BankrollMob News: Poker, Casino, Crypto & Betting

The 7th edition of Aussie Millions' $100,000 Challenge event is now over. The tournament saw a field of 22 brave players who were willing to put $100k from their own bankroll at risk. The field included notable pros such as Tom "durrr" Dwan, Tony G, Jason Mercier, Phil Ivey, Gus Hansen, Erik Seidel, Joe Hachem, and Daniel Negreanu.

After two days of play, 2 of these players had secured a piece of the prize pool, Tony G (4th - $242k) and Joe Hachem (3rd - $330,000). The final battle was between Dan "King Dan" Smith and Mikhail Smirnov. "King Dan", a well-known high stakes grinder online, ended up winning the tournament and received a first prize of $1,012,000. The second place finish gave Smirnov $616,000.

In one week, 1 day and couple of hours European Poker Tour makes a stop in Deauville, France. Last year, the €5,000 + €300 EPT Deauville Main Event saw a record-breaking field of 891 players and Lucien Cohen walked away with the first prize of €880,000. It will be interesting to see whether or not this year's main event will see another record-field.

Read more » PokerStars EPT Deauville starts next week

2,724 players entered TCOOP Event #19 yesterday, which created a total prize pool of $574,219.20 - nearly double the guarantee of $300,000. The event was played in Hyper Turbo mode and it took just about an hour until 306 players were left (all guaranteed to get away with double the buy-in). Then it only took another hour until 7 players came away with five figures each.

Read more » TCOOP: He turned $215 into $90,000 - in only 2 hours!

PokerStars' Turbo Championship of Online Poker is now 3 days in and there are lots of events still to be played. The highlight of tonight's events is of course the $109 NL Hold'em with a $300,000 guarantee, and there are plenty of cheap satellites running for this tournament and the other tournaments below (all played tonight).

$55 NL Hold'em [6-Max, Hyper-Turbo], $150K Gtd
$55 NL Hold'em [Knockout], $200K Gtd
$109 NL Hold'em $300K Gtd
$22+R PL Omaha [6-Max,2x-Turbo], $150K Gtd

Don't forget that you will be rewarded with entry to four $1000 freerolls per day for 31 days when you make a deposit on PokerStars at the moment. Plus players who make their first deposit get the 100% welcome bonus of up to $600. Click here for further information.

Ira Rubin, a 53-year-old businessman in financial transactions, has in an agreement with a court in New York pleaded quilty to several crimes related to Black Friday (the day when FBI and DOJ closed down Full Tilt Poker, PokerStars etc).

According to the Department of Justice (DOJ), Rubin has deceived banks into transferring gaming funds so it wouldn't look like the money came from gambling. The potential max penalty for Rubin's crimes is 80 years in prison. But since he had some kind of agreement with the court, experts believe that he will get less than 2 years.

It's time to get really excited as PokerStars Turbo Championship of Online Poker is less than 3 hours away from seeing the daylight for the very first time. The first event is a $22 No Limit Hold'em 6-max tournament with a $200,000 guarantee, but the prize pool will most probably be much greater than that since it's the opening event.

In total, $10,000,000 is guaranteed in over 50 events ($5.50 - $2,100 buy-ins) and the party will go on until January 29th. All tournaments will be played in Turbo and Huper Turbo mode, so you don't need waste a lot of your time to take in some of the events. Also there are satellites running for all the TCOOP events, with really cheap buy-ins.

Below is the TCOOP schedule:

We offer a $600 deposit bonus if you are new to PokerStars. Click here for more info.

Terrence Chan, 31, has won PokerStars' Spring Championship of Online Poker (SCOOP) two times and has had a very successful online poker career in general. Apart from being a good poker, Chan's also good at Kick Boxing and Brazilian JiuJitsu, two sports that he has practiced for many years. In fact, his interest for martial arts have overshaded poker recently and last year he became a MMA-fighter and had his first fight, which he won on technical knockout.

Read more » PokerStars: The Poker Pro Who Became MMA-Fighter

Two days ago, some lucky players at a $1/$2 Limit Hold'em table got to share a bad beat jackpot of amazing $1 million on the Merge Gaming Network (Carbon Poker etc). Seventy percent of the jackpot was distributed to the table. The one who lost the hand, "Eulson", received amazing $355k, the winner of the hand, "123maryc", received over $177k, and the remaining players at the table got more than $25,000 each.

