Up and Down: 74-year-old Neuville in the GPI’s Top 50, Hellmuth wins side event

74 year old Pierre Neuville entersthe GPI’s Top 50,wins prop bet

While sitting at 119thin the GPI rankings during the 2016 WSOP – Pierre Neuville made an interesting offer to the poker community. The offer was a prop bet at even odds that he would break into the top 50 players on the GPI rankings by June 2017.

With the points system being such that points awarded for big results will progressivelydecline over time, many thoughts his November Nine points haul would be seriously diminished by June of the following year. They also thought that he would have too much work cut out in other tournaments to make it. Bets rolled in, and the 74 year old Belgian got to work.

With a few months to spare he has now achieved his goal, moving up to 46thin the latest rankings shift. The amount that he has won from this bet is not known, but rumour has it that players were very keen on betting against him and there were 12 bets made in total.

His doubters may have crunched the numbers and felt that he was an underdog, but you can’t quantify heart with numbers, and Neuville has plenty of that. For a man well into his 70’s he plays a huge amount of poker, with 150 live tournaments played in 2016. He claims he wants to play 175 in 2017.

Hellmuth beats Matusow to take LAPC side event

In what was a nostalgic and thoroughly interesting occasion, Mike Matusow faced off against Phil Hellmuth in a heads-up showdown at the end of a side event tournament at the L.A Poker Classic. The fans at the venue streamed over to watch what would normally be a very peripheral final table, as the two old pros went to war with each other in the $1,100 Omaha hi/lo/Stud hi/lo tournament. Hellmuth bested a field of 72 players to take down the $25,200 1stprize, and the all-important trophy for his collection.

Adrian Mateos continues his good month by winning the $325k guaranteed ‘Title Fight’

Having already pocketed $34,524 in a tournament on 888Poker this month, Adrian Mateos has now added another $54,133 by winning the ‘Title Fight’ tournament on PartyPoker.

The $215 buy-in and field of 1,363 players created a sizable overlay of $52,400, from which Mateos profited greatly by taking home the biggest slice of the pie.

Article by Craig Bradshaw