Aced Poker Wins Dream Team Event
Team “Aced” won the inaugural Dream Team poker tournament by outplaying 147 other teams and 441 other players to take home the trophy. The first public version of the Dream Team poker event was a sold out affair with tons of poker professionals as well as celebrities on hand. The tournament took place at Caesars Palace in Las Vegas and had a buy-in of $500 per person for a total prize pool of $222,000.
Team Aced was lead by individual performances by Ashley Nataupsky (4th place finisher) and WSOP champ Jamie Gold (9th place finisher) who also happens to be the face of the Aced.com online poker room. The other player on the Aced team was Houston Waldie, but he didn’t make it very far into the tournament. The Aced team was awarded $59,940 for their efforts as well as the championship trophy, which was more important to some…
Jamie Gold stated “It’s the most fun you can have without $12 million on the line. My WSOP bracelet is in a vault, but my Dream Team Poker trophy will be on my mantel for all to see.”
As players entered day two, teams Aced, the Claddaghs, and the Clones were all locked in a fierce battle to move up in the team points standings. Although a member of the Claddaghs finished second, the duo of Aced players who reached the final table was such a points powerhouse that no one else had any shot to catch up.
The individual winner of the tournament was Danny Nelson from team BikerHaven.net. Nelson entered the day with $119,000 in chips and never looked back, as he annihilated the other players and took down the individual prize of $23,976. However, he didn’t have any help from his teammates and team BikerHaven.net didn’t even crack the top five in the team standings.
Expect to see more Dream Team events in the future, because casinos really like to host these types of tournaments. Since each team likely has at least one player go fairly deep in the tournament, it’s a good bet that the other members of the team will hang around and spend more money at the casino as opposed to just going home if it was an individual event.
In related news, Aced.com had a little problem because of this tournament. Every Sunday Aced hosts the Jamie Gold Invitational, which is a $1,500 guaranteed tournament with a $500 bounty on Jamie Gold’s head. However, since last Sunday Jamie was at the final table of the Dream Team tournament, he obviously couldn’t play.
Many players were upset, but Aced handled it very well. The manager (Mr. Brandon Berndt) of the Aced poker room refunded every player their buy-ins, and assured them that this type of thing would never happen again. I happen to be friends with Brandon and I definitely don’t see him letting this happen again.
If you’d like to check out the Jamie Gold Invitational, head over to Aced.com. They’re a brand new poker room on the Merge network, and honestly have some of the most amazing poker software I’ve ever seen. Plus, they currently have a nice $1,000 sign up bonus for new depositors. Check out Aced.com now - good luck!
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Mike Wittmeyer is the founder and owner of PokerSite.org, and does the majority of the writing for the site. He has played online poker for over five years now, and has also played at several live casinos around the world. Mike has been writing about online poker and poker strategy for over three years now, and owns several other online poker and online casino websites. Learn more about Mike at his personal blog, MikeWittmeyer.com.