Ever thought of becoming a vegetarian? If no, what if you got $1 million dollars and only had to stick to it for one year? Now it start sounding interesting ha? Well, if you're a good friend of Tom "durrrr" Dwan and have a lot of money, then you might get a crazy prop bet like this one!

In the latest episode of High Stakes Poker, Tom Dwan offered his High Stakes buddy Phil Ivey $1 million dollars if he stops eating meat and fish for a whole year. At first, Phil Ivey wanted $2 million dollars for doing it, but since he had thought about becoming a vegetarian for some time, he decided to accept the challenge.

"I will do it for $1 million dollars. I have thought about becoming a vegetarian for a while now, so this prop bet will make it extra interesting and challenging." said Phil Ivey in an interview with the host of High Stakes Poker, Kara Scott.

 

During season 4 of Million Dollar Cash Game the biggest pot in the history of telvised poker was played. 3 deep stacked players were sitting at the poker table,  Patrik Antonius, Tom Dwan and Phil Ivey. However, it came to be Phil Ivey and Tom Dwan who were involved in this historic hand.

This is how the hand was played out:
Blinds $1000/$2000+$500 Ante
Tom Dwan ($538,000) opens up the pot with a "small bet" from the button and Phil Ivey ($1,137,600) re-raise to $23,000. Antonius fold & Dwan call.

The pot is now $49,500 when the flop J[c]3[d]5[c] lands on the table. Ivey bets out $35,000. Tom Dwan thinks for a while before he decides to make the call. The pot is now $119,500.

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Phil Ivey, the American Full Tilt Pro, recently finished in second place in the $100,000 challenge of Aussie Millions in Melbourne, Australia. Thanks to the win, Ivey received nothing less than AUD$600,000 ($544,219 U.S. dollars) at the same time as he overtook the first place (earlier held by Daniel Negreanu) in the All Time Money List. This means that Phil Ivey now has won the most money all time. As you might understand - it's not small amounts we are talking about here. Phil has won $12,804,433 through his career.

Phil Ivey - In his own words about the second place finish in Aussie Millions and being on top of the all time money list .

"It's just another poker game. I don't think I'll celebrate too much. I'm just going to go to dinner, maybe have a glass of wine or two and play some poker later"

"I don't really think, ‘oh I'm the best in the world. I just try to perform the best that I can day in and day out."

 

 

884 players out of 1,529 players made it from Day 1 a & b to Day 2 of the tournament. In the lead after Day 1 was Wayne Bentley, a PokerStars qualifier from UK. Bentely continued playing good throughout Day 2 of the tournament as he's in 3rd place of the 314 players that will play Day 3. Chipleader at the moment is Praz Bansi with 960,800 chips, followed by Marc-Etienne McLaughlin (702,100) and Wayne Bentely (602,450).

Even though the top 3 players above have accumulated big stacks, they will have to fight really hard to stay in the lead since the remaining field is packed with pros. Daniel Negreanu, Dennis Philips, Phil Ivey, Huck Seed and Johnny Lodden just to mention a few. Day 3 will be the most trilling day so far of the tournament - that's for sure!

 

The second starting day of the PCA Main Event has now been played. Not less than 846 players started this day - many of them were some of the biggest names in poker. However, the most notable players that made it through Day 1b and will play Day 2 today are Paul Wasicka, Matt Graham, Annette Obrestad, Vanessa Rousso, Peter Eastgate, Phil Ivey and JC Alvardo.

A total of 1,515 players signed up for the PCA Main Event this year. This means that last year's record of 1,347 is history. Up for grabs in the Main Event is approximately $15,000,000, which makes sure that even the world best and richest poker players will give 100% all the way.

Its not only Tiger Woods who have problems with his relationship at the moment, but also Phil "Tiger Woods of Poker" Ivey who's leaving his wife, Lucietta. According to an american news site, Phil Ivey handed in the divorce papers on 22nd December and then he got his divorce request approved already on the 29th December. At the moment details on this divorce are very few and it might remain so as Phil Ivey and his ex-wife probably didn't have the same kind of problem as Tiger and Elin Woods.

Do you hope that american media will write much more about this divorce, or do you think that they should leave Phil Ivey alone and write about his poker instead? 

