Global Poker Leagues Summer Series Kicks Off

The Global Poker League is heating up (pun intended) with its Summer Series that will take part through early July. The “Cube” is what they are officially calling it, is a series of six heads up matches each week. Matches will be one player from the Eurasia conference, against a player from the Americas conference. The Summer Series will change venues from playing online, to live. It also will be the first glance at the newest GPL member – Aaron Paul. Paul, better known as Jesse from Breaking Bad was added to the league in an attempt to get better ratings and add a little drama to the field. Week one of heads up matches was a blowout for the Americas Conference. All six matches were won by a player from the Americas conference. Each match was a best of three, with each of the three heads up games earning 3 points for the player's team. First up was Aaron Paul who took 2 out of 3 games from the Paris Aviators Fabrice Soulier. Jonathan Jaffe would also win 2 of 3 from Dzmitry Urbanovich. Scott Ball and Kevin MacPhee also won 2 matches. Martin Jacobsen, and Felipe Ramos would win all 3 of their matches taking home 9 points each for their teams. By the end of heads up play, the Montreal Nationals took a commanding lead over the entire field with 115 points. The LA Sunset are the next closest team with 101 points. Eurasia's leader has just 100 points in the London Royals. Going in to the second week of the “Cube” Eurasia needed a strong performance to get back in the mix. I didn't look good as Americas Conference player Jonathan Little won 2 of 3 matches in the first game. Marc Andre Ladouceur would continue that trend winning 2 of 3 from Igor Yaroshevsky. Thiago Nishijima would make matters worse by sweeping Justin Bonomo of the London Royals. Randy Lew of the Hong Kong Stars would turn the tide and finally earn a win for a Eurasia player when he swept Jason Wheeler of the New York Rounders. That win would be put to sleep after the hottest player I poker – Fedor Holz would win all 3 matches against the Berlin Bears Sorel Mizzi. Timothy Adams of the Rome Emporer's would earn another 2 out of 3 wins for Eurasia and his Rome Empowers beating Phil Galfond. After 2 weeks of play in the Summer Series, the Montreal Nationals sit atop the leader board with 121 points. Hong Kong did move up the boards with their 9 points from Randy Lew. They are now tied with the London Royals, each with 100 points.