Van Til's Long Overdue
Johan van Til has been one of the biggest online pros from the Netherlands for many years, and if you would ask any poker fan in that country they would all say the man from Groningen is long overdue a big live score.
Van Til recorded his first live tournament cash at the 2008 PokerStars Caribbean Adventure followed by a big slate of final-two table finishes in big events like the WPT Championship, EPT Copenhagen, Bellagio Cup and EPT Tallinn. In total Van Til has cashed $289,219 in live tournaments, but across Full Tilt and PokerStars the man known as busto_soon has racked up just shy of $5.5 million in cashes. This makes Van Til the highest grossing Dutch online MTT player, but everyone's still waiting for him to take down an EPT, WPT or WSOP event.
When we found Van Til he had about 46,000 chips out in front of him, but two hands later things looked a lot different for the Dutchman. First Istvan Birizdo raised to 500 and Van Til called from the small blind. The flop brought out 
and Van Til check-called 600.
On the turn the 
hit and this time Van Til check-called 1,075. The river completed the board with the 
and Van Til opted to fold when Birizdo bet another 3,000. Two hands later Oleg Vasylchenko raised it up to 500 from middle position and Van Til three-bet to 1,200 from the cutoff.
The action folded back to Vasylchenko and he four-bet to 3,300. Van Til picked up even more chips and five-bet to 7,000 and Vasylchenko made the call.
The flop brought out 
and Van Til checked behind when Vasylchenko tapped the table. On the turn the 
hit and Vasylchenko bet 6,500, which was called by Van Til. The river completed the board with the 
. Vasylchenko now bet 5,000 and Van Til tanked for a solid minute before letting go of his hand.
Van Til dropped to 22,000 and he's looking to build his stack back up after taking two hits. His first big live tournament victory is still very far away.
| Player | Chips | Progress |
|---|---|---|
|
22,000 |