Around the Country: Graphenteen has crazy day

Troy Graphenteen, known as “stringbend” and “stringbendr” online, recently accomplished a pretty rare feat, scoring two $10,000+ multi-table tournament cashes in one day. On February 10th, Graphenteen won the Full Tilt “Fifty-Fifty” for $11,657 (1,227 entrants), and he took 2nd in a PokerStars tournament for $10,145.

Not a bad day. In fact, getting heads-up in two enormous fields on the same day is just down-right sick.

I actually caught up with Troy on Facebook the other day for a couple quick questions:

PMac: What are your overall thoughts about hitting two huge scores in such a short timespan? That’s sick!

Troy: I wasn’t really thinking about the accomplishment at the time.  I was just trying to focus on the 3-4 tournaments I was still alive in.  The final table of the first one went pretty quickly, especially the heads-up.  So, after I won that one, I was left with just 1 tournament with like 18-27 players left.  At that time I started thinking, wow, this could be the start of chance to get a Triple Crown.  That final table was more of an up and down battle where finally I got heads-up with an aggro who wasn’t gonna let me play too much post-flop poker even though we were still relatively deep stacked.  I took my chances with a KJo 4-bet all-in and I didn’t win the race against ATo.  ATo was definately in the upper end of this guys 3-bet range, but I was still live and didn’t hit.  Oh well, I’ll have to get a Triple some other time.

PMac: This is pretty rare, obviously… Did you sense it coming?

Troy: No, I try not to think about my poker game like that.  I just keep trying to get better and concentrate on playing the best mistake free poker I can.  I’ve worked really hard on my tournament play over the last year, adjusting to the evolution of the game.  The hard work has payed off for me as I have had several decent wins over the past few months.  I know I’m playing at a real high level right now, and hopefully, I can use these last few wins as a springboard to bigger and better things.

- Out in Los Angeles, Kyle Keranen, from Minneapolis, won a $300 buy-in LA Poker Classic Event last Tuesday for just under $25,000. He beat notable pro Theo Tran heads-up.

Keranan also has career cashes in the World Poker Tour and the Fall Poker Classic.

- Trevor Hills, from Inver Grove Heights,  finished third in a PokerStars.com Venetian Deep Stack event last Wednesday for a $16,000 chop. I swapped emails with Hills, who was obviously pumped up about his successful Vegas venture.

“I travel to Vegas about three times a year to play tourneys,” Hills said. “I am a semi-regular at Running Aces, usually play the Saturday afternoon tourney there and the occasional Tuesday night tourney.  Have a full time job, so I don’t get to play as much as I like.

“This was my biggest cash ever.  Have had quite a few $1k-$4k cashes in local Running Aces, Canterbury, Treasure Island and Turtle Lake tourneys, but 16k is the biggest.  Trying to get on the circuit a bit more this year.”