Today in the Daily 3-Bet we learn the poker talent in the Gold family runs to the top, find math geniuses playing poker for credit at MIT and tip our hats to Kevmath for a nice run in Australia.

1) Jamie Gold’s Mom Coming to Get Him

Jane Gold fan.

 

Jane Gold, mom of 2006 World Series of Poker Main Event champion Jamie Gold, has earned the family a new poker title as she took down the Borgata Winter Poker Open Ladies’ Event this past weekend.

With over 100 runners and a $400 buy-in, Mom’s take for the win was just over $10k. Not $12 million, but a very nice score in its own right.

Said Gold to Borgata bloggers on the scene:

“Look out Jamie Gold, mama’s coming to get you.”

A staple in the WSOP main event since 2007, even outlasting her son on at least one occassion, Jane Gold is known as a keen poker player and the reason son Jamie got into poker.

More details on the ladies event from Philadelphia-based gambling blog Philly Gambles here.

More on Jamie’s current gig as ambassador for the Tropicana Poker Room here.

2) Grind Online Poker for Credit at MIT

As if poker games aren’t already tough enough, 200 more math geniuses from MIT are about to get into the mix.

A course at MIT taught by Ph.D student Will Ma (former Grand Prix de Paris winner with $1.7 million in online cashes) is now up and running and so popular they had to move to a bigger classroom to accommodate it. 

It's an introductory course, but it’s also a bit more advanced than your usual beginner poker strategy.

Course topics include preflop ranges, polarization, bet sizing, implied odds, reverse implied odds, flop analysis, credible bluffs, thin value, folding good hands, slow-playing, river odds, ICM theory, faults of Nash Equilibrium, decisions vs. results, statistics and variance and risk management.

Course work is to play in a private home league on PokerStars and to pass you need to earn 10 points playing online poker tournaments.

Check the rest of the syllabus here.

Lectures are online (first one below) if you want to pretend your grades were good enough to get you into MIT.

We lasted seven minutes before it got over our heads.

3) Kevmath Makes Final Table in Aussie Millions $550 Terminator

Nubs for Kevmath.

 

Last but definitely not least in today's 3-Bet we send congrats out to everyone's favorite poker media icon Kevin "Kevmath" Mathers.

Mathers has been on the scene live in Melbourne covering the Aussie Millions but managed to find some time to play in the $550 Terminator event.

Playing against some stiff competition, Kevmath was on the short stack for a long time but still managed to make the final table.

He ended up cashing in sixth-place for for $6,055 when his A9 couldn't hold against K8.

As expected, he handled his exit like a pro, tweeting:

"Out in 6th for 6055, k8 <a9, guy hits 8 on river. Certainly can't complain after being so short forever."

How's he going to spend it?

"Figured out the first thing I'm doing with my winnings, laundry at the Crown!"

Hat tip to Kevmath. Couldn't have happened to a nicer guy.

Follow him on Twitter here.

Pateychuk adds €468,200 to his cash total to push him upwards of $2 million for the past five months alone. With a WPT and EPT title under his belt, he's also now just a WSOP bracelet short of poker's triple crown.

Without a doubt, Pateychuk has had to hit some cards at opportune times to make it happen.

He rode a sick beat to his EPT title back in October and had to find the same run-good magic in Prague to save himself heads-up against Balaguer.

Down 15.6 million to 1.5 million in the chip counts, it looked all but over.

Pateychuk shoved the last of his chips in holding K♠ J♣, but Balaguer made a light call with T♦ 9♠ and the K-J held for the double up.

The very next hand Pateychuk picked up A-K, doubled through Balaguer’s A-Q and the game was on again.

It took another couple of hours of back-and-forth heads-up play and some more run-good for the tourney to be decided however.

On the final hand, Pateychuk raised to 600,000 and Balaguer moved all-in for his last 4 million.

Pateychuk called with A♥ 5♠ only to find Balaguer flip over pocket queens.

Still, Pateychuk couldn’t be beat. A four on the flop plus a running 3-2 finish gave him the wheel and the victory.

Disappointed as he must be, Balaguer still earns an impressive $320,381 for his runner-up finish.

An Epic Final Table

All told the final table took over 10 hours to play out at the Kings Casino in Prague today.

Short-stack Russell Carson, Norwegian Sigurd Eskelund and Frenchman Benjamin Pollak went out in sixth, fifth and fourth respectively.

Chip leader coming into the day, Stanislaw Kretz, busted in third.

The final six and their payouts, courtesy of wpt.com:

For a full recap of all the day's action, check the WPT live updates pages.

Check out the winner's interview with Pateychuk below:

Bonus Prague Coverage: the Jungleman Cash Game

As an added bonus WPT Live Streaming will also be broadcasting the Dan "Jungleman12" Cates High-Stakes Cash Game live from the Corinthian Towers casino starting at 10:30am ET tomorrow.

