Posts Tagged ‘Isaac Haxton’

Should Poker really be covered like Winter Olympics?

Wednesday, February 12th, 2014

It’s been about a week since Joe Hachem gave his interview on how WSOP Main Event champions need to step up their ambassadorship efforts. And the discussion hasn’t stopped, with Daniel Negreanu recently bringing up an interesting perspective on poker television coverage.

Negreanu thinks that ESPN and 411 Productions could learn a thing or two from how NBC presents the Winter Olympics. As KidPoker pointed out through twitter, casual viewers aren’t exactly on a first-name basis with winter sports athletes. So NBC does a good job of focusing on athletes’ backstories. Here’s a sample of what Negreanu tweeted:

Winter Olympics provide a great example. Public doesn’t know the people or the sports but with great story telling fans & stars are created.

Much of the poker boom should be credited to ESPN and 411 Productions who spent time developing stars of poker. We have gotten away from it.

There is something interesting about EVERYONE! It’s up to the production team to find out what that is, then sell it to the public.

I have ALWAYS believed the focus should never be on the game, but on the characters who play it. We waste time appeasing the wrong demo.

Global poker numbers don’t seem to suggest that the game’s popularity is immediately dying off. However, Negreanu and other pros don’t feel like this popularity is sustainable if personality and interesting backstories aren’t brought back into the fray.

But it’s worth mentioning that, over the past five years or so, tournament TV coverage has been catering to more of a hardcore audience. So to revert back to how WSOP coverage was presented in the mid-2000’s and earlier would be a huge change. And not everybody is a fan of this either. Isaac Haxton is one of them, as you can see from the following tweets:

@RealKidPoker Comparing poker to the Olympics is perfect… if you want poker to be like snowshoeing, which people only watch every 4 years

@RealKidPoker But for something that is on tv consistently every week like other popular sports, in-depth analysis is completely appropriate

@RealKidPoker Poker lends itself to serious analysis on TV even more so because so many fans of the game play poker competitively themselves

@RealKidPoker Furthermore it’s insulting to the viewers to assume that they can’t or don’t want to understand the real mechanics of the game

@RealKidPoker More serious doesn’t have to mean less fun. TV commentary can be sophisticated while still being lighthearted and entertaining

Haxton brings up a good point too. However, the question here is what’s more important to a long-term sustainable poker population? Serious pros who understand check-raise analysis, or casual observers who keep filtering into the game and mostly serving as fish?

But as Haxton stated, maybe there’s a good way to blend sophisticated strategy talk along with jokes and lighthearted content. If so, ESPN really needs to add more of the latter if they want poker to continue growing.

Niklas Heinecker passes $4m in 2013 Online Poker Winnings

Saturday, November 16th, 2013

Throughout 2013, most of the attention in the high stakes poker world has been on Viktor “Isidur1” Blom. After all, the Swede has made over $4.5 million playing online this year.

But one player who’s had an exceptional year, yet has flown under the radar a bit, is Niklas “ragen70” Heinecker. The German recently won over $400,000 this past week, which puts him at a $4.2 million profit in 2013.

Perhaps the most interesting thing about Heinecker’s massive winnings is that they’ve come within the last three months. He was actually down money in the middle of August, but has since burst out of the hole and into some huge profits.

One event that’s really fueled Heinecker’s big win streak was when he took down a $403,000 pot back in August. The German flopped a straight against “MalACEsia” and five-bet shoved; MalACEsia called while chasing an ace-high flush and the race was on. MalACEsia wasn’t able to complete the flush, though, which sealed the huge pot for Heinecker.

Online poker isn’t the only arena where Niklas is excelling. He won the GuangDong HK$1 million Asia Millions in June and earned a massive HK$34,600,000 ($4,456,885) prize. He beat out a very tough final table which included Sorel Mizzi, Isaac Haxton and Igor Kurganov.

Considering the fact that Heinecker is only in his mid-20’s, he certainly looks to be a strong high stakes player for years to come. But for now, he’ll certainly be focused on the current situation where he’s trying to continue earning millions of dollars online.

2013 is close to being over with, so it’ll be interesting to see who finishes with the most money – Blom or Heinecker. Furthermore, it will be fun to watch how both of these players perform next year.

Niklas Heinecker wins 2013 GDAM and $4.46m

Friday, June 7th, 2013

The innagural GuangDong Ltd Asia Millions (GDAM) Main Event was a huge success after 71 players paid the HK$1,000,000 (US$130,000) buy-in. 54 of these grinders opted to rebuy after busting, and the buy-ins/rebuys combined to create a massive HK$119,375,000 ($15,376,897) prize pool.

Germany’s Niklas Heinecker took full advantage of this giant pool as he won the 2013 GDAM Main Event along with HK$34,600,000 ($US4,464,516). After winning, he said, “Of course, this is just sick. This is by far the biggest day of my poker career…I don’t think this is business as usual for anyone, and not for me definitely.” He added, “It’s far from what I’m used to. It’s a really big thing.”

Heinecker had to overcome a very fast-paced blind structure on the final day to capture this victory. The average final table chip stack was just 15 big blinds, which led to some very quick eliminations. When the dust settled, Heinecker and Australia’s Jeff Rossiter were left playing heads-up for the title.

The German definitely had an edge here with a 3:1 chip advantage. But this was anybody’s tournament with how high the blinds were. The rising blinds didn’t seem to affect Heinecker too badly though as he played well enough to beat Rossiter and capture his first major live tournament title.

Up until now, Niklas Heinecker has always been known as an online poker pro. But this is likely to change since he took down one of the biggest poker tourneys of the year. On the strength of the GDAM Main Event victory, Heinecker now has US$4,773,583 in live tournament earnings.

2013 GDAM Main Event Final Table Results
1. Niklas Heinecker – HK$34,600,000 (US$4,464,516)
2. Jeff Rossiter – HK$24,500,000 (US$3,161,290)
3. Sorel Mizzi – HK$16,100,000 (US$2,077,419)
4. Zheng Tang – HK$12,525,000 (US$1,616,129)
5. Isaac Haxton – HK$10,200,000 (US$1,316,129)
6. Igor Kurganov – HK$8,300,000 (US$1,070,967)
7. Anson Tsang – HK$7,150,000 (US$922,580)
8. Pratyush Budigga – HK$6,000,000 (US$774,193)