Introduction

Even though it feels a little ridiculous, considering I'm not in any way qualified for this, I'm gonna try to make previews and possibly predictions for the upcoming matches in this tournament.

And yes, I'll also cover the matches in this thread with hand histories as well as scores. If you aren't familiar with the tournament here is how Pokerstars itself explain it:

Basically, eight of the toughest NLHE players in the world are going to battle each other out in what has been called the "Heads Up Cash Game World Championship".

At 18:00 CET tomorrow, the 27th of October, the first match will take place and it's between KTPOKP and Sauce123.

Preview

KTPOKP is a fairly "fresh" player, even for me who could be called a "fresh railer", however, this dude has battled many very respected regulars as well as done a decent amount of 6max this year.

He started playing $25/$50 in March this year (on Stars, that is), and he started of playing a whole lot of heads up against the a "little less respected regulars". He has quickly rosen, playing (what I consider) harder and harder opponents the more time has past and has quite recently reached $750k in profits.

Note: KTPOKP is often seen playing deep stacked and has a very well-developed deep stacked game.

Sauce123 is a very well-known face for us railers since he does not only play NLHE, he also plays PLO where the majority of the higher stakes action has been this year. Sauce is also the biggest winner this year, however, only overall, not in NLHE specifically. KTPOKP actually beat Sauce on that leaderboard, where Sauce (only) is the 4th biggest winner this year compared to KTPOKP, who is the 3rd biggest earner.

Nevertheless, KTPOKP has played more than double the amount of hands that Sauce has. Also noteworthy is that KTPOKP has never played higher than $50/$100 (on Stars) whereas Sauce plays $200/$400 daily.

Note: Sauce is known for being a creative player that adjusts quickly.

Prediction

Though KTPOKP is a very active player (Supernova) that almost exclusively plays NLHE (though I have not seen it, apparently he has played high stakes PLO) who clearly is a heads up specialist, with very impressive winnings and impressive results beating some of the best in heads up battles, I do not think he will be able to outplay Sauce.

Sauce has not played as many hands NLHE as KTPOKP this year nor has he played more NLHE hands than he has played PLO hands, but he has constantly been keeping his NLHE game up-to-date by playing regular heads up battles against Kanu7 and patpatman. However, that he has not played against a whole lot of different opponents could of course be to his disadvantage.

Nonetheless, Sauce radiates extreme confidence about his game and truly does seem to believe that he is the best right now. This combined with his creative style that truly does **** with ones mind as well as his adapting skills make me believe him to prevail in this match.

_

I will post previews and predictions for the other matches as they come.

Discuss.

(http://www.pokerstarsblog.com/2012/a...et-123463.html)

As this is a first time event on PokerStars I'd guess that the likelyhood of it happening again kinda relies on how we like it and respond to it, so lets make it happen again.

Nice read. Thanks for doing this.

VT for president

What nationality is this KTPOKP? Any idea who it is?

His name is Tobias Kuder and he is from Austria.

Thanks for doing this thread VT, always appreciate your commitment

+1 i look forward to following this thread tmr

Kanu7 has to be the favourite IMO. Sauce has done well against him HU lately but there's so much variance in HUNL and Kanu has overall played more hands and won more money in NLHE than Sauce across 2011 and 2012 so I have to go with him. To see the biggest winners in NLHE since Jan 1st 2011 (start of HSDB tracking) on Stars, click here:

http://www.highstakesdb.com/results....&period=custom

I think since this tournament is the result of Kanu's hard work from conception to execution, considering all the time he has spent working on making it happen, he will be motivated to put in even more time studying Sauce than vice-versa and will adjust if they both win and meet in the Semis. Whoever wins that match is a huge favourite to win the finals.

Fantastic idea. Thanks VT. Appreciate all on your work in the HS thread and am looking forward to the read here. .

Good read, Vanilla. Makes me more pumped up for this match tomorrow than I am already.

Vanilla Thunder you are an excellent poster

Nice post vanilla, looking forward to this Kanu is favourite to win for me but variance will play a huge part. Gonna be fun to rail.

The schedule is as follows:

27 October: KTPOKP vs Sauce123
28 October: Kanu7 vs IkeHaxton
30 October: Sussie Smith vs w00ki3z.
31 October: MrSweets28 vs Ben86

Each contestant's results in No Limit Hold'em on PokerStars in the last calendar year (October 25th, 2011 - October 25th, 2012) :

Alex "Kanu7" Millar +$2,080,634 in 190,911 hands

Tobias "KTPOKP" Kuder +$776,927 in 79,659 hands

Benjamin "Sauce123" Sulsky +$542,545 in 38,848 hands

Alexander "Sussie Smith" Roumeliotis +$95,037 in 47,702 hands

Daniel "w00ki3z." Cates +$86,350 in 9,871 hands

Ben "Ben86" Tollerene+$59,264 in 36,422 hands

Phil "MrSweets28" Galfond +$58,190 in 1,357 hands

Isaac Haxton (philivey2694 + Ike Haxton) -$298,581 in 28,393 hands

Great topic, thanks VT

Anyone wanna make sidebets ?

Vn for mod . THE for THE hh

So they're 4 tabling with only 10 buy-ins? Basically one rebuy at each table? Did I read that right?

That's one way of seeing it.

I like sauce more than kanu cause he adjusts the quickest which will play a huge roll in such a short time period. However, I can't believe so many people are leaving out Jm12. To me, he is the favorite to win the whole thing, edging out sauce and kanu in 3rd

4-tabling w/ 10 buy-ins will prolly lead to a lot of table rebalancing

Needs Blom.

Edit: accidentally read "jm" to mean Jman as in Galfond when you were talking about jungleman, nvm

I feel like the favourites in this are Galfond, Haxton, and Sulsky. I'm a bit biased though, and they're all obv sick which is why they were selected.