Yesterday the 43rd annual World Series of Poker started with the first gold bracelet event: Casino Employees Championship ($500 buy-in). In total, the 2012 WSOP includes 61 tournaments in all variations of poker, with buy-ins ranging from $500 to $1,000,000 (The Big One for One Drop). 480 poker tables are set up in 125,000 square feet of ballroom space at the Rio All-Suite Hotel & Casino in Vegas.
The $100,000 Super High Roller at the 2012 World Poker Tour World Championship was played last Friday and Tom Marchese took down the tournament for a bit more than $1,3 million. Andrew Robl finished as the runner-up, earning $822k.
Marvin Rettenmaier had a massive lead when the final table kicked off last Saturday, and even though the final table included so many good players very few thought that anyone would have a chance against Rettenmaier, who had played absolutely amazing poker the last 2 days of the tournament.
Tonight the final table of the $100,000 buy-in WPT World Championship Super High Roller is being played. Relatively unknown Dan Perper tops the field with 3,415,00 chips. But apart from him there are many familiar faces on the final table. Just have a look at the final table lineup below and you understand what we mean.
Seat 1) Bill Klein, 620 000 Seat 2) John Juanda, 1 875 000 Seat 3) Tom Marchese, 2 235 000 Seat 4) Daniel Perper, 3 415 000 Seat 5) Justin Bonomo, 2 105 000 Seat 6) Andrew Robl, 3 355 000
The winner of the tournament will take home amazing $1,3 million, so it will defeinitly be a very thrilling final table to follow. We will return with an update as soon as a winner has been crowned.
Yesterday the sixth day of the WPT World Championship was played at the Bellagio in Vegas. There were only 9 players left and only 6 of them would make it to the final table. Marvin Rettenmaier had a big lead and could just have kicked back and relaxed, waiting for the small stacks to take out each other.
There are now only 9 players left in the World Poker Tour World Championship after 5 days of play! But the final table is still not set as the remaining 9 players need to become 6 for Saturday's televised final table! This means that the 6 players who survive Day 6 (play starts in a few hours) will get a well-deserved off-day to gather some energy.
In an interview that was published 22/5, 11-time WSOP bracelet winner Phil Hellmuth said that there is a big chance that he will play the $1,000,000 buy-in event Big One for One Drop at this summer's WSOP because he has found stakers to pay a large chunk of the massive buy-in.
PhilHellmuth: I haven't even tried to raise money for the "Big One" yet. Then I talked to just one guy and I got a text from him: "I am thinking about buying a piece of you for the Big One. I put up $250,000." I just wrote back: "Thank you!"
Jens "Jeans89" Kyllönen, whose name many recognize from PokerStars nosebleed tables, has confirmed that he will take part in the $1 million buy-in event called BIG ONE for ONE DROP at this summer's World Series of Poker ($111,111 from each buy-in will be donated to the ONE DROP, a nonprofit organization that finds clean water for people worldwide in an effort to fight poverty). This means that a total of 39 players have registered for the event that has a 48-player cap.
This is what Kyllönen said in an interview about his decision to participate in the historic event...
152 players have become only 19 after 4 days of play, and now only 1 more player has to hit the rail before the tournament has reached the money and all players are guaranteed at least $40,266. Hafiz Khan (picture) leads the pack with 1,966,000, closely followed by Marvin Rettenmaier with 1,870,000, and nick Schulman is in 3rd place with 1,315,000.
The third day of the WPT World Championship has come to and end with about 45 players (WPT is still verifying the number of players). Michael Mizrachi, who lead the way into Day 3 with 428k, is among the players who are through to Day 4.
But he will "only" bring 171,700 chips to the tables when play continues again today. Isaac Haxton was in 5th place when the day started, but unfortunately nothing worked out for the American High-Stakes Pro as he was eliminated during the day.
The 2012 Spring Championship of Online Poker is now over as 2 days of Main Event action, low, medium and high, are over. The Main Even Low attracted a field of 22,128 players which generated a prize pool of $2,212,800! 3,150 players received a share of the prize pool and "john_tri80" from Greece took down the event for $198,725,75.
Shaun Deeb, 26, won his fifth (4 this year and 1 last year) Spring Championship of Online Poker event early yesterday morning! The win of Event #38-High (Horse $2,100 buy-in), an event that attracted 85 players, gave the Mexico-based American $46,325.
