Starting on June 1st the winner of the EMOP Gran Canaries in January, Maciej Lipny from Poland will be joining Potraiser Pro Team.
24 year old Maciej Lipny now joins Krzysztof Grubka as the second Polish player in the team.

Maciej is one of the guys who really started his poker careerer from nothing. In July 2007 he entered a poker quiz on a poker site, and won his first $30.
In just a few months he had transformed the $30 to a couple of thousand, and he hasn’t looked back since then.
Today you can meet him on the shorthanded tables at Potraiser under the nick Yeahbunny*, mainly on NL400 but often higher up to NL1000.

Maciejs dream came true when he went on his first tournament of the European Masters of Poker in Gran Canaries. He eliminated all other players with interesting aggressive play and finally won the tournament, and took home €66.000.

Team Manager Albert Rolander says:
-I first noticed Maciej at EMOP in Gran Canaries, where he obviously was successful. Since Potraiser wants to grow in other markets than Scandinavia, we think it’s really good that we now have recruited one of the most talented players from Poland
And then our second signing.
Potraiser and JP.Heimonen have reach an understanding that put JP. in action in the Potraiser clothes already at European Masters of Poker in Campione this upcoming weekend.

25 year old JP. Heimonen is maybe more know for his online alias Jheimon that has been a constant force at the cashgames tables on Entraction.
Heimonen himself describes himself as a player with a different, game centric approach to 6 max cash games, and is one of the biggest winners at NL200 at Entraction. JP. will be playing at Potraiser under the nick: TAKE_MANEY

JP. Heimonen has already made some results in live eventas as well, with the final table apperances at Helsinki Midnight Sun in June 2009, and Finnish Open Championship of Poker in August of 2009.

CEO, Fredrik Rahnasto comments:
- JP. Heimonen is a really good ambassador for Potraiser. We are very glad to have such a player to represent us in Finland, since Finland is allready one of our most important markets.

Maciej Lipny                             JP. Heimonen
Look out ont this site by the weekend, there will be updates regarding JP, and also how all the rest of the team will be doing in EMOP Italy.Bye for now

Team Manager, “Ekolod1″

Our Very own ProTeam player Jens Lindbladh has been recruited as an video instructor by the site called pokercampus.se

At www.pokercampus.se you can watch several good players making instruction videos of their play.
A few videos are free to watch, and other recuire a membership.

Jens “donkykIonk” Lindbladh

Jens is one of the best low/midstakes players at Entraction at 6 max tables.
Regarding the video Jens says:
In this video I show some of my tips on how to take advantage of tight grinders with loose aggressive play, and how to use Holdem Manager in practice while playing.

The Video is in Swedish and can be wiewed here

Team Potraiser sent 5 players to participate in the Paradise Poker Tour in Madrid.
The players representing Potraiser this time were Steffen Uldahl Nielsen, Henrik Kask, Isac Berglund, Albert Rolander and finally Ida Lundholm who was to make her debut as a teamplayer.
Also joining us for this trip was Henrik Torstensson, who was the winner of our VIP2000 tourney in April and won this package.

The team wandering around in Madrid

Unfortunatelly the tourney was not one of the ProTeams best performances, as all 5 player were knocked out during day1.
It was a well organized tourney at a nice venue (Gran Casino Madrid), and the organizers managed to assemble a field of 251 players who put up the entry fee of €550.

We will be returning to the casino today to try our luck at the cashgames tables instead.
One really funny thing here in Madrid is that cashgames poker is played counter clockwise, but tournament poker is played the regular way.
I asked the poker room manager why this is so, and got the response “this is Spain”.

For the first time I have also made a short videoblog of some of the things happening during this weekend.
Check it out under our new video page at the ProTeam page here

Potraiser has recruited Ida Lundholm to the ProTeam.

