Marcelo Simoes Mesqueu: The New Big Poker Star

May 18, 2022May 18, 2022 Alex

playing cards

The poker world just got a new champion and his name is Marcelo Simoes Mesqueu! The Brazilian player startled everyone when he won the Main Event of the European PokerStars Poker Tour (EPT) on 9 May 2022. He is the first Brazilian player to hold that title despite many other admirable players from his country in the past.

In this article, we’ll tell you more about Marcelo Simoes Mesqueu, such as his road to becoming an international poker star, as well as some more about the tournament he deservingly won.

Marcelo Simoes Mesqueu: Poker Career

Marcelo Simoes Mesqueu hails from Rio De Janeiro, Brazil and he has been slowly gaining fame back home.

By looking at his player stats, which follow his participation in acclaimed poker tournaments, one can see that he was destined for greatness. After all, he won first place in R$ 520 + 80 Pot Limit Omaha at his third official tournament, the Brazilian Series of Poker (BSOP) in July 2010.

Four years later, he won his first major game, $5,000 + 300 No Limit Hold’em – Six Max, at PokerStars Caribbean Adventure, with the prize money numbering over $40,000. Perhaps this win inspired him to enlist in more competitions than previously and he soon became a rather prolific poker player.

Still, most of the poker tournaments he took part though were in Brazil or other South American countries. However, it was probably a good idea to gain some experience locally before moving on the big scene. Mesqueu is currently occupying the second place on the Brazilian leader board, having previously won the Brazilian Series of Poker in 2019.

The European PokerStars Poker Tour

The European PokerStars Poker Tour took place in the iconic Monte Carlo Casino, which surely made participants feel like James Bond. The tournament started on 28 April and it lasted until last weekend – 7 May.

The famous tournament returned after a three-year-long hiatus due to the Covid-19 pandemic and it came back with a bang. The first event, the €1100 buy-in, attracted 1,918 entries, which is a record number (a growth of 35% since the last one in 2019). It seems like players really missed the prestigious poker tournament.

The Grand Finale of the Main Event

Mesqueu was already a poker talent to be reckoned with, considering his place on the Brazilian leader board and participation in other PokerStars tournaments in South America, but it could be said that his eventual win was not expected by the European poker industry.

By the end of the tournament, there were six players leading the board – Marcelo Simoes Mesqueu (Brazil), Jaime Cervantes (USA), Dragos Trofimov (Moldova), Morten Hvam (Denmark), Hugo Pingray (France), and Erkan Soemnez (Germany). Mesqueu was arguably a clear winner from the start.

Not only did he keep his cool and made good decisions during his play, but once he realised his apparent lead, his playstyle became much more aggressive in a way to double-down and perhaps catch his opponents off guard.

When asked about Brazilian football legend Neymar (who’s also PokerStars ambassador) after the game, Mesqueu confirmed he was channelling his inner Neymar by attacking relentlessly, hoping for his opponents to make a mistake.

At the second showdown between the six leading players, Mesqueu eliminated Soemnez with five-trey against the German’s ace-deuce. He then proceeded to do the same to French-born Pingray with a king-nine. Dane Hvam eliminated Cervantes, and then finally Trofimov left the game, thus missing the EPT Main Event final, a would-be first event for Moldova.

Mesqueu then faced Hvam in a battle for the title. Hvam had managed to catch up to Mesqueu, but the Brazilian never lost the lead. Ultimately, Hvam risked everything with a gutshot in a three-bet pocket, but Mesqueu’s pocket kings prevailed and he was crowned the winner of the EPT Main Event.

Mesqueu was ecstatic and we can certainly understand why. He topped 1,073 entries in the 2022 EPT Monte Carlo €5,300 Main Event. Mesqueu ended up winning €939,840 in prize money, the biggest winning in his career and the biggest prize for the tournament due to the record numbers of entries that year.

Mesqueu thanked his family for the support, as well as his home country. He shared how many Brazilians from all over the world contacted him to congratulate him. He was overjoyed by the fact that his name would be in the poker history books as he is the first Brazilian to win an EPT title of such magnitude.

All we can say is good job, Mesqueu!

Top 10 Casino Sites for Underdogs

January 19, 2017September 4, 2024 Alex

If there’s one thing that’s an absolute certainty in the online casino world, it’s that if you live in the right country, there’s more than enough online casinos to go around, way more than you could possibly want or need. They spring up like mayflowers, popping up literally everywhere practically at a glance even if you’ve never asked for them… Actually, is that what mayflowers do? I may have the wrong metaphor here, and I’m too lazy to look it up. My point is that while quite a lot of sites online are trying to convince you that you must absolutely join THIS ONE SINGLE VERY PARTICULAR CASINO SITE BECAUSE LITERALLY EVERYTHING ELSE EVER IS BAD, obviously that’s not at all the case, and also protip, most sites that just recommend a single online casino are just advertising it and not giving you an honest opinion. The real articles are easy to tell because they provide you with a choice, which is what you need. Out of the dozens upon dozens of options available to you, which ones are the best as far as underdogs are concerned?