Thanks to eight Top 10 finishes and 4 titles at this year's SCOOP, Deeb took home the overall leaderboard and will get a EPT Grand Final prize package. He also won the High Stakes leaderboard and will get a 2013 PokerStars Caribbean Adventure package. Lastly, he will get tickets to all MicroMillions II Events for finishing 6th in the low-stakes leaderboard.
World Poker Tour World Championship is being played at Bellagio in Vegas at the moment, and already Day 1 a & b as well as Day 2 are in the books. According to the latest update on world poker tour's website, 95 players remain and no one else than Michael Mizrachi leads with 428,000. Another well-known player with plenty of chips is Isaac Haxton (has played a few Superstar Showdown matches against Viktor "Isildur1" Blom) in 5th place with 313,500.
In the latest edition of the Weekly Rant, Daniel Negreanu talks about the upcoming 2012 World Series of Poker and changes that have been made, golf, what he thinks about ballerina shoes, Howard Lederer and Chris Ferguson, and more.
Johnny Lodden might be Norway's biggest poker star ever, and he used to be among the top High Stakes cash game players in the world on the Prima Poker network back in the "good old days". However, he hasn't been running so good in the past few years and it's not very often he hits the headlines with a big win.
In a brand new interview, Viktor "Isildur1" Blom talks about his two SCOOP titles, his very first World Series of Poker this year, how the high-stakes scene online has been after Black Friday, and more.
Viktor Blom on...
his very first WSOP this year I'm really looking forward to going to Las Vegas, playing in the Main Event, and just experiencing what it's like to be there. I haven't quite decided which events I'm definitely going to play yet, but I'm under pressure to decide. I talked to a lot of other players in Monte Carlo recently about what it's like over there and it sounds full on, so it will be cool to actually experience it myself.
The Finnish poker pro Ilari Sahamies ended up as the biggest winner of 2011 at PokerStars with millions of dollars won. However, this year has been a totally different story for him and now it seems like he's more or less broke. "I don't have any money left," Sahamies wrote in the poker chat the other day after losing everything he had at the table.
According to a report from iGaming Post, PokerStars, Full Tilt Poker and the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) have reached an agreement on paying back Full Tilt Poker players and the official repayment plan might be presented already at the end of this month.
Once the announcement has been made and the U.S. Department of Justice has approved it, both Full Tilt Poker and PokerStars should be able to apply for licenses within the U.S., when and if online poker is regulated in the future.
Phil Galfond,27, has won millions of dollars both online and live and he has also won a World Series of Poker bracelet and appeared on multiple seasons of GSN's High Stakes Poker. Yesterday, Galfond wrote about how he started playing poker in a blog entry titled "My Poker (+other) Story. It's very interesting reading (over 5000 words). In fact, it's a must read for all poker lovers out there...
The Swedish High Roller "MaiseE, who is rumored to be ex PokerStars Pro William Thorson, dominated the final table of Event 24-High $1,050 Pot Limit Omaha and took home $107,422 after defeating Milana Jones heads-up.
Today PokerStars released an Android version of Zoom Poker, a fast action ring game format that give players more hands in less time! For now this version of Zoom only works on Android-powered devices, but probably it won't take long until Zoom will be available for iPhone and iPad as well.
Also, the official version of Zoom is now available in the poker client - almost 2 months after the beta version saw the daylight for the first time (more than 300 million hands have been played during this time)
The 2012 Spring Championship of Online Poker at PokerStars is now halfway through and 7 action filled days and lots of events are in the books. Last week, we wrote about Viktor "Isildur1" Blom's two wins and Daniel Negreanu's second place finish. During the weekend Shaun Deeb joined Viktor Blom as the only multi-event winners when he took down Event #19-High ($2,000 Triple Stud) for $44,200 while Jason Mercier and Phil Galfond each earned six figures in Event #18-High ($1,000 PLO Omaha 6-Max with rebuys).
Reuters, an international news agancy, reports that a group of 6 Buddhist monks have resigned after a video filmed secretly showed them playing high-stakes poker, drinking and smoking at a memorial event for dead Zen master. Seongho, a senior monk, said that about $875,000 was on the table during the cash game that lasted for about 13 hours.
There are some insane cash games going on in Macau in China at the moment, with some of the best players in the world! According to a poker news site that follows the action in Macau on daily basis, Tom "durrrr" Dwan took home a pot of almost $4 million dollars during the ongoing Macau Big Game.
After compiling last week's online cash games, it is clear that the American pro Ben "Sauce123" Sulsky was the biggest winner with a $401,718 profit. A player called "Phisherman36" also did very well last week. With a $388k profit the anonymous player secured the second place on the list of last week's biggest winners.