The action at the high stakes just keeps on getting more and more crazy ever year. In 2006, games were a lot smaller than today as the highest games back then were played with $200/$400 blinds, and only a few poker sites dared to offer these high stakes. The most talked about hand, and also the biggest pot back in 2006, was when Johnny "bad_ip" Lodden lost a $465,451 pot to Kowssarie. Many people were amazed over how one could lose/win so much in just a single hand.

These days we can see pots of this size every week and we are getting used to seeing Patrik Antonius, Isildur1, Tom Dwan, Phil Ivey and other pros winning and losing millions of dollars in just days, or even hours. Losing and winning these kind amounts is just something as normal as eating and sleeping for many of these guys. The question is: How big can the pots become? We'll, let's take Isildur1 as an example. This guy came from nowhere and won $6 millions in a few weeks, and then he lost it all plus another million+ in no-time. Isildur1 has thanks to his crazy style of playing poker already set a few records as he has been involved in the 8 biggest pots ever. However, the biggest pot Isildur1 has played was when he lost $1,356,947 to Patrik Antonius at the stakes $500/$1000 in Pot Limit Omaha. 

A short conclusion
The future looks very bright for people who loves watching the action at the highest stakes and the adrenaline it brings with it. The average pot will keep on growing and we will see more players like Isildur1 and Martonas who wins big, then lose it all and disappears from the high stakes scene. 

 

Joe Cada, 21, became the new World Champion just a few moments ago! He and Darvin Moon played heads-up for almost 3,5 hours, and WOW what an heads-up it was! Cada started with more than double the chips than Moon. But Moon had no plans on giving up as he gave Cada a really tough fight and even overtook the lead for a while.

The big turn for Joe Cada came when he flopped middle pair and Moon pushed all-in with a straight draw. Cada's middle pair stood up and gave him the lead. Only 8 hands later it all came to an end...

Final Hand:
Joe Cada has the button (big blind 3 million), Moon raise to 8 million. Cada double-checks his hand before announcing an all in. Moon dobule-checks his hand as well before making the call. 150 million is now in the pot.

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The 2009 WSOP Main Event final table is now finally down to 2 players after 15 hours of play. Darvin Moon, 45, and Joseph Cada, 21, are going to play heads-up for the World Champion title and the first prize of $8,5 million on Monday night at 10:00 PST (Tuesday 07:00 AM). Joseph Cada has more than double the stack than his final opponent, Darvin Moon. However, both players still have plenty of chips and it will for sure be a thrilling heads-up to watch.

Phil Ivey ended up on 7th place
Phil ivey, the big favorite to win the tournament, played very well on the final table and it seemed like no one wanted to double him up. But when Phil finally managed to get some action, the luck wasn't on his side. Phil moved all-in in before the flop with A[c]K[s] and Darvin Moon called with A[d]Q[s]. A queen came on the flop and neither turn & river cards were to no help for Phil. Phil Ivey ended up on 7th place and left lots of fans around the globe disappointed.

 

 

James Akenhead, from England, is a 26 years old Full Tilt PRO who will start the final table tomorrow with the least chips of the 9 remaining players. James hasn't been playing poker for a very long, but he has still been very successful and won over $800,000 online and live so far. At the 2008 World Series of Poker, he finished second in event #2 ($1,500 NL Texas Hold'em). With other words, he's not a newbie when it comes to playing in the World Series.

James will only bring 6,800,000 chips with him to the final table on Saturday, and he will need to double up at least 2 times quite fast in order to have some kind of chance of becoming the World Champion.

The 2009 WSOP final table is only 1 day away folks! Don't forget to vote for your favorite to win in our "Who will become the World Champion"-poll. For those of you who want to bet some money on the November 9 finalists, we can recommend KickOffPoker who also offers a €5000 deposit bonus & 45% cashback.

 

Antoine Saout, 25, is from Saint Martin des Champs, France and he's one of the 2 finalists that aren't born in USA. Antoine mostly plays poker online and there he has won about $200,000. Although he has been quite successful online, he has no records of any live tournament winnings, until now. This is Antoine's first ever WSOP and he won his entry to the Main Event through a $50 satellite online.

Antoine Saout had a really tough struggle to make it this far in the tournament. No one else than the other November 9 finalist Phil Ivey was seated on his left at the poker table for the 3 last days of the tournament. Now, however, both he and Phil Ivey are going to play for some serious cash on Saturday when the final table kicks off.

