In the high-stakes version of Event #37 ($2,100 No Limit Hold’em) of the PokerStarsSpring Championship of Online Poker (SCOOP), longtime community member James P0KERPR033Campbell took second after a three-way deal, securing a $276,000 payday, his largest to date. Officially winning the tournament was fellow PocketFiver Jason JCarverSomerville, who walked away with $234,000. Campbell is our featured guest this week on the PocketFives.com Podcast.
It’s not every day that $276,000 falls into your lap, let alone just before the start of the annual World Series of Poker (WSOP). Every SCOOP winner we’ve talked to agrees that the confidence boost going forward is invaluable and Campbell is no exception: “It’s absolutely tremendous for my confidence. I’ve been struggling to start 2010 and have been on the biggest downswing of my life, so this, against top competition and that kind of field, [was huge]. It let me know I still had an idea what I was doing. I was feeling washed up there for a little while.”
How did Campbell right the ship after his struggles? He told the PocketFives.com Podcast that cutting back on volume played an important role: “On Sundays, I was playing upwards of 15 to 18 games at once and it was getting to be way too much. On the last couple of Sundays, I actually stopped registering at the start of the day for tournaments and slowly went through the day. That helped and I also started going over more hands.” He’s now truncated his volume to eight to ten games at once.
Over 900 players coughed up the $2,100 buy-in for the high-stakes SCOOP event and the final table came down to Somerville (pictured at left) and Campbell. On his heads-up competition, Campbell told the PocketFives.com Podcast, “I was fortunate enough to be separated from [Somerville] for most of the tournament. Going into the final two tables, both of us had a pretty good-sized chip lead. I was watching his table and he was really the table captain. Even at the final table, we tried to stay out of each other’s way. He’s a great player and I think he feels the same way about me.”
Kicking off next week from the Rio in Las Vegas is the 2010 WSOP. The cream of the crop in the poker world will be on-hand, including Campbell, who plans to arrive on Memorial Day weekend. He elaborated, “From that point, I’ll stay maybe a week or so. I’ll stay about 10 days and play in five to seven of the preliminary events. Then, I’ll come back for the Main Event.” The $10,000 buy-in feature tournament kicks off on July 5th with the first of four starting days.
Campbell has been a contributor to the online poker community since 2005. He’s a Monthly PLB and Triple Crown titleholder whose final table appearances include the Full Tilt Poker $1K Monday, PokerStars Sunday 500, and Full Tilt Friday Night Fight.
Campbell revealed the secrets to his consistency: “Dedicating yourself, going over hands, and not letting the game pass you by. You see so many players that used to be the cream of the crop that you don’t even see anymore. The younger kids especially are getting so good and the game is constantly evolving, so you have to stay on top of that.” Campbell cashed in the 2007 and 2009 WSOP Main Events for nearly $50,000 total.
Some in the online poker community have speculated that the three-way deal that ended matters in the SCOOP event was due to the tournament dragging on well into the next day. However, Campbell noted that fatigue was not a factor: “The reason for the deal is because I really respected JCarver’s game. I think he’s a great player. We were deep, but tiredness was not a factor at all. Once there were about 20 people left, my adrenaline kicked in. I didn’t end up falling asleep until about 11:00 the next morning, two hours after the tournament ended, because the adrenaline was still going and I was still fired up.”
Check out the rest of this week’s PocketFives.com Podcast.