The Online Railbird Report: Phil Ivey Week's Biggest Winner; Polk vs. Sulsky Update

Chad Holloway PR & Media Manager

Sep 27, 2013 6 min read

This week in the Online Railbird Report, Phil “Polarizing” Ivey leads the way as he earned the title of the week's biggest winner. Last week, he won $359,248, and this week the nine-time World Series of Poker bracelet winner kept the ball rolling by winning $361,634 in 7,279 hands over 112 sessions. Despite the win, Ivey still remains down $2,224,237 on the year.

Not far behind Ivey this week was “wilhasha,” who won $356,219 in 3,051 hands spread over 62 sessions over on PokerStars.

In last week’s Online Railbird Report, we told you about the the highly publicized heads-up no-limit hold’em challenge on Full Tilt Poker between Doug "WCGRider" Polk and Ben "Sauce1234" Sulsky. If you recall, Polk pulled out to a $397,000 lead in the first two matches of the challenge, and things have changed as the duo played two more sessions this week.

Other winners this week included “punting-peddler” (+$318,959 in 62 sessions/2,890 hands), Phil “OMGClayAiken” Galfond (+$299,379 in 48 sessions/5,061 hands), “RookieNFL” (+$225,915 in 12 sessions/921 hands), and Gus Hansen (+$222,326 in 80 sessions/8,729 hands).

On the flip side, Alexander “PostFlopAction” Kostritsyn, who was recently interviewed as a part of PokerNews’ popular Online Chat series, was the week’s biggest loser after dropping $532,461 in 2,056 hands over 29 sessions. The next biggest loser was “mikki696” who lost $271,526 and $189,371 on Full Tilt Poker and PokerStars, respectively. Others who failed to get in the black were Patrik “FinddaGrind” Antonius (-$266,745 in 35 sessions/2,037 hands), Isaac “Ike Haxton” Haxton (-$200,489 in 30 sessions/1,269 hands), and Viktor “Isildur1” Blom (-$165,026 in 128 sessions/9,320 hands).

Ivey Back to His Winning Ways

At one point, Phil “Polarizing” Ivey was the year’s biggest loser. Now, in the latter half of 2013, he seems to have righted the ship. On Wednesday, Ivey finished at the day’s second-biggest winner with $232,300 in profit, second only to “wilhasha’s” $240,600 over on PokerStars.

Ivey got off to a bad start dropping $147,000 playing fixed-limit Omaha-8, 8-Game and 2-7 triple draw, but his luck soon changed. It happened when he sat down at the 2-7 triple draw tables with “Kagome Kagome,” Phil “OMGClayAiken” Galfond, and Viktor “Isildur1” Blom and proceeded to win $225,000.

Speaking of Blom, he was involved in the two biggest pots of the day. Have a look:

Hand #1: The game was $400/$800 NLHE when Alex “IReadYrSoul” Millar ($175,515.50) opened for $2,700 and then called when Blom ($114,467.50) three-bet to $9,600. When the flop came down 9♦6♦6♠, Blom bet $12,800, Millar called, and the 3♠ turned. Again Millar called a bet, this time $28,800, and the 2♣ completed the board on the river. Blom shoved all in for $63,267.50, and Millar called. Blom tabled the 10♥10♣ and it was good enough to win the $228,935 pot as Millar mucked.

Hand #2: The game was the same when Blom ($228,699) raised to $2,400, Millar ($138,463.40) called and the flop fell 2♠6♣7♦. Millar checked, Blom bet $4,000 and Millar woke up with a check-raise to $12,400. Not to be outdone, Blom three-bet to $28,800, Millar called and the J♦ turned. Millar check-called a bet of $26,400 and then checked when the 8♥ completed the board on the river. Blom moved all in and Millar called off for $80,863.50 to create a pot of $276,927. Blom tabled the 10♦6♠ for a pair of sixes, but it was no good as Millar had a set with the 2♥2♣. Despite losing that hand. Blom went on to finish a $100,300 winner on the day.

Good Day for Hansen; Polk vs. Sulsky Round 3

On Sunday, September 22, Gus Hansen put in a lengthy 15-hour session at the virtual felt, but it paid off as he finished a $359,400 winner. His day started out with a $142,000 win against Phil “Polarizing” Ivey and “Kagome Kagome” at the 2-7 triple draw tables in the early morning hours, and he’d add the rest 16 hours later playing the same game against a laundry list of notables. One of them was last week’s biggest winner, Niklas “ragen70” Heinecker, who finished a $134,900 winner.

It was also on Sunday that Doug "WCGRider" Polk and Ben “Sauce1234” Sulsky played for a third time in their challenge, which will consist of 15,000 hands of $100/$200 NLHE over a number of sessions. Each session will come to a halt if either player builds an effective chip stack of more than 250 big blinds, and the player who is ahead at the time the 15,000th hand is complete will be awarded the $100,000 put up by the losing player.

