So I have officially processed my untimely demise in the Aruba Classic. Let me give you a little back story though. In the 7 years that I have played that event, I have made the money ONCE. That is right. One time. Now there is a really good reason for that. I generally go down to Aruba with my kids and the thought of staying inside playing poker for the whole trip when my kids are having a blast horseback riding and tubing and whatnot without me doesn’t really work for me. So I play some pretty bad poker when I am in Aruba generally because I am secretly, well not so secretly, trying to get myself knocked out of the event.
But not this year. This year I resolved that I was actually going to try really hard. Last year I had to leave before the event even started because Celebrity Apprentice conflicted with the main event down there. So I headed down to Aruba for exactly three days and then left in a shroud of mystery. I had signed a confidentiality agreement so I couldn’t tell anyone why I was leaving which made for some pretty interesting rumors. I did have to assure a few people that nothing was wrong with my family and there was no emergency while still being coy about why I left. Anyway, we all know how Celebrity Apprentice turned out. I am still trying to decide if it was worth it to leave paradise abruptly for 5 weeks of being called worse than Hitler by Joan Rivers.
Anyway, after having to leave last year I realized that I really missed the opportunity to play and so this year came in with great resolve to play my heart out. I showed up relatively on time and proceeded to get dealt the best cards of my life. In the first two levels I got AA 7 times, KK twice and QQ twice. I am not kidding. I really got dealt those starting hands. So of course I ended the two levels with 4K of the 15K starting chips. As expected really. I was either going to have all the chips on the planet or 4K. When I came back for level three I managed to flop top two with AJ suited vs 99 on an AJ9 board. Oops. That sent me to the rail.
So I managed to hit the parlay: I wasted another year of the Aruba Classic getting knocked out on Day 1 when I was actually really trying (proof of the trying part: I managed to still have 4K in chips after getting all those hands cracked) and I wasted the best run of cards I will ever have. Sheesh.
Now, once I got knocked out I decided to make the best of it and took the opportunity to go tubing with Joe. We got on one of those two man tubes and were having a complete blast because we had a driver who was really trying to create huge wakes to buck us off the tube. Anyone who has gotten thrown off a tube knows that it usually the best part of tubing. Joe and I were really hanging on, though, so the driver was creating bigger and bigger wakes to drag us over until finally he made a wake so big that there was no holding on the tube to stay on because the tube itself was flipping over.
So Joe is on my right and the tube is flipping right so Joe kind of turned over and was heading face down into the ocean below me as I was flipping over him when his heel snapped up on the way into the water and caught me right in the neck. That snapped my head back pretty bad and smashed my lower jaw into my upper jaw in a way that really sent shockwaves up the left side of my face. That was aside from the pain I was experiencing from having just been kicked really hard in the neck. So now I land in the ocean and I am just sobbing in there and Joe isn’t sure right away whether or not I am laughing or crying so he is laughing at first. Then he realizes I am actually in hysterics and helps drag me back onto the tube so the driver can take us in really slowly back to the dock. I say really slowly because every bit of turbulence we hit sent waves of pain through my skull. By that night the inside of my throat had really swelled up which took about two days to go down before it was comfortable to swallow again.
So I got kicked in the head by the cards in the tournament then kicked in the head by Joe in a freak tubing accident. Come to think of it, getting called worse than Hitler for 5 weeks doesn’t sound so bad after all.
Well where can I start? I’m sat in Amsterdam airport after a somewhat hellish, screaming child filled ten hour flight back from a certain beautiful little island. The past ten days has been my personal heaven – the Ultimatebet Aruba Classic. After a riotous few days in Amsterdam with various UB pros we arrived in the balmy tropics and got straight to the most important part – locating the rest of the team and hitting the bar.
The first full day was spent on the beach and warming up my tubing skills for the inevitable bouts of last longer bets that were to bound to occur throughout the week. A number of us (including team members Matt Graham, Roothlus, Tiffany and Billy) rented a boat and we went for a very beery cruise involving diving competitions and trying to swim back to the boat against a very strong ocean current.
