Favorites Go Home First in Game of Gold: Team Clubs Is Eliminated

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GGPoker’s Game of Gold has been widely received as one of the best poker shows of all time, and it just keeps getting better with each new episode that’s released.

In Episode 1, we saw the contenders split into four teams of four players and the first round of the game began with one player from each team playing each of the four Sit and Go games, in pursuit of Gold Coins.

With Epsiode 4 airing yesterday, we now know which players will no longer be with us, at it came as a massive surprise that it was Team Clubs, which included the likes of Daniel Negreanu and Jason Koon, who had to go home first.

Team Clubs suffered one stroke of bad luck after another, failed to win any of the matches, and ended up leaving the competition very early on.

With only three teams remaining and the next episode coming as soon as Monday, let’s take a look at just what went wrong for Team Clubs and what we can expect from the upcoming episodes of GGPoker Game of Gold.

Poor Luck from the Start for Team Clubs

When Season 1 contestants of Game of Gold came together in Episode 1, it seemed like Team Clubs were the favorites to win it all and play amongst themselves for the $456,000 top place prize in the final round.

Daniel Negreanu, Jason Koon, Michael Soyza, and Kevin Martin made up Team Clubs, which meant they had by far the strongest overall lineup of any team in the competition.

However, Game of Gold is not a test of past accomplishments, and with the structure of Round 1 Sit and Goes being as fast as it is, luck was always going to play a major role.

The guys picked Michael Soyza to play the first match, as he went up against the three ladies from other teams and was probably the most experienced player at his table.

Things started out well for Soyza when he picked up pocket aces against Kyna England, but the revered straight of Olga Iermolcheva against his two pair broke his streak.

Soyza then bluffed off a big chunk of his stack into Olga’s top pair, and she was able to make the good call and completely turn the momentum.

England was the first to go, but Team Clubs’ Michael Soyza followed her not too long after, as his Q9 found itself in trouble against the AJ of Nikita Luther, leaving him with crumbs, before his J5 lost to Olga’s 83 for the last of it.

Kevin Martin was the next to represent Team Clubs, but his fortunes were even worse, as he lost most of his chips with [invalid notations], before busting out in fourth place just moments later.

Bad Luck Continues

After two games, Team Clubs had only a third and a fourth, and it was up to the legendary Daniel Negreanu to turn things around.

Dnegs looked like a massive favorite on his table, with Maria Ho being the only truly experienced player apart from him in that group.

Yet, despite building up a bit of a stack early on, he was not able to get things truly going and was forced to shove his A♥2♠ into Yoh Viral’s A♦K♦. The board was of no help, and Team Clubs got yet another third place.

It was now all down to the “super-pro” Jason Koon, whose experience in playing in high pressure spots was about to be of critical importance.

Episode 4 of #GameofGold is out and we get together to recap what happened in the “Do or Die” episode with special guest @JasonKoon as he tries to save team clubs.

Can he do it? Yes.
Will he do it? 👇🏿@tchanpoker @ASchwartzPoker @ProducerRoss https://t.co/8HoQhjjnAv

— Daniel Negreanu (@RealKidPoker) November 18, 2023

Yet, not even Koon could overcome bad luck, and when his pocket Kings failed to hold against A♠Q♥ of Fedor Holz, he was left as the short stack at the table.

Instead of eliminating perhaps the most dangerous player there, Jason was left with crumbs. After losing yet another fairly unlucky hand with JT, Koon eventually got it all-in with A♠5♥ to Holz’ K♦Q♦, and yet again the deck did not cooperate.

With nearly no all-ins won and very few moments of good luck, Team Clubs was always going to go home after just four episodes.

The consummate pros they are, Negreanu, Koon, and others simply congratulated their opponents and left the studio without much of a fuss.

What’s Next on Game of Gold?

Now that Team Clubs is no more, and the contest has been dwindled down to just 12 players, the stakes are about to go up.

GGPoker has not yet made it clear what the format of the next round will be, but we do know that it will be Yoh Viral entering Round 2 with 100 Gold Coins, more than any other player in the field.

From the previews of the next episode, we could see that tears and emotions are about to come into picture with some of the players, while the aggressive nature of others is about to come out of the woodworks.

When Game of Gold was first announced, this was exactly the kind of drama we were hoping to see, and it seems that we will be getting more of that very shortly.

For the time being, we are all left anxiously waiting to see what the format of the next challenge will be, and which of the players will be best equipped to handle it.

The next dose of Game of Gold is coming as soon as Monday, so stay tuned and get ready to see some fierce action over another exciting week of poker’s first reality show.