Sulsky, who was down $397,000 in the match, managed to make a little bit of a comeback — $97,100 — through 2,232 hands over eight hours of play. That brought the total number of hands played in the challenge to a little over 6,000, making the challenge just about 40% complete. At the end of the match, Polk still led the challenge by nearly $300,000.

Hendon Adds to Yearly Lead in Tuesday Full of Action

It’s not often we get to write about Kyle “cottonseed1” Hendon, and that’s a shame considering he’s the biggest online winner thus far this year. The reason is, he plays a lot of $2,000/$4,000 fixed-limit Omaha-8, and hands from that game aren’t currently tracked. Nonetheless, we thought we’d bring you an update on his progress, which included finishing as Tuesday’s biggest winner with a $235,600 win.

Hendon played Gus Hansen for 780 hands over eight hours and ended up a $320,000 winner, though he ended up losing a little back throughout the day. There were some other notable happenings on Tuesday. Check out the highlights:

The Online Railbird Report: Phil Ivey Week's Biggest Winner; Polk vs. Sulsky Update 101 — Phil “OMGClayAiken” Galfond

”RookieNFL” took $155,000 from Viktor “Isildur1” Blom in 50 minutes at the $500/$1,000 CAP NLHE tables. “RookieNFL” ended the day a $211,300 winner thanks to a $55,000 win later in the day against “punting-peddler” at the $100/$200 tables.
Phil “Polarizing” Ivey won $134,000 thanks to a heads-up win against Blom at the FLO8 tables.
”Kagome Kagome” won $191,400 playing at the 2-7 triple draw tables, while Phil “OMGClayAiken” Galfond banked $116,400 playing the same game.
”Odd_Oddsen,” who was also featured in PokerNews’ Online Chat series, won $131,200 playing $50/$100 pot-limit Omaha over on PokerStars.

Polk Punishes Sulsky in Part 4 of their Challenge

Wednesday also featured Part 4 of the aforementioned Doug "WCGRider" Polk vs. Ben “Sauce1234” Sulsky challenge. The two played for 8.5 hours and knocked out another 2,478 hands. After Sulsky won some back in the last match, Polk returned to his winning ways to edge out his advantage. That means 61% of the challenge is in the books, and Polk is currently a hefty $491,000 winner.

Here are a couple of notable hands from the match:

Hand #1: In the biggest pot of the match, Polk ($30,439.50) opened for $480 and then called when Sulsky ($95,813.25) three-bet to $1,440, which brought about a flop of 6♠5♠8♥. Sulsky check-called a bet of $2,400, the 10♥ turned, and Polk bet $6,400 after his opponent checked for a second time. Sulsky woke up with an all-in check-raise, and Polk called off his remaining $20,199.50. Polk tabled the 8♣8♠ for a set, which was ahead of Sulsky’s 9♥5♥ straight and flush draw. The river was run twice, but neither the Q♠ on the first run nor 5♣ on the second helped Sulsky. With that, Polk scooped the $60,879 pot.

Hand #2:

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Biggest Winners/Losers (Full Tilt Poker)

Week’s Biggest Winners (9/20-9/25): Phil “Polarizing” Ivey (+$361,634), “wilhasha”* (+$356,219), “punting-peddler” (+$318,959), Phil “OMGClayAiken” Galfond (+$299,379), “RookieNFL” (+$225,915), Gus Hansen (+$222,326), “Odd_Oddsen”* (+$151,150), Tom “durrrr” Dwan (+$146,904)

Week’s Biggest Losers (9/20-9/25): Alexander “PostFlopAction” Kostritsyn (-$532,461), “mikki696” (-$271,526), Patrik “FinddaGrind” Antonius (-$266,745), Isaac “Ike Haxton” Haxton* (-$200,489), “mikki696”* (-$189,371), Viktor “Isildur1” Blom (-$165,026)

Year’s Biggest Winners: Kyle “cottonseed1” Hendon (+$3,538,164), Ben “Bttech86” Tollerene (+$3,125,190), Niklas “ragen70” Heinecker (+$3,003,787), “Rhje” (+$2,484,462), Patrik “FinddaGrind” Antonius (+$2,287,070), Alexander “PostFlopAction” Kostritsyn (+$2,265,777), “Odd_Oddsen”* (+$1,663,666), “no_Ola” (+$1,512,516), Hac “trex313” Dang (+$1,581,012)

Year’s Biggest Losers: Gus Hansen (-$4,213,122), “MalACEsia” (-$3,773,524), “samrostan” (-$3,174,499), Phil “Polarizing” Ivey (-$2,224,237), “patpatpanda” (-$1,330,885), Ben “Sauce1234” Sulsky (-$1,310,105), “punting-peddler” (-$1,242,483), Scott “mastrblastr” Seiver (-$1,220,399), “Johnbest” (-$992,253), Rui Cao (-$974,166)

*Denotes PokerStars