That night was the opening party including all the free booze and food UB could throw at the guests, and which inevitably ended up in everyone getting thrown in the pool. Lacey Jones and I had a chicken fight aboard Matt Vengrin and Matt Graham (we won, of course), and Phil managed to get through about $10,000 getting ladies to jump in the pool naked.
Lacey and I also got $1000 for one lucky guy who was the first one to jump in naked also… gotta keep the balance between the sexes!
Monday was relatively quiet as it was day 1A, and half of the pros, myself included, had been scheduled for a new UB photoshoot which I can’t wait to see the results of. Tuesday was day 1B, which was my first day of play. I had the Great Poker Ho on my table, who was lauding it up the way only Ho can, rallying the table and generally creating mayhem with some huge pots. Sadly things didn’t go Ho’s way once Robbie Cunningham came to the table and started crushing it utterly. I swear to God he had Jacks or better every other hand for two hours, and played them tricky enough too, knocking Ho out in the process. An interesting (and kinda costly hand) for me was when I had around starting stack and the blinds were 100 200. Robbie makes it 525 in the hijack, I have queens and make it 1600 in the cutoff. However, the supertight girl to my left who hadn’t played many hands at all goes to call his initial raise before I even get chance to act. When I say wait a minute, and do my threebet she instacalls behind anyway. The SB, who has been pretty LAG and was “internetting it up” as they like to say now does a really weird min raise making it 2700. Robbie now says “what the hell do I do?” and flats. I now ask the same question, and chose to call behind too (in hindsight should’ve jammed here, I mean, Laggy guy could have anything, Robbie or the girl, if they have me beat here are reraising) and the girl flats. The board comes A j 10 and Robbie bets out 2/3, I muck, the girl mucks and the SB stuffs it in with… A-10. What does the Cunningham have? Jacks of course.
My day went pretty much downhill from there and I got short after whiffing AK three times, and then found 10s vs QQs which sent me packing to the beach for more fun and frolics that I’ll document next week… tough life!
Well, the golf has been put on hold a few times due to some rainy days here in the bluegrass state. However, there are a lot of other things going on right now. It was a crazy and exciting weekend as it will be my last here in Kentucky for some time. First I would like to mention my good friend and fellow poker player Doug who was not able to take part in the festivities due to having heart surgery sometime this week. It’s never the same when one of the biggest partiers I know is stuck in a hospital, and we all have to worry about his health. We got word Friday night that things are looking up and can’t wait until he can get back on his feet.
This weekend was a big one in Lexington due to the football game. Kentucky played Louisville which is only about 80 miles from here. This is always a huge and exciting game because many of us at Kentucky have friends from high school who went or go to Louisville. Everyone we know from there came up for the game and was a blast. My friend James from Boston even came down to get a glimpse of what it’s all about here. This is always a huge rivalry in football and basketball. Kentucky was the favorite by almost 14 points and barely sneaked out a victory. We had way too many turnovers but somehow managed to win. This is crucial because the apartment that I rented before I decided to move is on the biggest party street near campus. It’s so wild that I usually watch the game on TV and party with lots of people around here. That may also be due to the fact that in the SEC you can’t purchase alcohol at collegiate sporting events, but that’s debatable! Also, the partying and bar scene is never the same after a loss, so I was glad we managed to get a win my last weekend here.
I am officially leaving on Thursday to live with my friend in Las Vegas until I close on my house there. I have been rushing to get lots of things finished up here in Kentucky before the big move. I’m actually going to the post office right now. I realized that I have lost my passport, great timing About 12 days from now I will be in glorious Aruba taking part in the best poker tournament of the year. I’m going to cut this a big short so I can get some other errands finished as well. I hope all of you are running satellites or steps so that you can win a seat to the Aruba Classic. I would love to meet all of you out there in October. Best of luck!
