Inga Vigh Pedersen beats her boyfriend to land Portuguese Backgammon Open

Inga Vigh Pedersen got the better of her long-time boyfriend Hans-Kristian Mathiesen to win the Betfair-sponsored Portuguese Backgammon Open held in Carcavelos in late August. There was success, too, for Betfair online qualfier Gaz Owen who finished in the money when securing second place in the Doubles event alongside his brother.

The Danish pair, who have been a couple for 8 years, living, playing and travelling together, played the final in a competitive and fair manner: no deals and arrangements were done and the final match was a real no holds barred encounter. Eventually, Inga defeated her boyfriend and qualified for the Grand Finale to be held early next year.

The tournament was held for the 7th consecutive year, under the umbrella of World Backgammon Association (WBA) and part of the prestigious Betfair/EBGT 2012 in Carcavelos, on Portugal´s sunny coast near Lisbon.

The dates were changed from June to end of August and it turned out to be the right choice. 28°C, sun, beach, pool and backgammon action during four days. Many players opted to combine backgammon with holidays and stayed for the full week or even longer.

Around 50 players from 18 nations took part. Among them were around 25 Scandinavians from Denmark, Sweden and Norway and they turned the Portuguese Open into a "Nordic Open going South". Wherever you have Vikings as players, you know what to expect. Chouette sessions by the pool, heavy drinking by the bar, non-stop backgammon action and fun.

The new directors, the "French Dynamic Duo", Scarlett Serrero (President of the French Backgammon Federation) and Julie Thabault (member of the Board of the French Backgammon Federation) managed to run a very fine first international event on their own, using the same format, rules and the spirit of the WBA and the rest of the Betfair/EBGT.

Players lined up to compete for money, fame and glory and to collect valuable Master Points for the EBGT Race, in order to qualify for the Grand Finale of the Tour, featuring €20.000 prize-money.

Betfair's online qualifier winner, Gaz Owen (UK), managed to cash in the Doubles event, coming in second place with his brother.

The Point Race couldn´t be any tighter, as 3 stops still remain. While Yalkin Erk from Turkey took the lead by reaching the semi-finals, French Philippe Vouhé is only a point away. Others have caught up and the Grand Finale is within reach of an of the top 20 in the current ranking.

Istanbul is next 14-17 September, Cyprus Open 6-9 December, and Munich Open 24-27 January are the remaining stops of the Tour.

Dates are set for the Portuguese Open 2013 to be 22-25 August and we're all excited to go back for backgammon and fun by the beach.

Warm up your dice, qualify online and start making travel plans to the remaining tournament of the most prestigious of the European series of tournaments.

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Jose Machado: The Portuguese Prodigy

Poker News / Matthew Pitt / 14 March 2011 / Leave a Comment

Not Machado - he's a little older than this!

The Two Plus Two poker forums are usually awash with rumours that Player A won X amount of dollars in next to no time but almost all of them disappear without most people giving them a second thought. However, one such rumour appeared in January that simply refused to go away.

The person informed the online poker community of an 18-year old Portuguese poker player who had won around $2,000,000 from a tiny deposit and as usual the claims were refuted. The poster also mentioned that this particular player had received coaching from the likes of Daniel "jungleman12" Cates, which pricked up the ears of many people but due to the nature of the post, which seemed as if the poster was too obsessed with trying to track down this Portuguese youngster, most swept it under the carpet and dismissed the claims.

However, on the evening of Wednesday 2 March a poster by the name of "Girah" started a thread in which he claimed to be the so-called Portuguese Poker Prodigy. Although he said that he was under strict instructions from his lawyers not to publish his online alias' he did post a screenshot of his last 817,379 hands played, which shows him at a staggering $1,624,044.95 profit! He went on to reveal that he has made all of this money from an initial $30 deposit on Betfair Poker using good bankroll management and playing a phenomenal amount of hands.

His name is Jose Machado, an 18-year old who became fascinated with the game a couple of years ago when he read Tom "durrrr" Dwan's story of rags to riches and he went out of his way to emulate him. After racking up a ton of experience playing for play money and on the Facebook poker site Zynga, Machado managed to convince his mother to let him use her credit card and deposit $30 online, and he has never looked back.

Despite only playing $0.01/$0.02 in the first instance, he managed to grind up this $30 to $2,500 within a month and was quickly playing $0.50/$1. His meteroic rise continued until he reached the dizzy heights of NL1000, with blinds of $5 and $10, where he says he struggled to break through. At this point he set out to get tips and coaching from the very best in the game including Cates and Ben "Sauce123" Sulsky, which helped him to push through and win more than $280,000 at this level. He has since continued his climb and is a regular at the $25/$50 and $50/$100 heads-up No limt Hold'em games.

As you would expect the extremely talented youngster is in high demand right now but here at Betfair Poker, where he first cut his teeth in the world of real money online poker, we have been in contact with the Portuguese Isildur1 and he has agreed to answer a few questions for you readers, which should hopefully appear here in the next few days.

Sign up for a free Betfair Poker account through this link and see if you can use the $50 to $2,500 sign up bonus to kickstart your rise to poker's elite!

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