Antoine brings 9,500,000 with him to the final table on Saturday. He's quite short stacked with other words. But Antoine might have some kind of advantage because of the tough fight he had the 3 last days of the tournament. And who knows? Maybe he will be really dangerous if he mange to double up at the early stages of the final table.

 

Phillip "Phil" Ivey was born in Riverside, California February 1, 1976. When he was only 3 months old he and his family moved across the country to Roselle, New Jersey. Phil's grandpa taught him to play poker when he was just a kid, Phil then crafted his game playing skills amongst his co-workers at a New Brunswick, New Jersey telemarketing firm in the late 90's.

Used a fake ID
When Phil was around 17 years old, he started going to Atlantic City to play poker for money. Of course he was too young to enter any of the casinos, but thanks to a fake ID card with the name "Jerome" on it he managed to get in. Phil used to play for 16-17 hours straight at the casino and sometimes he missed the last bus home so that he had to sleep on a bench near the casino. The casino staff used to call him "No home Jerome" because of that.

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Kevin Schaffel, 52, a father of 2, was born and raised in Miami and is these days living Florida, USA. Kevin started playing poker at home with his family when he was just 11 years old. Many years later, he understood that he had some sort of talent for tournament poker and that he actually could make some money out of it. And so he did. Kevin has cashed in 7 bigger tournaments and won over $600,000 during his poker career. Even though he has been so successful and made so much money, he still wants more...

Aiming high
Kevin's ambitions with poker part from making money, has always been to win either a WSOP Main Event, or a WPT title. If he wins the Main Event, which is the biggest dream for him, he will retire straight away and play poker and golf full-time.

Final table
Kevin Schaffel brings 12,390,000 chips with him to the final table and is with that on 6th place. He doesn't see a quite short stacked Phil Ivey as a really big threat (like many of the other November 9 players) and he thinks that he has a decent chance of taking home the tournament even though he's far behind some of the players in chips.

Steven Begleiter, 47, reside in Chappaqua, New York with his family. Steven is a former executive for the investment bank Bear Stearns, where he has worked for almost 25 years. His interest for poker started already when he was a kid, and since then he has been playing poker regulary, but never for high stakes as he sees poker as a social thing.

He won his entry fee to the Main Event through a poker leuage with 20 players in his hometown. Whatever his final total cash winnings are at the final table, he intends to share 20% of it with those 20 players.

When Steven entered the main event, he had no expectations more than just making it to the money. When he finally got to the money, he noticed that players started dropping like flies, which made him feel more relaxed. It was at this time his long awaited winning streak started as well, and suddenly he had made it to the final table with huge stack. Steven Begleiter will start the final table on Saturday third in chips.

 

With only 5 days left to go before the 2009 World Series of Poker final table kicks off, we will put a lot of our energy and focus on writing about the November 9 finalists and other relevant information that might be of interest. First out is chip leader Darvin Moon.

Darvin Moon - The working class hero
Darvin Moon, 45, lives in Oakland, Maryland and work as a logger. He won his ticket to the Main Event through a satellite at a casino in West Virginia. But even though he was going to play the main event, he didn't put his hopes up high, and he could never ever imagine in his wildest fantasies that he would make it this far in the tournament. He was wrong as the whole cards and the flops were the best possible for him from start until the final table. Now he has a massive chip lead and is the big favorite to take home the main event.

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On Saturday it's finally time for 2009 WSOP Main Event final table, and it's these 9 players who are going to fight for the first prize of $8.5 million and the World Champion title.

Darvin Moon - 58,930,000
Eric Buchman - 34,800,000
Steven Begleiter - 29,885,000
Jeff Shulman - 19,580,000
Joseph Cada - 13,215,000
Kevin Schaffel - 12,390,000
Phil Ivey - 9,765,000
Antoine Saout - 9,500,000
James Akenhead - 6,800,000

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A new variant of poker called 7-game has become a very popular high stakes game at Full Tilt poker recently. A few days ago, Phil Ivey, won over $1,000,000 playing 7-game against different high stakes players. It seems like Phil Ivey can handle all poker games there are. This is very, very impressive if you ask me!

Other players that really enjoy the new game are for example Gus Hansen and Cole South. South dominated the game at first when he and Gus played heads-up, but then Gus managed to win back most of the money he had lost. Many of the pots when these two played landed on around $100k-$200k. With other words it seems like both of them are very comfortable playing 7-game.

