The first half of the Global Poker League season has come to a close with a couple of surprising teams atop their individual conference standings. In the GPL Eurasia, the London Royals have slowly been grinding it out and now are in the lead, while the GPL Americas has seen the Montreal Nationals ascend to the pole position of the conference.
In the GPL Eurasia, the Royals have been stalking the top of the leaderboard for the past few weeks. With the Moscow Wolverines hitting their stride to take the top slot, the Royals were in a fight with the Paris Aviators for the second place slot in the conference. With one week to go in the first half schedule, the Royals decided to strike and seize the conference lead.
The amorous partnership of Igor Kurganov and Liv Boeree from the Royals led to a great deal of success for the team on the felt on Tuesday. During the Six Max sit and gos, Kurganov was able to take down a second place finish to the Paris Aviators’ Mike Leah to earn five points. In a case of “anything you can do, I can do better,” Boeree picked up the baton for the second leg of the Six Max match and crushed a field that featured the Rome Emperors’ Dario Sammartino, the Aviators’ Leah, the Moscow Wolverines’ player/manager Anatoly Filatov, the Berlin Bears’ Bill Perkins and the Hong Kong Stars’ Raiden Kan to capture the second sit and go.
The 12 points picked up by Boeree and Kurganov set the template for the matchup against the Wolverines on Wednesday. Playing like they had a plane to catch, the Royals’ Sam Trickett jumped all over the Wolverines’ Vladimir Troyanovskiy in winning the first two games of their heads up match. With those six points and the win sewn up, Trickett would drop Game 3 to Troyanovskiy in only 18 hands, but the 6-3 win gave the Royals 18 total points for the week and allowed them to steam past the Wolverines for the conference lead.
| GPL EURASIA | POINTS | WINS |
| London Royals | 97 | 10 |
| Moscow Wolverines | 92 | 8 |
| Hong Kong Stars | 91 | 6 |
| Paris Aviators | 86 | 9 |
| Berlin Bears | 74 | 4 |
| Rome Emperors | 63 | 3 |
Arguably the most disappointing team in the GPL Eurasia has been the Berlin Bears. Thought to be a powerhouse at the start of the season with a roster that included Brian Rast, Sorel Mizzi, Dominik Nitsche, Jeff Gross, Dan Cates and Perkins, manager Philipp Gruissem has seen his squad underperform in the first half of the season. With the live Summer Series, the Bears definitely have to turn their fortunes around or they will be left in the dust come the second half of the season.
In the GPL Americas, the Nationals took advantage of another bad week for the preseason favorites, the New York Rounders, as they extended their lead in the conference. The Nationals’ Martin Jacobson picked up a win and a third place finish in the Six Max for 10 points, but it was his teammate Jason Lavallee who carried the water for the Nationals. In their heads up battle against the Las Vegas Moneymakers’ Anthony Zinno, Lavallee swept the three games to pick up the 9-0 win and put the pressure on the rest of the conference.
The Rounders’ second bad week in a row saw Jason Wheeler only pull in three points during the Six Max matches, then Tom Marchese lost what would prove to be a pivotal heads up match against the L. A. Sunset’s Olivier Busquet by the count of 6-3. Busquet’s win, combined with the 10 points that Fedor Holz earned during the Six Max matches on Tuesday (a win and a third place), shot the Sunset past the Rounders and into the second place slot in the GPL Americas.
| GPL AMERICAS | POINTS | WINS |
| Montreal Nationals | 106 | 10 |
| L. A. Sunset | 95 | 8 |
| New York Rounders | 87 | 7 |
| Sao Paulo Metropolitans | 82 | 6 |
| San Francisco Rush | 69 | 6 |
| Las Vegas Moneymakers | 65 | 3 |
The GPL America’s version of most disappointing squad would have to be the San Francisco Rush. Manager Faraz Jaka put together what was expected to be a strong challenger to the Rounders with players such as Phil Galfond, Tony Gregg, Anton Wigg, Jonathan Jaffe and Kitty Kuo. Instead of challenging, however, the Rush have underperformed in the first half of the season and, with the Nationals almost 40 points in front of them for the conference title, they have to start looking at simply getting into the Top Four so they can make the playoffs.
The GPL will be taking next week off as players come to Las Vegas for the World Series of Poker, but the next big experiment for the burgeoning league is two weeks away. The “Summer Series” will begin on June 6 with live heads up play between the 12 teams in the GPL, starting with the Paris Aviators versus the L. A. Sunset in the first interconference battle between teams. From Mondays through Saturdays at 2PM (Pacific Time), two teams will have the live stage in Las Vegas as each team will play the six members from the opposite conference over the course of six weeks. It will be the next evolution of the Global Poker League as actual live play becomes a part of the show beginning on June 6.