Carlo Hassan wins PPOC II!

Congratulations Carlo, how are you feeling about the win?

I’ve just about recovered! I’m trying to do some research and
find out if it’s the longest tournament without a proper break. It went on for
14 hours 25 minutes with just those 5 minute breaks every hour!

How did you qualify?

I just bought in. I wasn’t able to enter the other PPOC
events but I’m a regular PokerPlayer reader.

What was your tournament record like prior to this?

I’m a winning tournament player on a couple of sites. I won
the Sky Poker Primo, I’ve won a couple of tournaments on Betfair.

Tell us about the early stages

At the beginning I was struggling to stay awake! It was 8pm
and I’d just had something to eat. For the first hour I was basically not
there, playing hands blindly. After two or three hours, my chipstack started to
increase and I was never in danger until the last two or three hours.

Were you dead on your feet when it got to 2am/3am?

When 12 o clock came, it seemed to come really quick and by
the time 1am came I was cruising. There was no trouble with my thinking, it
almost became robotic, ABC. I did my resteals, raised from the button, it was
all pretty smooth. It didn’t physically hit me until I had railbirds coming on
and started chatting and saying they’d had a good night’s sleep! At around 8am,
I did start to get affected, I had to run up and down on the spot! Talking to
other players actually kept me going.

What was your chipstack like going into the final table?

I was around 3^rd in chips I think. HillytheFish
was up there for a while [he got knocked out in 12^th) and he can
vouch for how many hours he was doing. When we got to three-handed, it was an
interesting situation. I squeezed a few times, there was a lot of slowplaying
with big hands. The other two sussed out that I was min-raising with big hands
so I had to change that a little bit and show weakness by going all-in. Hands
rarely got down to the river.

Divzano had a chiplead over you going into heads-up. How
did you turn it around?

Every time I was on the button I raised. He rarely
three-betted, he folded to any raise really. One hand made the difference. I
turned a full-house and he flopped a set. That made me chipleader with about
150k more chips. I just kept that going.

What time did you finish up?

10.25am. I was elated because I had won but I was also
delirious and hyper because all of a sudden I felt like Phil Laak! Eventually I
went to sleep at 1pm and I had to take the day off work  – which wasn’t planned. I was very
pleased but I was actually more interested if that was the longest tournament
online! And if it isn’t, what isn’t it?!!

<h3>PPOC II Final table results</h3>

1 caremma $2,313.90

2 Divzano $1,371.20

3 Lettuc23383 $857.00

4 sherifffatman1 $685.60

5 jjthegingerninja $599.90

6 champydon $514.20

7 PoshSwanny $428.50

8 sspedersen1982 $342.80

9 mousehouse $257.10

10 RicayJL $171.40