Aruba, PokerHo.

Rushmore · #1 03-22-2005, 10:31 AM

Won my seat to the Aruba event last night, playing in a $320. I played about as well as I could play, and was rewarded with a nice trip and buyin to the event in September.

There are a number of big name players at UB. You see 'em every day. But the one who seems to be universally adored and fawned upon is PokerHo, who is a solid, selectively aggressive player who shifts gears a lot and makes it very tough to stay with him.

Anyway, I find myself at the table with him a LOT, and invariably, a great throng of admirers/sycophants/groupies will flock around and jump on his jock.

I'm sure I should know who this guy is, but I do not.

Fill me in. How did this guy get to be such a rock star?

zaxx19 · #2 03-22-2005, 10:58 AM

He is a like 40ish bar owner(or maybe ex bar woner mgr something like that) who was one of the original players/MTT'ers on UB and just basically worked himself from being an avg player to like a pro or semi pro who does really well online.

He has a group of perhaps 20 higher buyin friends who play private tourneys and know eachother...

I wouldnt consider him the best MTT'er but he is an excellent player for sure.

Filip · #3 03-22-2005, 11:11 AM

I think it is because a site that is ranking online tournament players.

When i was playing the 10+1 PLO tournament someone said we had 90 observers. So i checked and it was true. This was no finaltable, it was just that the creator of Microsoft Word was playing at our table. I even think i busted him [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]

Btw grats on the trip.

fnord_too · #4 03-22-2005, 11:53 AM

Like Zaxx said, I don't think he is a pro or someone you would know, but he is pretty good. I watch him if I happen to be in the same tourney, just to improve my own game. Every time I see him, he is doing well, and I definitely think he plays better than I do right now.

sirtimo · #5 03-22-2005, 01:19 PM

PokerHo's name is Mark Kroon

http://www.pocketfives.com/AA60BDA1-...C2D7E5487.aspx

Rushmore · #6 03-22-2005, 01:51 PM

Well, that was about as thorough a response as I could have hoped for.

Thank you very much.

asofel · #7 03-22-2005, 01:53 PM

[ QUOTE ]
PokerHo's name is Mark Kroon

http://www.pocketfives.com/AA60BDA1-...C2D7E5487.aspx

[/ QUOTE ]

um....thoughts on this:

[ QUOTE ]

So how does P0ker H0 win so much? He plays a loose and aggressive style, and often calls a raise before the flop with hands such as 9-2 offsuit or 7-4, particularly early in tournaments. His theory on this is that he can afford to call a very small % of his chips early in a tournament, knowing that if he hits the board hard, he could likely get a huge stack of chips to play with—chips he knows how to use to propell himself to the final table. If someone makes a bet, and there are 4 or 5 callers, he will oftentimes call with any two cards.

[/ QUOTE ]

fnord_too · #8 03-22-2005, 02:14 PM

My main thought is that I keep doing SailorLobell dirty by sitting right behind him in the low buy in ($11+1 and $13+1) TEC SNG's [img]/images/graemlins/ooo.gif[/img]

gumpzilla · #9 03-22-2005, 02:22 PM

This doesn't surprise me. I've watched this guy (I'm assuming it's the same guy, a poker ho from Madison who has won the Paradise $30 R&A) at the beginning of R&As. He'll push often with pretty much anything - both preflop and flop - for the first hour of an R&A trying to build a stack. As soon as he gets a large stack, he plays a much more sensibly aggressive game. Not an uncommon plan for R&A, I guess, but it wouldn't surprise me if he uses a similar plan for non-R&A tournaments. Go big or go home.