This week’s been one of my hardest ever in poker. As you can probably tell from the title of this blog, I experienced the agony of the bubble. Now obviously this is something none of us who have ever played more than a few tournaments have not experienced, but my encounters with it over the past few days have been none other than exemplary. It all started on Sunday, where you UB regulars may have been aware of, or indeed playing in, the 50 seat Aruba guarantee. This was UB’s $500 buy in massive giveaway of fifty $8,500 golden tickets to their annual Aruba Classic tourney (and if you don’t know what that is I dunno what planet you’ve been living on). Now I’m already going to Aruba either way, but I won a step into this 50 seat mega to try and win another seat which baEnsically equals a bucketload of cash. Anyway, I played pretty near perfect all tournament until we got to just 70 players, and then combination of factors allowed me to get short but then I did the inexcusable thing of miss a couple of vital blind stealing opportunities to get myself back to healthy. Next thing I knew there were just 55 left and I was looking like it’d all be ok with me sat in 48th. However lady luck seemed to favour a number of these shorterstacks and before I knew what was happening there were 51 left, and only 1 person shorter than me and he was at my table. By this stage neither of us had any fold equity whatsoever so I tried to play the waiting game. He decided to play it even more and left himself with basically two hands left (the antes were huge) knowing the blinds were about to go up and eat my stack completely. And they did. And I finished stone cold bubble for 51st out of nearly 800 for 50 seats after sitting up til 5am UK time and ready to throw myself out a window.
However, Monday morning made me suck it all up as I had to head up to Nottingham to play the first ever English Poker Open, a $5k buy in tourney featuring pros such as Phil Hellmuth and Doyle Brunson so I was pretty excited to be playing it. Things started slowly for me but then I got moved to the feature table with James Akenhead and Devilfish. Devilfish pretty promptly doubled me up in a really interesting hand that I’ll write about next week, and then I cruised from there til the end of day 1 with about 60 of the 213 entries remaining.
Day 2 started a bit rocky with me getting short at one point but then getting it up to about 50k average with around 35 left and rapidly approaching the bubble. I then proceeded to run big hand into bigger hand in quick succession leaving me with a short shovable stack and doing the shovey thing at what seemed like an appropriate moment to get called off by yet another monster busting me again close to the money. Anyway, starting just as I busted was a super deep structure $750 event so I jumped straight back into the saddle to play that. This one went really well and before I knew it I’d played 10 hours and we were seven from the money and I had a healthy stack and picked up those darling little weapons (the AA) and got it all in versus the big stack with 44s. Can you guess happened? Where’s the rope…
I am in, of all places, Thackerville Oklahoma. Obviously to play poker The Winstar Casino here has a $2100 buy-in tourney with a 3 million guarantee! They have had 4 day ones… Today is the last… Looks like they will end up with 1100-1200 players, meaning there will be an overlay of $600k-800k. That is great value, especially given relatively weak field here. Actually I am very surprised they are able to get such a large turnout for a 2k in the middle of Oklahoma…
Apparently they have been running satelites for months and to a lot of players in the region this is the biggest event of the year.
Anyway, things have started off nicely… I have triple the average stack early on. But still along way to go and the structure is fast.
Last week I was in LA for the WPT Legends at the Bike… Busted at the end of day 1 with aces versus kings preflop. I then spent a few days at the Commerce playing cash games… Wish I could say it went well, but I ended up taking one of the biggest losses in my life playing 400-800 mix games. I haven’t played that big in a while so it was painful to run as bad as I did.
After OK I am headed home to vegas for a few weeks before a heavy travel schedule in September. NC to see Mom, Philly for a wedding, AC for Borgata, London for WSOP Europe, then Aruba for the UB classic!
As the newest Ultimate Bet team pro, I’m excited to share my first blog with all of you. For those of you who don’t know, my name is Billy Kopp and I reside in Erlanger, Kentucky. I am twenty three years old and have been playing online poker for the past five years. I got my start into poker by playing small home games with friends. While going to college at the University of Kentucky, I began to play primarily online. I had success and was able to meet other successful players online who helped me to advance my game.