Read more » $1 Million Bad Beat Jackpot Awarded on Merge Network

Last Sunday, after 3 days of play, the opening event ($1,000 NLH) of Aussie Millions got a winner, Brendon Rubie (a well-known figure in the land down under thanks to several cashes in major poker tournaments). Rubie played very well on the final table and had a 2-1 chip lead when heads-up began. His opponent, Scott Wilson, fought really well though and didn't give away any chips for free. After some time of fighting back and forth, Rubie managed to get Wilson to believe that he was weak in a hand that he had flopped 2 pairs. After Wilson made the call on the river and mucked his hand, Rubie went up to his friends and started celebrating. 

Read more » Local took home the Aussie Millions opening event ($200,000)

The 2012 Turbo Championship of Online Poker (TCOOP) on PokerStars is now just 2 days away and it's high time to plan which tournaments you want to play. TCOOP runs from January 19-29, 2012, with a guaranteed prize pool of amazing $10,000,000 that is awarded in over 50 events. There will be Turbo tournaments as well as Hyper Turbo tournament, with buy-ins from $5.5 - $2,100. The highlight of TCOOP will of course be the Main Event with a fantastic $1,500,000 guarantee (January 29).

Read more » PokerStars: 2012 Turbo Championship of Online Poker ($10,000,000 guaranteed)

The German Poker pro Martin Finger has once again been in trouble after a night out partying (read EPT Prague winner arrested by the police). This time he was thrown out from a club during PokerStars Caribbean Adventure in Bahamas. Besides that he punched the former world champion Jonathan Duhamel the face outside the club.

Read more » Troublemaker Martin Finger punched Jonathan Duhamel during PCA Bahamas

Some time ago we wrote that Gus Hansen was on his way to Macau to check out the insane high stakes games. According to what Gus Hansen wrote in his blog then, he wasn't sure whether or not he would take part in the biggest games. 

Now we can confirm that Hansen joined the action in Macau last week and played against Phil Ivey, John Juanda, Andrew Robl, and several Asian businessmen at stakes of HKD$10,000/HKD$20,000 (USD1,287/2,574). According to an Asian poker site, Gus Hansen has crushed the games and he's up about $4 million already.

Read more » High Stakes: Gus Hansen scores 7-figure profit in Macau

The 2012 PCA Main Event is now in the books. After serval days of play, John Dibella, a 43-year-old stock trader from Westchester, New York, was the last man standing after knocking out Kyle Julius in 2nd place.

Dibella survived a field of 1072 players to reach the fantastic first prize of $1,775,000. Dibella's previous tournament cashed totaled just $42k, and his biggest cash up to this point came in 2008 at the PCA when he finished 60th for $16,000. In other words, $1.775 million will come in handy for his future poker career.

Read more » Stock trader won the 2012 PCA Main Event ($1,775,000)

Last Friday, Leonid Bilokur and Jonathan Duhamel battled it out on the PokerStars Caribbean Adventure High Roller final table. Duhamel played amazing on the final table and got to heads-up with a 2-1 chip lead over Bilokur. But Bilokur didn't throw in the towel. Instead he showed no respect whatsoever for the former world champion since he took down pot after pot. Small pots in the beginning, then bigger pots as his confidence grew.

Read more » PCA High Roller: Bilokur defeated Duhamel heads-up for $1.1 million

141 players paid $25k each and entered the PCA High Roller event yesterday. Seven of these 141 players even re-entered the tournament for another $25,000 ("ElkY", Chris Moorman, Chance Kornuth, Eui Woong Kim, Joe Elpayaa, and Nick Yunis)., making the total number of entries 148 - 10 less than last year.

After 11 levels of play, lots of all ins, bad beats etc, 56 players remained and they will return to the tables today and continue the struggle towards the juicy $1,134,930 first prize. Chip leader is Nick Yunis from Chile with about 60k more than his closest opponent, businessman Bill Perkins. Yunis has been around the poker scene for a couple of years but missed out on the really big cashes. So, now he has a great opportunity to do something about that.

Read more » PCA High Roller: 56 of 141 players ready for Day 2

After 5 days of play, the 2012 PokerStars Caribbean Adventure Bahamas main event is down to a final table with 8 players. Faraz Jaka (picture), the day 2 and day 4 chip leader, is still in the lead. Jaka will bring 6,47 million chips to the final table. Xuan Liu (picture), the last remaining women, and Kyle Julians are very close behind Jaka in chips. So, the final table will be everything but a walk in the park for Jaka.

Read more » The 2012 PCA Bahamas Main Event final table is set: The winner will get $2,000,000!

Another love saga has come to an end as Vanessa Rousso and Chad Brown announced that they are getting divorced last Tuesday. Rousso and Brown marriage only lasted about 2 years and neither of them have announced why they decided to split up.

But, as always, there are plenty of rumors circulating on the web. One is the 20-year age diffidence between the two, another one is that Brown's cancer struggle last year took a hard hit on the relationship.

