Player Update: beL0WaB0Ve

“Poker was finally fun to play. For the last seven months, it took on more of a job role rather than a hobby. Poker is my job, but working can be fun. It feels like a hobby when you are enjoying yourself.”

This is Kevin ‘beL0WaB0Ve’ Saul describing his poker form in 2008: but after you’ve had an August like he put together then it’s no wonder that he is enjoying himself.

Of course, Saul is an MTT legend who has been dominating the toughest fields in the world for over 3 years – and in July 2007 defeated Mike Matusow to take down the WPT Bellagio Cup for over $1.3million.

Though the Illinois native doesn’t put in the volume he used to online, he has still managed a year that most professionals could only dream of. In August 2008 ‘beL0WaB0Ve’ created poker history by winning the Pocket Fives monthly leaderboard race with a points tally of 4,402: the highest in the history of the site and nearly 40% clear of his nearest challenger, Chris Moorman. (See his interview here). In just 31 days, he took down nearly $500,000 of tournament prizes; we will list his biggest scores here to give you an idea of the sort of heater this guy is on.

On the 8th he took down the PokerStars $100 Re-Buys for $33,193 and just 3 days later won the Full Tilt $40k GTD for a further $15,938 to kick off the month on fire. Then the FTOPS came around and ‘GetPWN3D’ (as he is known on FT) wasn’t going to miss out. Just 24 hours after taking down that $40k GTD he final tabled Event #12 (the $1,000 NLH), eventually busting in 4th for his highest online cash to date of $105,000 (Ram Vaswani & Phil Gordon were also on the final table). But 48 hours later he would even top that and finished runner-up in Event #17 ($300 Re-Buys) for $167,843 to earn himself two 6-figure scores in just 2 days! (The latter was a very tough final table with the likes of IWEARGOGGLES & eisenhower1 also present).

The online community had taken notice that Saul was back in a big way and he wasn’t even done there: a week later (21st) he was to final table the PokerStars Wednesday Quarter Million (4th, $18,750) before taking down the FT $100 Re-Buys on the very same night for $34,650! By now he was cruising to the monthly title and just for good measure he took down the Stars Nightly Seventy Grand for $12,780 on the 27th before finishing runner-up in the $100 Re-Buys just 24 hours later for a further $21,018.

At 28 years old, Saul is a relative veteran of the MTT circuit but having put together surely the greatest month in the history of MTTs, he is clearly still among the very best. His red hot championship form has continued since then, final tabling September’s WCOOP Event #13 ($200 Re-Buys, 6th, $48,586) & made a deep run in November’s FTOPS $5,000 NLH, busting in 11th for $33,750. A welcomed return to the P5’s top 10 was in order and it’s hard to see when this heater is going to end at present: wp, beL0WaB0Ve.