This summer I made a transition into playing more live events. I had a second place finish in the 5k New Orleans WSOP Circuit event for a nice six figure score. After that I proceeded to play in several WSOP events. I was fortunate enough to get 8th in the 5k no limit event and then 11th in the 10k pot limit event. Finally, I finished in the summer out with a 12th place finish in the main event for a little under $900,000. I can proudly say that Ultimate Bet was by far the best site for me to represent. Due to the help of my agency, Suited Connections, I was able to land a long-term deal with the site. I have played on UB for years and have had success in the biggest multi table tournaments they have to offer including a win in their Sunday major. To date, I have never given substantial time to playing cash games. Now, I will be playing cash games along with multi-table tournaments on Ultimate Bet under the name “billy_kopp”.
Lots of people have been asking me what my next live event will be. I am currently in the process of moving to Las Vegas, so the next event for me will probably be the $5,000 main event in Biloxi, Mississippi at the Beau Rivage in September, followed by the Ultimate Bet Aruba Poker Classic in October. Once everything is settled in Vegas I will be playing more live events. On a side note, I want to wish my friend and fellow colleague Adam “Roothlus” Levy good luck in the Legends of Poker tournament going on at the Bicycle Casino right now. Hopefully he can bring home another win for the UB team.
I can’t wait to meet the other team pros in Aruba. I have never played in the Aruba Classic and wish everyone who plays the best of luck. For all of you reading this, I hope to get to play with all of you on the site at some point soon!
The past few days I have been looking at my schedule for the upcoming months.I will be traveling quite a bit and look forward to seeing as much of the world as much as possible each year.Traveling has becoming one of my favorite past times and has become a traditional post World Series of Poker activity.
Last year, immediately after the WSOP, I traveled to Costa Rica and Nicaragua with my agent and good friend, Matt Palmer.As I have previously mentioned, I have stayed in Vegas since the WSOP lounging at home, playing a ton on UltimateBet.com and just relaxing.However, I now have the itch to get on some planes, play some poker and visit some destination spots.
Looking ahead in August, I will be heading to the World Poker Tour’s “Legends of Poker” at the Bicycle Casino in Bell Gardens, California on August 22nd.After winning my second WSOP bracelet this year, I wouldn’t mind making a strong run at another WPT victory. My stay in California will be about a week.
After the Bike tournament, I return to Vegas to quickly repack for the next stop, which is Portland, OR, for my 10 Year Class Reunion.Though I get back regularly with all the boys and old friends; 3-on-3 basketball tournaments, Holiday parties, some NBA games, etc., I look forward to seeing classmates who I have lost ties with.All in all, it will be good to be back in my hometown.Portland weather is perfect this time of year and will be an added bonus to reconnecting with old friends.
After a week or so back home, I will again return to Las Vegas planning to play online before heading out to London for the WSOP Europe.Two of my good hometown friends, Tony and Dave traveled with me last year.We were able to travel Europe a bit after the WSOPE and this year should be quite similar.This year I plan on traveling to Amsterdam, a destination I look forward to exploring for a few days I have free time.This year I will be traveling with poker player and friend, Allie Prescott.He and I both traveled to Venice for the WPT event and are going to continue our adventures post WSOPE.
Once the European travels are done, I will be flying directly to UltimateBet.com’s Aruba Classic, October 3rd – 10th.I am very excited for this tournament.Not only because Aruba is beautiful and that I will have friends attending, but that I am a sponsored UltimateBet Pro.It almost feels like it will be a “home game” for me.It will be nice to see some of the UB staff I met at the WSOP this summer, as well as play and visit with all the other UB Pros.
I feel lucky to have the opportunity to see so much of the world.Safe travels to everyone else that is also making the rounds the next few months.Good luck.
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It is well-known that Aruba is around the corner and for those of you who have no idea what the Aruba Poker Classic is, it’s just one of the biggest live poker events in the world. This event has become a favorite due to the amazing prize pool, parties, camaraderie and of course the location. There are several events, but the main event, which has a $5000+500 buyin is known for attracting tons of well-known poker pros and offering one of the best tourney structures for live events. At UltimateBet you can find several options to qualify or contact our customer support department to book your seat today. More details here for Aruba Qualifiers.