Expected to play in the game are Cates, Luke "FullFlush_1" Schwartz, high-roller specialist Phillip Gruissem and more.

Check out the live feed here.

It has been quite the rise to poker prominence for Staszko, who did not take up the game until 2007.  His first live tournament cash came in January 2010 when he bubbled the final table of the EPT Deauville Main Event, placing 11th for almost $50,000.  He followed that up with a 10th place finish in August at the Unibet Open ($10,813), but did not record another cash until this summer.  He had four small cashes at the World Series of Poker, but of course he forced his way into the consciousness of the poker community with his final table run in the Main Event, where he won $5.4 million.

Staszko was the short stack to start the second day of the Main Event final table, behind eventual winner Pius Heinz and Ben Lamb, but he won the first four hands, including a knockout of Lamb, to take the chip lead going into heads-up play.

At 35-years old, Staszko is no geezer by any means, but compared to most of the young players at the final table, he looked ancient.  That, combined with his less-than-polished personal sense of style and his stoicism at the table, made him initially feel like the “villain” to many watching.  It became apparent as he got more television time, however, that not only was he very nice guy and far from a villain, but he was also one hell of a poker player.

Despite going into the second day of the final table as the short stack, he entered the first day as the chip leader.  By the end of the day, his chip stack basically stayed in place, mainly because he was one of the tightest players at the table.  Going into Day 2, many poker fans felt that the aggressive Heinz and the 2011 WSOP Player of the Year Lamb would run Staszko over, and while he did show his tightness throughout the night, he was able to take advantage of Heinz’s aggression to the point where the eventual champ looked visibly frustrated.  Of course, Staszko wasn’t able to grab the bracelet, but on the whole, he arguably outplayed Heinz.

“I’m really happy to sign for PokerStars and join such a talented team of poker players,” Staszko told the PokerStars blog.  “I’m playing in my home country at EPT Prague as a Team PokerStars Pro and looking forward to playing many big live and online tournaments in 2012 like the PCA and WCOOP.

“My main focus is to win a mixed game event at the next WSOP, becoming the first Czech player to win a bracelet.”

Though Trickett began the final table with the chip lead and started the final day atop the standings as well, the tide had turned a bit and he began heads-up play against Salman Behbehani facing a 2-to-1 chip deficit.  As those who watched the World Series of Poker Main Event final table well know, the chip lead can flip in an instant, and it was no different this time.  Trickett persevered and made his comeback to win the million Euro first prize.  Behbehani had to “settle” for a mere 600,000 Euros.  The rest of the members of the final table all cashed in the six-figures.

Trickett has had a fantastic 2011.  It was actually all downhill since January until now, but that’s just because Trickett started out the year almost impossibly hot.  First, he won the A$100,000 No-Limit Hold’em (yes, that’s $100,000) event at the Aussie Millions for A$1,525,000.  He followed that up less than a week later with a runner-up finish in the A$250,000 Super High Roller No-Limit Hold’em event, scoring A$1,400,000.  He had a few five-figure cashes the rest of the year through the summer, including an 11th place finish in the first event of the Epic Poker League and then picked it up another notch this fall.  After qualifying for the Patrouche Poker Tour Main Event in September, Trickett final tabled the £20,000 High Roller Event of the European Poker Tour London stop (£68,800/$107,534) and placed fourth in the €5,000 Pot-Limit Omaha event of the World Series of Poker Europe (€77,642/$103,719).

Trickett’s recent dual final table runs contributed in large part to his cracking ESPN.com’s “The Nuts” power rankings of the best poker players of the moment.  He entered the latest poll at number ten, though many still don’t think he is getting the credit he deserves.

For the year, Trickett has now won over $4.2 million (monetary figures converted to U.S. Dollars from Euros and British Pounds) on the live tournament circuit, bringing his lifetime earnings to just about $6 million.  He ranks fifth on the overall 2011 money list, behind World Series of Poker Player of the Year Ben Lamb ($5,352,970), WSOP Main Event runner-up Martin Staszko ($5,462,876), Erik Seidel, who beat Trickett heads-up in the Aussie Millions Super High Roller event ($6,530,154), and WSOP Main Event champion Pius Heinz ($8,823,794).

2011 Partouche Poker Tour Final Table Results

1. Sam Trickett — €1,000,000
2. Salman Behbehani — €600,000
3. Oleksii Kovalchuk — €379,760
4. Ilan Boujenah — €300,000
5. Roger Hairabedian — €230,000
6. Alexander Dovzhenko — €190,000
7. Mustapha Kanit — €160,000
8. Alexandre Coussy — €130,000
9. Mads Wissing — €100,000