With the expanding team of streamers on Team RIU and the addition of RIU 247, sometimes there’s just too much content for you to consume. We’re here to help you out with our weekly installments of ‘Up and Running’.
‘Up and Running’ will serve as a way to catch you up on all of the action on Twitch by the Team RIU pros from the previous week.
There was plenty of action on the Twitch poker streets through the first week of October. Team Run It Up streamers put out tons of content and made a few deep runs to start the month, but the highlight of the week’s action came away from the virtual felt.
Lex Veldhuis streamed four times in the first week of the month and racked up a bunch of cashes. On Sunday, his fourth and final stream, he announced the winner of his Platinum Pass Adventure.
For Veldhuis, his dedication to his stream comes from both a love of poker and a love of the Twitch community formed around his stream. With that in mind, he decided that his giveaway would reward people who paid it forward and helped other people or other communities.
The winner of the #PSPCitFWD contest would have to spend 20 hours helping others and document it along the way. Ben Alvarado won the $30,000 package after his video submission was picked by three of the five judges.
Velduis isn’t the only Team RIU streamer awarding a platinum pass. Jeff Gross and Andrew Neeme teamed up to award one too with their #VloggerInParadise competition. They announced their winner yesterday, but with a slight twist. PokerStars decided to add a second platinum pass to their competition, which gave two lucky up-and-coming vloggers a chance to play the event. There are also a couple ways to take home Platinum Passes at Run It Up Reno later this month.
As for the actual poker played by Veldhuis, he put up a solid week. On Tuesday, he final tabled the $44 turbo six-max event and won a $27 pot-limit Omaha event on the same day.
He cashed in seven more events on Wednesday, found himself in the money in nine more on Thursday and finished the week on Sunday with eight cashes, including a min-cash in the Sunday Million.
Jaime Staples tied Veldhuis for the team lead in streams for the week, also putting on four streams. His first two streams were somewhat uneventful, but on Saturday, he gave his viewers something exciting to watch by entering the Daily 500.
The title of the day’s stream, ‘Daily 500 Misclick LUL,’ lets you know exactly how it went for him. Unfortunately, Staples misclicked in a key pot in one of the biggest buy-ins on PokerStars’ regular tournament schedule to leave him fairly short.
He ran his stack back up, but somewhat of a cooler, and an unfortunate runout sent him to the rail shy of the money.
Staples made a deep run in the $55 Bounty Builder, however, which saved his day and secured a breakeven session.
Bounty Builders are going to be a bigger part of Staples’ streams in the immediate future, since he finished the week on Sunday with a few shots at the Bounty Builder Series, that started on Sunday.
He missed the money in the first event of the BBS, but found himself in the money of the second BBS event that ran that day.
Ben ‘Spraggy’ Spragg was also grinding Bounty Builder events on Sunday as well. In what was the third and final stream of the week, he made a deep run in the $109 BBS event. He cashed for a profit of $1,053, which secured his most profitable stream of the week.
Part of his Sunday stream was done alongside Fintan ‘EasyWithAces’ Hand. If Sunday was any indication, Hand might be Spragg’s lucky charm.
Outside of his appearance on Spraggy’s stream, Hand put together one stream. He streamed tournaments for five hours on Saturday before the now infamous UFC fight between Connor McGregor and Khabib Nurmagomedov.
Kevin Martin streamed on Wednesday and Thursday of last week. He cashed in three events on Wednesday before a more extensive tournament stream on Thursday. He went in with hopes of winning the Thursday Thrill and the $162 Bounty Builder.
The Canadian pro didn’t cash in either of them, but did make final table of two other events. He made the final table of the Omania $27 pot-limit Omaha and an $11 no-limit hold’em six-max turbo event.
Martin, like many of your favorite Team RIU streamers, will be at Run It up Reno, which kicks off in less than two weeks.