Earlier on this blog, I’ve used the term “underdog” to refer to literally all gamblers, because the odds are never stacked in our favor, and I still stand by that definition. However, in this particular article, I’d like to use the term just a bit more literally, by defining through it a person who is at a disadvantage, someone who lacks the opportunities of their peers. In this context, I would assume that the underdogs of the online casino world are those that can’t afford to high roll, who need to take advantage of generous offers, who need a good variety of games because they can’t spend their nights betting hundreds on Blackjack every Saturday. I was looking for casinos that would be useful to the types of people that online casinos generally don’t care all that much about, the folks that want to play, but want to play smart without losing their house along the way.

I have to admit, it wasn’t easy to find even one casino that met my criteria, let alone ten. However, I was pleasantly surprised to discover others who shared my sentiments. The best example I could find is https://www.bestcasinosites.net/. They have a great list of the top 10 casino sites that I could absolutely get behind 100%, and I say that without a hint of bias. Their ranking is based on user ratings rather than stuff such as the limits of the live French roulette table, so literally the only thing that determines whether Casino A is higher than Casino B is how many underdogs like you and me liked it. And at the end of the day, I don’t think we could be asking for anything more when narrowing down the choices.

An Underdog Case Study – Phil Ivey

January 4, 2017January 5, 2017 Alex

In my first blog post, I shared my theory about casino players being underdogs. That’s so simply because the house always has an edge over the players, even if that edge is quite insignificant at certain games, such as some blackjack variations, but we’ll talk about that in detail some other time.

face However, you shouldn’t play the victim and just give up on trying to improve your conditions as a player. It’s not only you that gets exploited by the casino system. We’re all in the same boat but some are using whatever they can find to paddle and others are just throwing money into the ocean trying to build a bridge.

There are, actually, some celebrity underdogs. Have you heard of Phil Ivey? You probably know him as one of the greatest pro poker players of all times. Lately, however, he’s been in the news with two lawsuits. It turns out that in 2012, Ivey and his casino partner Cheng Yin Sun noticed a defect in a certain brand of cards and exploited that in a few sessions of baccarat at two casinos – the Crockfords Club in Mayfair in London and the Borgata in Atlantic City. As a result, the players won £7.7m in London and $10.1m in Atlantic City.

Two years later, in 2014, both casinos filed similar lawsuits, claiming Ivey had cheated and won by using “edge sorting”. The Borgata management went so far as to claim they were a victim because they had agreed to 5 unusual requests, such as to turn the cards 180 degrees, because they trusted Ivey. The Borgata representatives accused Ivey of getting an advantage over the house.

Imagine one of the most powerful casinos in the world, a gaming landmark, claiming they were too naïve and were fooled by a single player into giving him over 10 million dollars. And all that when “edge sorting” is not illegal in the first place! And what a double standard! Casinos all over the world take millions out of players by the minute, using their advantage over the players, which is ingrained in the game rules, but when a player uses his cunning and skills to gain advantage, he’s a villain.

poker2 Ivey never got the money from Crockfords Club and was recently ordered by a federal judge to return the money he’d won from the Borgata. While, at the same time, I’m pretty sure, a lawsuit with the roles exchanged would have simply been dismissed and laughed at. The fact that Ivey is a public person makes it even better for the casino industry to turn him into an example of what happens when you mess with casinos.

Actually, the casino conspiracy, though it’s no conspiracy really as it’s put there in plain English even if it comes in fine print, is that no one can beat the house, less so hope to do so all the time. If I may paraphrase the quote often wrongfully attributed to Abraham Lincoln, “You can fool all of the people some of the time and some of the people all of the time, but you cannot fool all of the people all of the time”, it would go something like this: You can win at some casino games some of the time but you cannot win at any of them all of the time.

The Underdogs: All about Games and Online Playing

December 14, 2016January 5, 2017 Alex

I’m an underdog. You’re an underdog, too. In the world of casino games, we are all underdogs. Why, you might ask. Well, let me explain.

win Let’s first look at the word “underdog”. The Free Dictionary defines it as “one that is expected to lose a contest or struggle” or “one that is at a disadvantage”. Now, let’s turn to the world of casino games. No matter if we’re talking about online casinos or the land-based ones, the player is always the one more likely to lose. You could say that the player is an underdog. Casino games have varying degrees of house edge but still the casino advantage is present in each and every one of them. So, no matter how good you might be at a certain game, you’re more likely to lose than to win in the long run.

Then, what? Should we sit around and wait for casinos to take our hard-earned cash just like that? Or maybe we should give up playing games entirely? Knowing how much pleasure and profit online gaming could bring, I would be the last one to discourage anyone from gaming. But I wouldn’t advise you to just play the sitting duck, either.

What do I propose? Come join the Underdog Gang! I’ll be your Top UnderDog leading you, underdogs, to victory. I’ll show you how to bring the house down, to turn the tables in your favour and to beat the dealer. I’ll teach you whatever tricks I’ve learnt through the years of playing at online and land-based casinos. And what’s the best thing? You’ll get it all for free. Yes, sometimes the best things in life are, indeed, free. What’s the catch? There’s no catch. Just sit patiently because I’ll be doing this good deed in my spare time. I can’t quit my day job, you know.