Read more » Vanessa Rousso and Chad Brown's marriage comes to an end

Faraz Jaka, who lead the way into 3 day, is once again back in the lead as Day 4 of the PokerStars Caribbean Adventure main event has come to an end with 24 remaining players. Faraz turned his 1,22 million stack into a monstrous 4,1 million stack during Day 4 - about 1,4 million more chips than his closest opponent Alex Fritzgerald.

Unfortunately Team PokerStars Pro Berry Greenstein was knocked out in 25th place for $46k. This was far from the first time that "The Robin Hood of Poker" went deep in a major tournament but missed out on the big cash. We can only wish him better luck next time.

Read more » PCA Bahamas: Greenstein finished 25th. Faraz Jaka is back in the lead!

The third day of PokerStars Caribbean Adventure (PCA) main event in Bahamas is now history. Out of the 184 players who started the day only 64 players were left with chips when the tournament crew called it a day. All of the remaining players are guaranteed to get away with at least $32,500 each. But of course that's peanuts compared to the prize money on the final table.

Read more » PCA: Faraz Jaka still going strong in Bahamas

There were some big gaps between Daniel Negreanu's blog updates last year, which might be a reflection on his failure to reach most of the goals he had in the beginning of 2011. 2012 has started much better for the Canadian poker pro with a final table at the 2012 PCA Super High Roller last Sunday.

In a blog post on January 6th, Daniel writes about his 10 Poker Goals for 2012. For example: he wants to regain the 1st place on all four all-time money earners lists, win at least 1 WSOP bracelet and stop drinking the day before a tournament.

Read more » Daniel Negreanu's Poker Goals for 2012: "no drinking or socializing the night before a tournament"

Today it's time for the third day of PokerStars Caribbean Adventure on Bahamas. The player field has been narrowed down from 1072 to 195 players, and the chip leader is Faraz "The Toilet" Jaka, 2009-2010 WPT Player Of The Year, with 902,500 chips - quite impressive since he started Day 2 with only 129,500 chips.

There are plenty of big names left. 2011 PCA winners Galen Hall and 2010 champ Harrison Gimbel, Luca Pagano, Barry Greenstein, Liv Boeree - just to mention a few. 160 of the remaining 195 players will receive a share from the massive prizepool. The winner will get stunning 2 million dollars, and the runner-up will get $1,275,000!

Day 3 of the 2012 PCA Bahamas Main Event begins at 18:00 CET tonight. 

The PokerStars Pro Randy "nanonoko" Lew took a new world record during PokerStars Caribbean Adventure in Bahams. In a corner of the tournament room Lew sat and played not less than 40 cash game tables (PokerStars had to raise the table limit) on PokerStars, and in eight hours he managed to play 23,493 hands - about 2936 hands per hour - or just about 0.8 hands per second.

One of the conditions for the record to be approved by Guinness World Records was that Lew had to win something. The profit, however, just ended up being 7,65 dollars, less than one dollar per hour.

Read more » New Guinness World Record on PokerStars

After 2 days and several hours of final table action, the PCA Super High Roller event's player field had been narrowed down from 30 to only 2 players, Viktor Blom and Dan Shak. It was a quite short heads-up match that mostly went the young Swede's way. And it didn't take long before the final hand was played:

976Q was on the table and Blom betted 180,000. Dan Shak moved all in almost straight away. Blom called with K Q, and Shak flipped over A5. The turn card was the 4 and Blom took home the tournament.

Read more » Viktor Blom won PCA Super High Roller ($1.2 million)

After 3 days of play, Dave Shallow, from the UK, had accumulated a monstrous looking 6.1 million chips, almost 2 million more than the remaining field together! It was not a big surprise to anyone that he would be the one who took home the tournament, the first prize of €222,280 and a $25,000 seat in the WPT World Championships, which will be played at Bellagio next year.

The win is by far Dave Shallow's biggest in his poker career. But even though he's been playing extremely well and seems to be on a winning streak at the moment, he said in an interview after the win that he will take a break from poker for a while now and instead take care of his 7,5 month pregnant girlfriend. Let's hope the money will come in handy for Shallow and his family!

Yesterday, the World Poker Tour Ireland Main Event kicked off with 338 players. At the end of the day (after 9 levels of play), 195 had chips left and they now get a few hours of rest before it's time to return to the tables again.

Dave Callaghan (picture), a local poker player, is the chip leader with 186,900 chips. It will be interesting to see whether Callaghan has what it takes to become the second local in a very short time to win the main event (referring to the 2011 WPT Venice Main Event that a local boy took home). Well, there is long way to go and still many good players will plenty of chips, so we will just have to wait and see what happens.