Ida is a 26 year old girl that has played a long time at Potraiser online, and really done well.
Online she mostly plays Omaha nowadays under the nick AILL at Potraiser.
Ida has played some liveevents and has cashed in sideevents to the EPT and the CPC.
Online she has a lot of tournament wins, with the biggest being the 150K guarantee on Microgaming.

Ida has played poker since 2004, and before she decided to play poker full time she had her own clothing store.
Ida comes from Kalix in the very north of Sweden, and has lived in London for a while before moving back to
Sweden about 2 years ago.

Team Manager Albert Rolander says:
- I think Ida will be a really interesting addition to our team, as she fits perfectly in to the group, and has shown me that she will be a force to be reckoned with at the pokertables.

CEO, Fredrik Rahnasto says:
- It was about time that we at Potraiser once more get a girl in our team. We really want to be a site for all players, and with Ida in the team we once again show that we give chances to those that play on our site, and prove themself to be good.

Idas first apperance as a team pro will be in Madrid in the beginning of May, when Team Potraiser will have their next team trip.

Ida “AILL” Lundholm

Team Potraiser participated in the European Masters of Poker in Lisbon last week.
10 players from the ProTeam participated and those players were:
Simba84, ChilledOne, JustFold, Ekolod1, uldahl, Luxxxing, donkykIonk, ihave0uts, Zuberr and ullis14.

This was not the most successful tourney from the team, as 9 out of 10 didn’t survive to play day2.
Through to day2 was Lukas “ChilleOne” Bäumer, who once again did a good result when finishing just in the money in 45th place.
Lukas took home €1970 for this, and at least the team had an ITM finish this time as well.
Other bright spots was the Potraiser player St@ke_me who finished 12th for €5.516, as well as his buddy Henrik Torstensson who took home third place for a nice payout of €34.672.

The tourney was held at Casino Estoril, a really nice and big casino. Unfortunately the organizers banned all kinds of promotions such as roll-ups and flyers etc. Photography was also prohibited, so I can’t serve you with any pictures from the casino unfortunately.
I can tell you that the tourney attracted 393 players with a buy-in of €1100. This created a prizepool of close to €400.000.
The tourney was won by Timothy Timotheou from Great Britain who took home a first prize of €88.680

Team Potraiser will now be going to Madrid in the beginning of May as our next team event, and we definitely have hopes for improvement in this tourney as well as we hope to meet some good present players of Potraiser as well as all future ones.

Some pictures from Estoril:

Team dinner before day1A

A hopefull Potraiser CEO before the start of the tourney

Potraiser player Ida Lundholm before day 1B

On march 13-14 team Potraiser visited the PAF/Sviten Springcruise with a team of 4 players.

Representing Potraiser in this tourney was Potit, Gnaget8888, verdict, and team manager Ekolod1.

Starting stacks were 15K, with 30 minute levels.
The tourney started out great for Ekolod1, who really dominated his table and was up to around 70K in level 5.
Also Gnaget8888 ha a good start, and took the lead at his table as well.

Potit and verdict had a difficult day on day 1 and never really got things working their way, but fought good untill the field was down to the last 45 players when they both got knocked out.

Ekolod1 finished day 1 with 38K in chips, after a rough last halfhour, and Gnaget8888 finished day 1 with 48K.
37 players survived day 1.

On day 2 Ekolod1 again started to build his stack up to 60K, when he lost a big 35K pot with KK against AK all in pre.
He then managed to build it up again, and the final table was approaching.

Gnaget8888 was playing solid poker all day, and building his stack slow and steady.
With 11 people left in the tourney the 2 Potraiser players were seated next to eachother on one of the remaining 2 tables playing 5 handed.

Both of the players had good chipstacks with around 140K, with an average of 85K, when the final table bubble bursted.
Unfortunately it was Ekolod1 who went out on the bubble in a monster 300K pot when he raised A 9 and got one caller.
The flop was 9 8 4, with 2 diamonds.
Ekolod1 elected to checkraise all-in on this flop and was called after about 4 minutes of deliberation time by his opponent holding QQ.

