Annie Duke has been lying extremly low in the live poker scene since the Epic Poker League filed for bankruptcy in the end of February this year. EPL gernerated only $37,052 during its short exitence, however the bankruptcy showed that Duke paid herself $299,784 for her time as commissioner while Epic Poker amounted debts of over $8 million. Among the defrauded in the EPL scandal was the Disabled American Veterans Charity.
Team PokerStars Pro Daniel Negreanu has posted a new video blog in which he discuses Ray Bitar's (the CEO of Full Tilt Poker) late apology to the poker world, Bay 101, Epic Poker League's failure, and other interesting and funny things that have happened in his life recently.
The two starting days and Day 2 are now history and the player field has been narrowed down from 477 to 116 players. Unfortunately, Day 2 saw the departure of many former EPT champions: Jake Cody, Anton Wigg, Michael Eiler, Arnaud Mattern, Michael Tureniec and David Vamplew etc. However, one former EPT champion is leading the way into Day 3.
Mike "Timex" McDonald (picture), a Canadian poker pro who won EPT German Open in Dortmund in 2008, must have bribed the poker gods (or perhaps the dealers?) since he was running so extremely good throughout Day 2. When he had good hands - he always got paid off very well. When he didn't have good hands and needed luck - the turn and river cards performed magic.
Epic Poker League, a league that only qualified players with a membership card can take part in, is now almost one year old and so far it has been a success - something that very few people thought earlier this year. The conditions to enter the EPIC Poker League main event make sure that only the best poker players in the world can take part.
However, those conditions don't apply to Doyle Brunson, who hasn't taken part in any of the 2 EPL main events played so far. On Tuesday, Doyle Brunson was offered the first lifetime membership card by the EPL, which means that he can enter any future Main Event no mater how his poker career is going.
The second ever Epic Poker League Main Event is down to a final table, and, as you can see below, it's not lacking in talented and well-known players. However, the biggest name on the final table is Erik Seidel who's had an amazing live tournament year. Seidel will bring 1,031,000 chips to the final table - only David Steicke has more chips - 1,059,000. Steicke and Isaac Baron (3rd place - 876,000 chips) will most probably be Seidel's biggest threats on the final table.
The second Epic Poker League $1,5k Pro/Am event came to and end about 7 hours ago. After 3 short days of play, the field had been narrowed down from 97 players to a final table with 9 players. Those 9 players were Am Le, Phil Hellmuth, Greg Mueller, Andreas Hoivold, Russell Rosenblum, Sean Getzwiller, Brandon Meyers, Jeremy Ausmus and Michael DiVita.
All of the finalist won a seat to the $20,000 8-Max Main Event that starts on on Tuesday - the second Main Event of the EPL's first season. Anyhow, it ended up being Greg Mueller who won the tournament. Mueller, a former hockey pro, is a professional poker player from Vancouver. He has cashed 19 times at the WSOP (2 bracelets) and 1 WPT final table. It will be interesting to see how things go for him on Tuesday!
The American poker pro David "Chino" Rheem became a part of history when he won the first ever Epic Poker League Main Event last week and took home $1 million, thus taking his career earning to impressive $5,37 million. But the notable win quickly fell into the shade of the "news" that Rheem owes a lot of money to different poker players. Yesterday, the Epic Poker League crew sent out a press release where they write that Rheem has violated their rules of behavior - even though his gambling debts arose before the league started.
In the press release one can also read that EPL has formed a behavior committee that will monitor Rheem and make sure that he pays off his debts with tournament and cash game winnings - regardless from which part of the world the winnings come from. The monitoring will stop as soon as Rheem has paid back all the money.
It was an epic final table of the first ever Epic Poker League Main Event. But it wasn't one of the big names who took home the tournament. Hasan Habib, Chino Rheem and Jason Mercier were the 3 players who made it to the final table with the largest stacks (about 1.5 million each).
Of these 3, Chino Rheem, the 2008 WSOP Main Event finalist, impressed the most on the final table by taking down pot after pot. Not even the almighty Erik Seidel could stop him from taking down the $1,000,000 first prize. In total, Rheem now has impressive $5,370,875 in tournament earnings.
Final table results: 1) David Rheem, $1 000 000 2) Erik Seidel, $604 330 3) Jason Mercier, $360 970 4) Hasan Habib, $237 560 5) Gavin Smith, $154 260 6) Huck Seed, $107 980
Day 3 of the EPL Main Event is over and the final table is now set! Hasan Habib, who had the second biggest stack at the beginning of Day 3, is the one who will bring the biggest stack to the final table, which will be played 2pm local time at The Palms Casino in Las Vegas. It's an extremely good final table we will get to watch today. Just have a look at the final table seating and chip count below and you understand what I mean.
A few days ago the Epic Poker League Main Event with a $20,000 buy-in started in Las Vegas. The tournament attracted a field of 137 players, and after 3 days of play, 6 players will return today and continue the battle for the first prize of amazing 1 million dollars!
But even though EPL has attracted many of the biggest names of poker - many of them Americans - many big names still decided not to take part as they didn't believe in the concept. Daniel Negreanu is one of the these players and he has also written a blog on it. It's some very interesting reading. Below you can read Daniel's blog "Why I dind't Play The EPT" in its full version. Don't miss out!
