Phil Laak is back in the action, taking part in the 2nd European Poker Tour event in Monte Carlo. This time, he has entered the €25,000 High Roller event that follows the regular EPT Monte Carlo Main Event tournament.
Despite the Unabomber’s early exit in the Main Event earlier this week, he has enjoyed the Monte Carlo setting and the professional way that the tournament has been run thus far.
Big Names & Big Money
The High Roller event kicked off with a large 120 person field. Big names that are here include Daniel Negreanu, John Juanda, Eric Siedel, Jason Mercier, Vanessa Rousso, Humberto Brenes, Carlos Mortensen, Tony G, Viktor Blom, Gus Hansen, Barry Greenstein and even tennis legend Boris Becker!
This is a big event with the winner taking home a record €1,000,000.
The competition is packed with big names and is not expected to be a walk in the park for any of the players.
“I was an engineer as a kid”
Jason Mercier built up his stack to resemble a pyramid, and sure enough, as busy as ever, Laak made sure he got in on the action building his own pyramid. Once he was done, he yelled over at Mercier to take a look. Here is the conversation that followed:
“Yours is way better that mine,” said Mercier.
“I was an engineer as a kid,” responded Laak.
“What? You played with Lego?” asked Mercier.
And with that, Phil took off to cause trouble elsewhere, with the new victim being Chad Brown.
Calling down Viktor Blom
The young Swedish pro Viktor Blom (widely believed to be the online phenomenon Isildur1) seems to be getting a lot of callers as no one trusts him to hold a hand given his wild and aggressive image.
Phil fell victim to this trap going as far as to call Blom down with King high!
Phil Laak All-in for TV
Poker fans should get a chance to see Phil playing at this event for sure when it is broadcast on TV.
Phil got on all with Jd8d on the turn with a board reading Qs4c8c2s against Tony G’s 5c3c. Laak’s pair was up against an open ended straight draw and a flush draw. He had to dodge a lot of river cards to double-up and stay alive and didn’t want the cameras to miss it!
Phil called the camera man over in total excitement saying “This is my first high-roller event. I love being here. I want to stay here. Oh my god, can I dodge this? Where are the cameras? This should be filmed.”
Our hero was safe when the river came a Kd and he doubled his short $8,000 stack to $16,000 to stay alive.
Tough Luck
Phil Laak has made another early exit in Monte Carlo much to everyone’s disappointment. The cameras missed this one, but here is how it went down:
He raised with A9 to be called pre-flop by Viktor Blom and Pierre Neuville.The flop came Ace-high as Laak had hoped and he bet out, with Neuville calling to come along for the ride.Unluckily, Neuville was holding AK and had Phil dominated.On the blank turn, he check-called Neuville’s all-in push, to then be shown the carnage.No 9 came on the river to save the Unabomber and that wraps up a rough tournament run in Monte Carlo.
Phil Laak blogged that he had a good time in Monte Carlo and really liked the hotel’s great location at the bottom of a cliff. He is pretty disappointed by his poker results but at least was able to enjoy his time away from the tables.