On the final table Gnaget8888 kept on playing solid poker, and was called by the gentleman who eventually won the tourney when he reraised all-in for 116K holding A 3 against the first raise of 32K from the mentioned gentleman who called with AJ that held up.

Gnaget8888 took down 6th place for a payout of €1200.
All in all a good performance by the team, and yet another final table for a Potraiser player.

Stefan “Gnaget8888″ Dufva at final table

Potraiser is now broadening their ProTeam with yet another team member from Central Europe,

Potraiser recently signed Krzysztof Grubka of Poland, and now recruits one of the most interesting new names from Germany.
19 year old Lukas Bäumer from Tecklenburg in Germany joins Potraiser ProTeam.

Lukas “ChilledOne” Bäumer

Lukas Bäumer might still be more well known for his online alias” Ch1ll3d” that have been a constant force at the online tables the last couple of years.
Lukas has final tabled the Sunday Million as well as the Sunday 500, he first tried playing live tournaments in August of 2009 and the results came pretty fast.

He also won the £500 event of European Championship in London, and grabbed 4th place at the final of European Masters of Poker on Malta.
In less than 6 months he’s made more than $65000 in live tournament winnings, a quite impressive record indeed. Lukas is also an entrepreneur
within the poker industry as he is a driving force behind the instruction video site SitnPoker.com, where he also functions as an instructor.
Lukas plays at Potraiser.com under the nick:”ChilledOne”.

Team Manager, Albert Rolander:
“Lukas is a really nice guy, who we believe a lot in. My opinion is that he will fit well into the team, and even though he’s young we think he brings a lot
of experience to the team”

CEO, Fredrik Rahnasto:
“It feels really nice that we have managed to tie one of Europe’s biggest talents to Potraiser, and we can’t imaginea better ambassador for us on
the German market.”

Lukas made an impressive start a a ProTeam player when he cashed for €1000 in his very first apperance when the team played the tourney in
Prague this weekend.

The day has started good for our new player ChilledOne, who started the day with a short stack of 46K.
Allready in the first round he got it all in with AQ against JJ, and the ace was already in the doorcard for a nice double up to 105K.

So he’s was back in it for real with an average stack when there was 25 players left.

“ChilledOne”

As play continued he lost a big part of his stack when he got trips at the river against a player who already had a straight on the turn.
He was knocked out in 20th place when he ran in to the AA of seasoned pro JJ Hazan.
Team Potraiser congratulates him to the €1008 he got out of the prizepool on his very first tournament as a ProTeam player.

Here are some pictures from the tournament.

Simba84, uldahl and Ivar44 playing China poker.

Tournament area in day 2 of the Prague event

Jens “donkykIonk” Lindbladh

Gusten “Simba84″ Sjöberg

Mattias “Ivar44″ Bengtsson

Steffen “uldahl” Nielsen

Here in Prague Potraiser ProTeam was of to a promising start in this €550 tourney that had attracted 252 entrants.
The following players entered the tourney Simba84, Ekolod1, Luxxxing, uldahl, donkykIonk, Ivar44 and our new teammember ChilledOne (who will be presented in a separate blog soon).

Luxxxing and Simba84 had a cold tourney this time and were eliminated quite early, and Team Manager Ekolod1 went out in place 90.

The rest of our players was still in with 50 players left and things looked really good.
Then came a disaterous 30 minutes when uldahl first was knocked out in 48th place, and Ivar44 in place 42 and donkykIonk in 39th.

Still going strong is ChilledOne, who made it to day 2 when play ended for the day with 27 players left. He has a stack of 46K and will be looking for a double up tomorrow.
Tune in tomorrow to see how he ends up in this tourney and a presentation of him.

over and out for now………..

Potraiser Pro Team is currently in Prague to play a tournament there. The first day is played today and updates of how it is going will be posted here. Good Luck, guys.