On August 19th the second Scott Ian Home Game took place. This event gave our players a chance to play an 18-seated tourney with guests such as: Jerry Cantrell from Alice in Chains, well known metal legend Kirk Hammett, Vinnie Paul from Pantera plus other celebrities including Scott Ian himself, Phil Hellmuth and Annie Duke. For the second event, 1st prize was a 2009 Aruba Classic package worth $8,500. The winner of the event was SMGKAG from Lawrence, Kansas. He has already received $3,000 for travel expenses and his seat for the Ultimate Island Poker Tournament is already booked.
The promotions team works 24 hours a day to offer the most exciting benefits to our players, we would like to invite you to visit our promo page on a regular basis for updates on our events, big tourneys and special bonuses offered, you are just a click away from the best online poker promotions.
Our weekends are always exciting with massive guarantees: $200k Sunday @ 17:30 with a $215 buyin, the $100K Sundays @ 14:00 with a $530 buyin and our well known $100k Guaranteed Deep Stack Saturdays @ 17:30 with a $320 buyin.
If you haven’t noticed, we launched a new UltimateBet.com home page a little over a week ago. Our goal of the layout change was to get pertinent information to players faster and more effectively. Of course we want new players to download but aside from adjusting messaging for that, we’ve cut a lot of clutter and extra fluff on the main page that we knew just got in the way. The Bad Beat Jackpot is now feeding into the homepage, so you know when it’s time to jump on the tables.
UltimateBet successfully launched the first ever 7 Deuce Hold’em tables online and everyone is buzzing about it. We’ve added action to the tables that had previously only been available in live games. Watch our own Phil Hellmuth in a famous 7 Deuce hand on High Stakes Poker win the pot and prop bet with 7 Deuce.
Phil plays regularly at the UltimateBet 7 Deuce $25/50 stakes tables where, if you win with 7-2, you get paid $75 from each player at the table on top of pot, which can get massive. Good luck!
I can’t go without mentioning progress on the Aruba Poker Classic either, since we are going to have our 10th Anniversary party down there and expect the number of players to exceed 550. Now that’s a nice prizepool. If you’re staying with us in the Radisson you can have yourself a Mai-Tai, take dip in the ocean then the pool and be in your seat at the poker table all before the flop. We still have tons of ways to qualify without buying in directly, so check out the tourney schedule for details. Our next 25-seat giveaway event will be on August 30th, so don’t miss it.
Now that WSOP is over we are shifting our gears to The Aruba Poker Classic in October. It’s UltimateBet’s 10th Anniversary and we’re going to be celebrating! We’re planning our opening and closing parties to blow all others out of the Caribbean waters and should be sending more of our own blood to the tourney this year than ever. We’ve already qualified over 40 players and are looking forward to our first big seat giveaway on August 2nd. After it’s said and done, 25 lucky UB players will have their seats reserved to the Ultimate Island Poker Tournament. With at least $2 million in guaranteed cash for this year’s tourney, it’s destined to be recorded as a part of poker history.
The Donkament is in full effect on the site and dragging in the best of our sharks and donkeys. With only points to lose and cash to win, these games are getting feverishly active. Get in on the action from as low as 200 points and qualify for up to $50,000 in cash.
We have some exciting product releases coming up, including our UB Mac software launching next month. Be on the lookout later for a client download that is compatible with your Apple Macintosh so you can get rid of those tedious parallels to run Windows on a Mac. As the release gets closer we’ll keep everyone posted on the launch date and new features to be expected.
The extreme action game of 7-Deuce is coming to UltimateBet in the next few weeks and they’re being brought in with a bang. These permanent tables will introduce a 7-2 side pot to throw a wrench into everyone’s poker strategy. They’ll be available in both low and high stakes so be ready to bluff your faces off.
The Winstar Casino here has a $2100 buy-in tourney with a 3 million guarantee! They have had 4 day ones… Today is the last… Looks like they will end up with 1100-1200 players, meaning there will be an overlay of $600k-800k. That is great value, especially given relatively weak field here. Actually I am very surprised they are able to get such a large turnout for a 2k in the middle of Oklahoma… 
