Alex Schindler Poker

Alex Foxen and Jake Daniels Win 2020 LA Poker Classic High Roller Events. Schindler earned $151,970 for his latest deep run in a high roller event. It was his 59th career cash of at least six. The 2019 World Series of Poker has seen Day 1 of Event #15: $10,000 Heads-Up No-Limit Hold'em Championship kick off with a total of 112 entries, and after an initial play-in round, two further heads-up matches in the official bracket of the last 64 were completed to reduce the field to the last 16 hopefuls. Canadian Spring Championship. Casino: Playground Poker Club, Kahnawake, Quebec Buy-in: $3,500 6-Day Event: May 1–6, 2015 Number of Entries: 370 Total Prize Pool: $1,148,480 Number of Payouts: 45. After a lengthy final table, real-life couple Alex Foxen and two-time World Series of Poker bracelet winner Kristen Bicknell finished and champion and runner-up respectively, albeit after striking.

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Over the weekend, the MSPT Venetian hosted its $5,000 tournament, which marked the steepest buy-in in tour history as well as the first time they utilized the big blind ante. With 178 entrants taking to the felt there was a slight overlay, meaning the $1,000,000 GTD constituted the prize pool.

After a lengthy final table, real-life couple Alex Foxen and two-time World Series of Poker bracelet winner Kristen Bicknell finished and champion and runner-up respectively, albeit after striking a deal. Each locked up $200,000 and by rule left 10 percent ($39,000) and the title to play for.

Bicknell: 'We talk poker all the time and that makes it a little difficult in hands because we kind of know what each other is thinking.'

“It was a lot of fun, certainly some interesting spots at the table,” Foxen told PokerNews. “There were a lot of roller-coaster hands, a lot of all ins once we got shorthanded. Passing chips back and forth, a lot of shoves. I was ultimately on the right side of a bunch of all ins.”

Bicknell added: “In a way it was really fun but then there were some spots that felt really frustrating because I want him to do well but I want to do well. We both want to win and both want each other to win but that’s not possible so it was a little hard. We talk poker all the time and that makes it a little difficult in hands because we kind of know what each other is thinking. I was a fun experience overall.”

It marked the second time in four months the couple was at a final table together. Back in March, Foxen finished seventh in the partypoker MILLIONS Barcelona €25K Super High Roller while Bicknell busted one spot earlier.

Official Final Table Results

_{*Denotes heads-up deal}

Among the 18 players to get paid but not make it to the final table were Dylan Linde (11th - $19,000), Josias Santos (14th - $16,000) and recent WSOP bracelet winner Elio Fox (17th - $14,000).

One of the biggest hands at the final table happened in Level 21 (6,000/12,000/10,000) on a board reading . Kahle Burns checked from the small blind and Jake Schindler bet 137,000 from the big. Burns responded by check-raising all in and Schindler tanked for a long time before calling off with a queen-high flush. Unfortunately for him, Burns held the one hand that beat him – an ace-high flush!

Another wild hand took place in Level 23 (10,000/20,000/15,000) when Foxen raised to 45,000 from the button holding eight-four of hearts. Joey Weissman called out of the big blind with the eight-five of diamonds and the two got it in on a flop. Weissman was ahead with two pair but the six of hearts on the river gave Foxen a straight flush.

Three-handed play was a four-hour affair between Bicknell, Foxen and Burns, who was left with crumbs after his ace-eight offsuit failed to hold against Foxen’s king-seven suited when two sevens flopped. Bicknell finished him off in the next hand. It was at that point Bicknell and Foxen, who were even in chips, struck a deal that left $39K and the title on the table.

In the first hand of heads-up play, both players flopped top pair of nines and Foxen doubled due to his superior kicker. Bicknell busted one hand later.

The MSPT will host two more events at The Venetian this summer. A $1,600 buy-in, $3 million GTD is currently underway while a $3,500 buy-in, $3.5 million GTD will run June 25-30.

_{Photo courtesy of MSPT}

_{Editor's Note: Chad Holloway serves as Media Director for the MSPT.}

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GALVESTON – If the right people are at the table, a poker game can change the course of history.

The new film “Quezon’s Game,” opening Friday, uses poker (and copious cigars) to dramatize one of the most remarkable, and still largely unsung, episodes of World War II history: the resettlement of roughly 1,200 Jewish refugees from Europe – which was quickly falling under the Nazis’ thumb, if not there already – to the Philippines in the late 1930s.

Seated around the table at Manila’s Malacañang Palace most nights were Manuel Quezon, the then-U.S. territory’s president; Paul McNutt, the top U.S. official in the Philippines; Alex Frieder, a Jewish cigar merchant from Cincinnati; and Dwight D. Eisenhower, the future Supreme Allied Commander and 34th president of the United States, then a military attaché assigned to the Philippines.

“I think that’s how they got to know each other, yes,” says Dr. Barbara Sasser, Alex Frieder’s granddaughter and Galveston resident. “I think it built a mutual respect among all these people.”

These men’s task was about as difficult as it sounds. For their plan to work, they had to find people willing to relocate to the other side of the world, which they did by placing ads in European newspapers; convince the Germans to grant them exit visas (which, according to “Quezon’s Game,” was surprisingly easy); and then perform diplomatic somersaults in order to get the visas approved by a State Department riddled with anti-Semites.

“They did what they did because they thought it was the right thing to do,” says Sasser. “They were in a place where they had some influence and they could talk to the right people.”

