel him eventually to the final table.
Back to the action as the field thinned, approaching the money (49-41st places received their money back courtesy of Holland Casino before the actual prize pool was touched). Now was the point at which Trond Eidsvig, young Norwegian fresh from his excellent result in Dublin, took off, accumulating chips as if prepared to finish off the tournament that very day. We still couldn’t really see much, but there was plenty of random stuff going on in the casino to take pictures of – our favourite ever snack disperser wasn’t one of the lovely
candy girls but the Oyster Man, who trundled around dressed in armour with buckets on either hip from which he produced oysters and small bottles of hot sauce. Extraordinary. Similarly the positioning of the atmospheric conical lighting devices over the tables meant for much hilarity ensuing as almost every picture we took involved positioning a player so he looked like he was being abducted by aliens. You couldn’t pass Tony Bloom’s table without seeing him raise preflop, and he left the brakes off all day. Eventually running into trouble in the closing minutes raising on the button with QQ and running into Sevevi’s KK, knocking him back to around 100k, I was suddenly worried that I might have to somehow pay up on the, “If Bloom doesn’t final I’ll eat my own arm,” proposition. But no, the very next hand it was Sevevi himself who hit the rail and the Final Bubble burst with Tony Bloom still on the right side of it, if short stacked.So the final table looked like:
Seat 1 Noah Boeken -- 219,000
Seat 2 Michael Martin -- 819,000
Seat 3 Trond Eidsvig -- 1,062,000
Seat 4 Mikael Norinder -- 647,000
Seat 5 Joris Jaspers -- 219,000
Seat 6 Tony Bloom -- 119,000
Seat 7 Eric Larcheveque -- 435,000
Seat 8 Tristan McDonald -- 415,000
Seat 9 Christian Grundtvig -- 330,000
Their prizes:
1. €620,000
2. €368,000
3. €216,000
4. €139,000
5. €111,000
6. €87,000
7. €66,000
8. €47,000
9. €34,000
After the fabulous Walk of Pride (the antithesis of the exiting Walk of Shame) the final table rocketed into action, with short stack Tony Bloom running AQ offsuit into Christian Grundtvig’s (left) pocket Kings to finish 9th. Almost immediately afterwards it was local player Joris Jaspers exiting stage left after his preflop shove found Michael Martin lurking behind with Aces. Then a surprise knockout for strong player Grundtvig in a pretty unavoidable situation against continual preflop raiser Trond Eidsvig. Having just smooth called Eidsvig’s preflop raise on the button, Grundtvig flopped top set on a J-5-3 all-spade board, but he was given a spin by the young Norwegian’s Kings – one of which was a spade and promptly hit, sending him to the rail in 7th.Meanwhile, in between all this huge action, people were either constantly picking up hands against Eric Larcheveque or they were all out to resteal from him. Either way he was a bit unlucky to exit 6th after another big pair – Kings - for Michael Martin took out his AQ. Trond Eidsvig had a stab at eliminating Tristan McDonald (calling with A9 and racing Sixes) but failed to do so, and in other small pots gradually eroded his stack. He also laid down a hand after a sizeable pot had accumulated preflop to Michael Martin, who edged into the lead as his considerable fan club led by virtual railer TheReader23 rejoiced. In fact, Eidsvig looked to be dwindling dangerously, enough that when he eventually got it all in against Micke Norinder’s two pair with his turned gutshot(!) he was covered, but that huge pot shot him back up to chip safety. Never far behind, though, was Michael Martin, who found another timely pair of Aces to knock out Mikael Norinder in 5th spot.
Noah Boeken, who had clearly decided that his stack was good for shoving preflop and not so much else by this point, was doing so regularly, and picking up quite a lot of hefty blinds-and-antes pots that way. But one time
too many – autoshoving when it passed to him on the small blind, big blind Martin (right) called with K-9 and found himself in excellent shape against 9-7 – the popular Dutch player took fourth place. So with two monster stacks in front of Martin and Eidsvig, and a slightly less monstrous stack in front of McDonald (the exact top three Dana and I had miraculously predicted before play had even started), there began a very hard-fought battle for the top spot. Tristan McDonald, who’d successfully re-raised and pushed his way forward, was eventually caught with Sevens by Trond Eidsvig with Kings, and he left the two young players who’d fought for the chip lead all day to contend for the title.Some caginess entered the equation – although I have to say the whole final was played with good humour and everyone on it was both pleasant to chat to and fun to watch playing – a rare and pleasing combination. We had no favourites in the press room, although the support for Michael Martin drifting over from the US was infectious (the Norwegians in the crowd, of course, went crazy at the end of it, though – oops I may have given the ending away). Trond Eidsvig took the lead heads up winning multiple small pots as both players started to look a little weary. And who could blame them? The final hand, on which Trond had flopped two pair and eventually received a call/muck combo from Michael was played out as hordes of tipsy punters waited in an enormous queue to get their coats as the casino had already officially closed. We were quickly expelled from our press niche – there was just time to take some snaps of an understandably delighted Trond Eidsvig, who’s had a cracking few months on the circuit and deserved his rapturous applause.
As we retired to the Owl Hotel through the London-like drizzle in the middle of the night, Dana and I were struck by how pleasant a town Amsterdam is, and delighted that two days of holiday had been tacked on to the end by us in an unusual display of foresight. The Masterclassics has to be one of the best tournaments of the year and we were pleased to have watched a few of the many runners get to the top in 2007.