Erik Hedenstierna
“The victory was obviously very nice,” commented Swedish player Erik Hedenstierna, after he won the Sunday Blast $200,000 Guaranteed tournament on June 3, 2012. “I can say that I appreciate playing at Titan Poker. I have not played here that long but will certainly play more here in the future because I like the client, the structure and the players,” he said.
Erik, who plays at Titan Poker under the nickname “erihed007”, defeated a starting field of 1,934 players, all of whom had paid the tournament’s discounted buy-in of $100 + $9 (or had won their seats at the satellites leading to the main event). The tournament lasted 11 hours until Erik emerged as overall winner.
Erik received first prize of $32,000 for his tournament win. We spoke to Erik in the days after his achievement.
“I have been playing poker seriously for about 1 1/2 years now and started becoming serious when I was coached and staked by a Dutch guy,” Erik told us. “Now I’m staked by a really nice Canadian guy and everything works out great. I used to only play on another site but now I play on iPoker too since there are a lot of great tourneys there and a lot of soft fields.”
Key Moments from the Sunday Blast
We asked Erik if he remembered any key moments from the Sunday Blast $200,000 Guaranteed tournament.
“I had a lot of tables running on other sites too (at the time). I just played my standard game with not many bluffs, etc. and I was running extremely bad on the other sites. When I only had that iPoker tourney left I was kind of on tilt and re-jammed with only 13bb or so on the button with 10s 9s. It was right before the money stage and the original raiser called with QQ. I was on my way to bed. The flop came J 2 2 which was really bad for me. I could only win with runner runner nines or runner runner tens. The turn was a 9 and I rivered another 9! After that I started to focus a lot more, played a lot better and started to build a stack.
“After that hand, I was never behind in an all-in pot and I was happy that I could hold most of the times. I remember that when there were 18-20 players left or so I was at the bottom with a small stack. I said to myself: “I don’t care if I finish 18th or 10th, but I will play to make the final table and then win it. So I started to play more aggressively and made more 3-bets and was lucky to get good hands. I got a huge stack when I called with A K vs A 6 and 5 5. I hit a king on turn when there were 12 left or so.”
The Final Table
Erik said he started the final table second in chips. “I didn’t play many hands until the first 3 short-stacked players were out. When there were 6 left I started to play to win the tourney and I played really well and changed my style according to the different players I met at the table. One guy 4-bet jammed me a lot when I 3-bet so I started just to call his open raises and only 3-betted him if I wanted to call his 4-bet jam. That tactic worked really well and soon I was chipleader. After that I built my stack and won a huge pot vs an aggressive player with A K vs. A J. When we got into heads-up I had a stack of 17 million and the other guy had around 2 millions so I had quite a strong advantage. It took some minutes but then I called his jam pre-flop with A 3 and he had 9 7 and I won it.”
Erik’s advice to other players
“My advice to players is to stay focused. You don’t win the tourney after 2 hours; you win it after 8-10 hours. The player with the best focus can take advantage of other players’ mistakes abd will most likely win the tourney.”
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