“We’re a very hospitable people and we had experienced exile and imprisonment during the Spanish colonization and the early American occupation, so someone of my grandfather’s generation would have been conscious of the plight of refugees,” Quezon’s grandson and namesake, Manuel Quezon III, told The New York Times.

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‘A pretty good story’

“Quezon’s Game” makes a similar point when one of Quezon’s aides must use a segregated bathroom while on a trip to Washington, D.C. The younger Quezon, a writer, was speaking at a reunion of the refugees and the Frieders’ descendants held in Cincinnati in February 2005.

“The Filipino people are the kindest, most generous people,” Sasser says. “They’re always in a good mood, they’re always smiling; they always say yes. They’re just kind and compassionate people.”

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“Quezon’s Game,” directed by British-born Filipino filmmaker Matthew Rosen, opens in Houston Friday after a successful run in the Philippines last year and screening at several festivals. At Houston’s WorldFest last spring, it won four awards including best director and best foreign feature. Apart from the inevitable dramatic license, Sasser believes the film represents her grandfather rather well.

“It’s not a documentary, but it’s a pretty good story,” she adds.

And she ought to know.

Several years ago, Sasser and her cousin, another of Alex Frieder’s grandchildren, produced “Rescue in the Philippines: Refuge From the Holocaust.” The 60-minute documentary aired on PBS and impressed New York Times reviewer Nicole Harrington, who noted “in telling their stories, the former refugees and the proud descendants of the leaders involved can finally publicly express their enduring sense of gratitude and faith in humanity.”

Although there is no official connection between the two films – “they contacted me and gave me an early script, and asked for comments,” explains Sasser; later she sent Rosen a family photo seen in the new film’s credits – Sasser says she’s glad to see “Quezon’s Game” come along all the same.

“Very few people know the story,” she says. “A lot more people know since we did our documentary, but we did the documentary on public television, not in movie theaters, and I’m really glad there’s a chance for a greater audience to see the film.”

Comparisons to ‘Schindler’s List’

The parallels between this story and “Schindler’s List” are unmistakeable, and indeed practically leap out of the “Quezon’s Game” press kit. The main difference, reckons Sasser, is that one story is well-known; the other, not so much.

“I made the connection that there were approximately the same number of lives saved from this rescue in the Philippines as Schindler had saved with his Jews in Germany, and the reason people knew about Schindler was a film,” she explains.

According to Sasser, her ancestors moved to the Philippines, which had been under American control since the Spanish-American War ended in 1898, around 1920. They might have taken to Manila because, she figures, the capital city was laid out by Americans around the time another prominent American from Cincinnati, William Howard Taft, occupied the White House.

The brothers built a cigar factory there that, according to a 2005 article in Cigar Aficionado magazine, once produced up to 250 million cigars a year. Alex and three of his four other brothers took turns supervising the family’s Philippines operation in two-year intervals.

“The brothers were very close, and the families were very close,” Sasser says. “In the Philippines as they rotated in and out they all lived in the same house, and they would always go over there and sort of have a two-week time together before the departing family left.”

The Frieders left the Philippines shortly before the Japanese invaded the islands in December 1941. They eventually moved their cigar operation to Philadelphia and in due course Alex’s nephew, Sam, took over. Every so often Sam would field a curious request from his uncle: ‘so-and-so’s gonna come by and you should be nice to ’em or give them a discount.’

“Sam speculates that [this person] was a refugee,” Sasser explains.

Alex Frieder, though, wound up back in Cincinnati, where he became a leader in the Jewish community. Sasser also grew up in Ohio’s Queen City, and remembers visiting her grandfather at the local Jewish country club and at his house. Although they didn’t talk much about the rescue operation – she was fairly young; Frieder died in 1968 – he was still playing poker.

“I remember visiting him in the card room,” Sasser says. “We would celebrate Passover at his house sometimes. He was a very jovial, outgoing, gregarious guy.”

The family remained friendly with the Eisenhowers. Ike thoughtfully sent Alex a condolence letter when Sasser’s grandmother died shortly before the Normandy invasion. Alex became co-chairman of Democrats for Eisenhower’s Ohio chapter. After Ike won, the Frieders happily sent cigars to the White House; they were rewarded with invites to the inauguration.

“They stayed friends for a long time,” Sasser affirms.

Quezon honored

As for Quezon, he led the Philippines from exile in upstate New York until dying from tuberculosis in 1944. The Philippines became an independent nation two years later. Today signs of his legacy are everywhere – his likeness is on the twenty-peso note, while many locales across the Philippines bear his name.

Quezon City, created in 1939 and the nation’s most populous city with around three million people, is more or less the size of Houston.

“He is known as the first elected president; he is also known as the commonwealth president and as the president that brought back their national language,” Sasser says. “This story is a very small part of his presidency.”

However, she adds, “any Filipino that I know that sees the [documentary] is very proud of this story, and very proud that their country acted that way; it makes them proud to be a Filipino. They’re very glad to learn about it.”

In the Israeli city of Rishon LeZion, just south of Tel Aviv, the 23-foot Open Doors Monument honors Quezon and the others who helped the Jewish WWII refugees. The activities center in Manila’s lone Jewish temple is lined with plaques telling their story. The way Sasser sees it, the Filipino president was simply a man of faith who decided to lead by example.

“He was a good Catholic,” she says, “and he thought the most unreligious thing he could think of was to think badly of the people who gave them their savior.”

Chris Gray is a Houston-based writer.

When: Opens Friday

Where: Cinemark Tinseltown 290, 12920 Northwest Fwy.

Details: 713-329-9402; quezonsgame.com