No Survivors :(

Although none of our group survived TKPT Day 2 to make it to tonight's Final Table, a couple of friends did! Fortunately poker isn't the only reason we came to St Maarten. There's lots of fun in the sun to be had in a place like this and we had a great time ziplining through the jungle yesterday.



We'll publish our final TKPT episode, featuring the final results at TKPT St Maarten, on Monday.

Ziplining This Afternoon, TKPT Day 2 Tonight

We took a couple of the guys ziplining this afternoon prior to the resumption of the Main Event tonight. We'll have a report on Day 2 at TKPT St Maarten tomorrow but in the meantime here's a little teaser for you.


Check back tomorrow to see which of our players will advance to the third and final day of the tournament that our online satellite winners from Intertops and Juicy Stakes are playing in.

Preparing for Tonight's TKPT Main Event

Our five players – who all won their way to TKPT St Maarten in online satellite tournaments at Intertops Poker or Juicy Stakes Poker – arrived yesterday. The Main Event starts tonight. Last night they had a chance to check out their competition by playing in a smaller warm-up tournament – and by having a little fun at a local cantina!

Tim and Chris, who were both with us in Austria a couple months ago, were a little surprised at how aggressively their European competition played. They’re thinking things might be a little more relaxed here…

Check back for our report on Day 1 at TKPT St Maarten when we’ll introduce you to the prettiest member of our team.  Elena Stover arrived late last night, hot off her second place finish at the Borgata Million last week.


“This post was shared on the Alec Torelli’s Best of Poker Series“. 

Serious Poker -- and Serious Fun!

The Living the Dream team is heading to the Caribbean next week for TKPT St Maarten. We'll have daily videos from St Maarten, following five online players -- Tim O'Keefe, Chris Perkins, Elena Stover, John Curcurcu and Gabor Kresco -- as they compete in the Main Event and as they enjoy all the fun-in-the-sun the tropical island has to offer. In this preview video, tournament organizer Thomas Kremser talks about what we can expect next week. The tournament attracts both professional and recreational players from around the world. It's serious poker -- but Kremser is also organizing island excursions like zip lining, ATV touring and a party bus with DJ and open bar, so there will also be some serious fun to be had!

Watch this preview video to meet our five players and to get a taste of what's in store for them next week in the Caribbean.  Check back here April 27th for the next episode -- or like our Facebook page to be notified when new episodes come online.


The Living the Dream team for TKPT St Maarten: Chris Perkins, Tim O'Keefe, Elena Stover, John Curcuru and Gabor Kresco.

Elena Stover Placed 2nd in Borgata Million This Weekend

Congratulations to Elena Stover, one of the online satellite tournament champions that will be with us at TKPT St Maarten next week. She’s been in Atlantic City this weekend where she placed second in the $1,000,000 GTD ‘Borgata Million’ at the Borgata Spring Poker Open, winning $138,000.

Stay-at-home dad Matt Mendez won that tournament, which had 2527 entries, taking home $213,192.

Elena put on an impressive performance during the final table and came close to being only the second woman to win a Borgata big guarantee event, hoping to follow in the footsteps of Stephanie Hubbard who won the $500,000 GTD opening event of the 2015 Fall Poker Open last November.

At the river the board read T 9 7 A K. Mendez showed Q-10 for a pair of 10s.   Stover left herself with only about 6 million when she mucked her hand, surrendering a big pot.

It wasn’t long before she was all-in pre-flop holding J-5 against Mendez’s Q-4. Then the flop came Q-8-5 which gave them both a pair. Mendez already had the top pair and when the last two cards were dealt, 2-6, the game was his.

This is Elena’s largest reported tournament cash and is nearly triple her accumulated earnings to date.  She’s on quite a hot streak with four cashes prior to this in 2016.  Hopefully this winning streak will continue in St Maarten next week!

More like GRINDING the dream!

Well I think I’ve officially earned “Grinder” status at this crazy game!  What a sick few weeks of poker I've just played!  I just came from the Foxwoods Poker Classic series in CT and while it was A LOT of fun, I can’t remember a more brutal series grind than this! (And I have played an entire series before and not so much as min cashed! haha)  I'm talking about playing 11 hours before busting out!  I played 11 hours for 5 days straight, just to start the series off! It was rough! lol

ChrisPs Twitch stream
at the cash table!

On top of that, I literally busted out of 6, (SIX!) different tournaments with AJ! Every time I got it in really good, just to get super unlucky, with all of them being very deep into the tourneys! I could probably change the title of this post to “How to lose with AJ” ! As an added kick in the nuts, another weird coincidence was that 4 (FOUR) of the 6 times I got knocked out, my opponents had a Kx hand! King 4 suited, King 8 Suited and King 7 twice!! Yikes!  What are the odds off that, getting knocked out holding the same hand, against basically the same hand 4 times! So SICK!! I think the Poker gods or Karma was against me for some reason! Not cool! I guess it was a good and bad thing though, as I was playing well enough to make several very deep runs in decent sized fields with a lot of good players. 😉

Rockin' the Intertops gear
and green tea

I placed in the money 3 times over the 2 weeks I played. Starting with a 21st out of 320 players, a 13th out of 282 players and a brutal FINAL TABLE BUBBLE of 11th out of 300 players!  Also, two other tourneys I played for about 10-11 hours before busting BOTH times 10 places off the money and moving to day two! So yea, like I said, Brutal lol But I did at least make some money back! Oh and I had one real good day playing cash games that helped cover the losses, so can’t complain too much!;)

Overall, I’m very happy with my play, I made a lot of real deeps runs, I felt confident at the tables, and played very consistent throughout the series!  Of course, it’s still always disappointing to not come home with a win, but all I can do is shake it off, learn from the experience and bring an even better game to the next series! I know I had quite a few leaks in my game that I need to plug before the next series. We should all be constantly trying to improve! So I’ll post those mistakes soon and hopefully I can get some feedback before Choctaws “Poker Night in America” series kicks off.

And then, I'm off to the Caribbean after winning an online satellite tournament at Intertops Poker.  I'll be playing the TKPT tournament in St Maarten last week of April.  Livin' the dream, baby!!!

Final table of championship event

Thanks for reading,

Tim
@2fit2fold