What is 7-game?
7-game is a mix between the 7 different games below. Usually 10 rounds of each game is played before it switches to another game. For the ones that master all the 7 games in 7-game (like Phil Ivey), there is a lot of money to be made as many poker players who tries 7-game out are newbie's when it comes to many of the games.

Game 1: Fixed limit Holdem
Game 2: Fixed Limit High/Low Seven Card Stud
Game 3: Fixed Limit Razz
Game 4: Fixed Limit High/Low Omaha
Game 5: Fixed Limit Seven Card Stud
Game 6: No Limit Texas Holdem
Game 7: Pot Limit Omaha

 

It has been kind of quite around Tom "durrrr" Dwan and his high stakes games lately. But now he hits the headlines once again as he has played what probably is the biggest pot in the history of televised poker in Full Tilt's Million Dollar Challenge. 

The pot landed on $1,100,000 dollars, and it was against one of the best poker players in the world at the moment - Phil Ivey. This is how the $1,1 million dollar hand between Tom Dwan and Phil Ivey was played out.

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"Martonas", or "the unknown Swede" as many people call him, came from nowhere and played against some of the biggest names in the world of poker. After a week of playing he had already won 2.5 million dollars, most of the winnings from just one heads-up session versus Tom "durrr" Dwan. A few days later, Tom Dwan, got his revenge.

He won back everything he had lost to "martonas" plus some more before he decided to end the session and get some sleep. "Martonas", continued playing against Phil Ivey and other big names after this big loss. He won back a lot of money he had lost and it seemed like he would be back on track again shortly. But, the poker gods had other plans for the unknown Swede. "maratonas", can't get anything going at the moment and the winnings fail to come day after day. According to different sources he's now $1 million minus after just a few months of playing under the alias "martonas". Now the big question is. How much longer can "martonas" afford to play at the highest stakes at Full Tilt poker before the bankroll takes too much damage?

 

Sammy "any two" George, from England, is one of the players that Tom "durrrr" Dwan will play against in his new challenge later this year. Sammy George, is not a very well known name in the world of poker, but he's very well known and also a highly respected high stakes player in England. Even though Sammy George knows he's going to play Omaha PL or Holdem NL $500/$5000 with a minimum buy-in of $500,000 against one of the most successful online players, he's not afraid at all.

"I'm not afraid to play against players like Tom Dwan on these stakes. If you ask me, I think that Tom Dwan is just an average player. Nothing special at all! Of course there are players that I have a lot of respect for. Phil Ivey and Patrik Antonius are two of them"; Sammy says.

 

The billionaire, Andy Beal, needed a big challenge back in 2001, and therefore he decided to play against some of the world's best poker players with sky high stakes. Even though he knew he was not even close to as good as the pros, he thought that betting huge amounts of money which the pros couldn't afford to lose would give him a great advantage at the table.

Anyhow, Andy Beal, played against players like Phil Ivey, Doyle Brunson, Todd Brunson, Jennifer Harman, and Gus Hansen. In the beginning nothing worked for the American billionaire and he lost around about 3.4 million dollars to Jennifer Harman, Todd Bruson and other pros.

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Phil Ivey, is probably the best poker player in the world at cash games and tournaments since a few years back. He has won millions of dollars live, online and from different tournaments. He's greatest achievements during his whole poker career however, has to be that he has won 7 WSOP bracelets. It also thanks to his huge success in WSOP that he's now one of the top candidates to get voted in to "Poker Hall Of Fame".

At the moment, Phil Ivey, is one of the 9 players that will play the WSOP main event final table in November this year. On the final table, he has the chance to get another WSOP bracelet and also to win over 20 million dollars. This huge amount of money, according to an article on a poker site. This is how the author of this article came to this conclusion.

1st prize = $8,5 million + $10 million extra from Full Tilt (assuming that Full Tilt pros have the same deal as satellite qualifiers) + $2 million for the side bet he placed with Andy Bloch ($20,000 to 99,1 times the money when around 2400 players still were in the tournament) + $1 million from Tom Dwan. 

The total winnings according to this calculation would therefore be $21,5 million dollars. But who knows? Maybe Phil placed more than 2 side bets on himself to win the main event?

