Called It!: Lex Veldhuis Reads Victory in His Future Then Wins It

6 years ago
Called It!: Lex Veldhuis Reads Victory in His Future Then Wins It
11:41
24 Nov

On Thanksgiving, the day Americans remember the first day of the serial-genocide which would eventually create the Land of the Free and the Home of the Brave, there is a tradition to count one’s blessings.

In Lex Veldhuis case that meant counting them before they hatched. Veldhuis is himself a sort of settlor: a Dutch immigrant who came to Las Vegas to seek his fortune. He seems to have found it, with his  live tourney winnings alone standing at over $670,000, on top of that he has a popular Twitch stream and a contract as one of the PokerStars Pro.

So he has a lot to be thankful for. On Twitter he gave thanks for his victory in the $1,050 Thursday Thrill on Stars. Only thing was, he sent the tweet about 14 hours before his victory.


To The Soothsayer, The Spoils

The Thrill – a $1k buy-in bounty tourney – originally debuted in 2014 since when it has tended to get a few hundred entries week-on-week. There were 299 players at the start of yesterday’s event which made for a main prize pool of $149,500, with the same again tantalisingly pinned to the players as bounties.

Those bounties meant Veldhuis’ $28,465.94 prize was supplemented with another $27,535.17 in bounties. The bounties are so generous because of the progressive bounty system PokerStars use, where of each bounty you win half is added to the bounty on your head. So, the later in the tournament you get, the more thanks you get in cash for knocking a player out.


What This Means For The Future of Poker

Veldhuis has taken the self-styled nickname Razidamus in the aftermath of his sibylline display, but it remains to be predicted what the effect of his powers of prognostication be on the kind of draws he’ll chase. 

One thing is for sure, the fact that he’s a PokerStars Pro is gonna do nothing to dissuade the conspiracy theorists of the idea that online poker is rigged.


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Jon is a freelance writer and novelist who learned to play poker after watching Rounders in year 9. He has been giving away his beer money at cards ever since. Currently he is based in Bristol where he makes sporadic donations to the occasional live tournament or drunken late night Zoom session. He ...Read more

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