 

In 1979, Benny Binion, the owner of the Horseshoe Casino, created the Poker Hall Of Fame to preserve the names and legacies of the world's greatest poker players. He also was the man behind the first ever World Series of Poker (1970), and the first one to organize high stakes games where the public could watch. Anyhow, Harrah's Entertainment took over the right for WSOP in 2004, and also the ownership of the Poker Hall of Fame. Today the Poker Hall of Fame is handled directly by the WSOP crew. Up till now, 37 people have been inducted into the Poker Hall of Fame. Only 15 of those people are still living.

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Darvin Moon has a huge chip lead of the last 9 remaining players in the Main Event, WSOP 2009. He's already guaranteed to become a millionare even if he ends up last on the final table in November. But Darvin takes everything very relaxed and continue working his "9-5" shift in the woods.

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According to different poker forums and magazines, Phil Ivey has betted x-amount of money on himself to win the Main Event to x-times the money. According to one of his friends and teammates in team PokerStars, he would take home one of the biggest wins the world of poker has ever seen if he becomes the last man standing.

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The 2009 WSOP Main Event attracted not less than 6494 players (who paid $10,000 buy-in each), of all these participants, only 9 players "The November Nine" still have the chance to win some serious cash on the final table in November. One of these 9 players is no one less than Phil Ivey from team PokerStars.

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Day 6 of the main event is now over. Of 185 players who started this day, only 64 players made it through to day 7 after 10 hours of hand by hand poker. Unfortunately for Sweden is that their big hopes Christer Björin and Rifat Palevic both got knocked out in during 6. Other big names that got knocked out this day were Bertrand "ElkY" Grospellier, Joe Hachem, JC Tran and David Benyamine.

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Amir Lehavot (610,000) has taken the lead from Troy Weber (435,000) who was the chip leader when day 2 started. I took the lead thanks to this hand, Amir Lehavot said in an interview with a poker magazine.

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Tom "durrrr" Dwan had a really tough start in the beginning of the year with millions of dollars lost. But the last few months he has improved his poker and is now over $1,5 million plus, he's also leading his own challenge (durrrr challenge) versus Patrik Antonius.

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The Swedish high stakes player, "DIN_FRU", was until last week one of 2009's biggest winners on the fixed limit tables at Full Tilt poker. But two heads-up sessions this weekend changed it all, now he's one of 2009's biggest "losers".

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Event #8 of the 2009 WSOP was a Deuce to Seven Draw Lowball tournament. Once it came down to the final day there were only seven players remaining in this tournament, and one of them was no other than Team FullTilt member Phil Ivey. At the start of the day Phil Ivey found himself in 6th place with 110.000 in chips. But after just a couple of hands he found himself being on his way out of the tourmanet as he dropped down to 65.000 in chips very quickly.

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Phil Hellmuth's own publishing house has just released a new book called "Deal Me In". The book is about 20 poker players, their way to success and their lives before making it pro. Players like Doyle Brunson, Phil Ivey, Daniel Negreanu and Scotty Nguyen's life time storys are included in the book.

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A poker site started tracking No Limit Holdem and Pot Limit Omaha results in January 2007, and after that the site also started tracking the high stakes Horse and Hi/Lo games. The player that was most successful when they started checking the results for 2007 was no one less than Phil Ivey himself.


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Last weekend the biggest pot (online) ever was played at Full Tilt on one of their highstakes tables. The pot reached the amount of $723 000, and with that it beats the old record of $607 000. Involved in this monster pot were "durrrr", Phil Ivey, "urindanger" and Gus Hansen. Winner of the pot was "urindanger" and he left the table after winning about $650 000!

Interested in a $100 no deposit bonus at Full Tilt?

Phil Ivey is the owner of 5 WSOP bracelets, one WPT Trophy and one victory in the Monte Carlo Millions. Apart from this he finished 10th in the 2003 WSOP and he has won a total of $9 Million in land based tournaments. The latest tournament that he won was the WPT Tournament LA Poker Classic.

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RailHeaven is a poker table at Full Tilt poker where some of the greatest poker players in the world sit down with enormous stacks and play $500/$1000 No Limit Holdem.

 

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Phil Ivey is probably the poker pro that wins the most money at the moment considering that he left a poker table at Full Tilt poker recently after winning $1.000.000 in just one day. This means that he have made a profit around $2.000.000 only in September playing at Full Tilt.