BankrollMob News: Poker, Casino, Crypto & Betting

Day three of the 2010 WSOP Europe Main Event is in the books. Now there are 22 players left of 346 and the final table is getting closer and closer. In the top of the 22-player field are two of the biggest names in the poker world - Phil Ivey and "Isildur1", a.k.a. Viktor Blom (Sweden). Wouldn't it be amazing if both of them made it to the final table and then all the way to playing heads-up against each other? 

Read more » WSOPE London - Main Event: Phil Ivey and Isildur1 through to Day 4

What an amazing final of the High Roller Heads-up championship event in London! After a nearly 8 hour long battle on Thursday night, the tournament crew called it a day and the tournament went on a break for 2 days. Yesterday, Gus Hansen and Jim Collopy once again sat down at the poker table, this time in order to play the last of the 3 heads-up matches so a winner could be crowned. After about 3 hours of play, it was "The Great Dane" who had all the chips on his side of the table after winning all in with full house (deuces full of jacks) vs Collopy's three of a kind (ace kicker). For the win Gus Hansen received nothing less than $451,880 and his very first WSOP bracelet. A big congratulations to Gus Hansen!

On Friday October 8th one of the most expensive live tournaments in the history of poker will take place at Es Saadi Casino in Marrakech, Morocco. The buy-in for the tournament is nothing less than $100,000 and there are 40 seats available - 10 seats are reserved for american poker pros. David Benyamine (highroller) and Michael Mizrachi (WSOP 2010 finalist) are two of the big names that have confirmed that they are attending.

Read more » Benyamine and Mizrachi to take part in tournament with $100k buy-in

Yesterday, the WSOPE London High Roller Event's semi-finals were played. Gus Hansen (Denmark) played against Andrew Feldman (UK), while Collopy (USA) battled Ram Vaswani (UK). It was 2 quite long (but kind of thrilling) heads-up matches the small crowd at Casino Empire in London got to watch. It ended up being Gus Hansen and Jim Collopy who won their matches and made it to the final heads-up. This meant that a native wouldn't win the tournament.

After a short break, Hansen and Collopy sat down at the poker table again to play the final (best of three matches) - a final that would last nearly 8 hours and still end up in a tie.

Read more » WSOPE London - High Roller: Gus Hansen and Jim Collopy deadlocked in 1-1 tie

Gus Hansen, the danish poker pro, is very close of winning his first gold bracelet in the High Roller event at WSOPE London. So far, he has defeated 5 players (Phil Ivey, Neil Channing etc) and now he's just 2 heads-up matches away from winning the whole tournament. If Gus wins the semi-final vs Andrew Feldman (UK), he will either face Jim Collopy (USA) or Ram Vaswani (UK) in the final.

The four remaining players are guaranteed £96,212 each, but all of them will do everything they possibly can to lay hands on the first place prize of £228,409. At 3pm (local time) the semi-finals will start, and then it's best of three matches until the tournament has found its winner. Personally, I hope for Gus Hansen! He really needs the money to make up for some of the loses he had in the past few years.

After weeks of buildup and handing out prizes for every millionth hand since 49.7 billion, the 50 billionth hand has been dealt at PokerStars. It happened at 10:37 a.m. EDT Wednesday when there were 220,000 players on the site playing on 33,000 tables.

The 50th billionth hands was played on a table named Ornamenta ($,02/ $.05) and the winner of the hand was a player with the nickname "tbvle". For winning the hand he received $56,140 and the other players at the table received between $2,990 and $3,070 - depending on how many VIP points they have earned the previous 50 hands. But that's not all, all players received a $5,200 WCOOP Main Event ticket as well. It must have been an amazing feeling for these players, who were playing for peanuts, to win so much money.

The swedish poker pro William Thorson has been a Team PokerStars Pro for 2 years and been PokerStars face on the swedish poker market during this time. However, his contract with PokerStars expired some time ago and according to the world's biggest poker site it was just a matter of time before he signed a new one. Now, William Thorson announces that he wont sign another contact with PokerStars and that he has other plans.

"After 2 years in PokerStars colors as a member of Team PokerStars Pro I have decided to move on. I have decided to to quit and move on with new projects and challenges.", says William Thorson to a swedish poker magazine.

Read more » William Thorson leaves Team PokerStars Pro

The WSOPE London High Roller event attracted a field of 103 players who could afford the buy-in of £10,350. Many of these 103 players were big names in the poker world. To mention a few, Viktor Blom (Isildur1 according to many), Huck Seed, Daniel Negreanu, Phil Ivey, Gus Hansen and Erik Sagström. All of them, except the swedes Viktor Blom and Erik Sagström, are among the 32 players who will return to play Day 2 today.

Read more » WSOPE London High Roller Event: Phil Ivey & Gus Hansen through to Day 2

For Daniel Negreanu there is no doubt whatsoever that the high stakes player Isildur1 can be anyone else than Viktor Blom from Sweden. Well, at least if we should believe what Daniel writes in his latest blog entry - "Top 5 Young Poker Pros of the Future". Daniel praises Isildur1 and call him a legend in the poker world, even though he never played against him.

"I've never played against him, but people I respect have told me that his NLH skills are remarkable and he approaches the game like no other, absolutely fearless and fun to watch." writes Daniel is his blog.

Other players who get amazing feedback in Daniel's "Top 5 Young Poker Pros of the Future"-list are Jason Mercier, Bill Reynolds, Tom Dwan and last but not least the norwegian poker pro Annette Obrestad.

Read more » Negreanu's "Top 5 Young Poker Pros of the Future" list - Isildur1 is one of them!

582 players paid the buy-in of £1,075 and entered Event #3 (No Limit Hold´em) at WSOPE London a few days ago. The field is now down to only 9 players and it's time for the final table in a few hours time. Kaveh Payman is in the lead with 434,000 followed by Mehdi Senhaji (369,000).

All eyes, however, will be on the young Englishman JP Kelly (242,000) as he has the chance to break Phil Ivey's record of the youngest players to win three bracelets. He would also become the first player since Johnny Chan won the main event in back-to-back years to successfully defend his title.

Read more » WSOPE London - Final Table Event #3: JP Kelly close to writing poker history

120 players took part in the WSOPE London £5,250 PLO event and created a prize pool of £600,000. The tournament began on Thursday and finished on Saturday night. Jeffrey Lisandro, the Italian poker pro, played fantastic poker from day 1 to the final table, where he continued playing killer poker and defeated Joe Serock in heads-up. For the win he received his 5th WSOP bracelet and £159,000.

Jeffrey Lisandro has been around for quite some time now, however, it was during last WSOP, when he won 3 bracelets, that he really made a name for himself. Lisandro is one of a very few players in the world who has a WSOP bracelet and a WSOPE bracelet.

Phil Laak has recovered very fast from the quad bike accident a few months ago, and he has also been doing very well at the poker tables. However, his first big win since the accident came yesterday when he took home the first event of 6 at WSOPE London - his first ever WSOPE (World Series of Poker Europe) win. At the moment Phil is playing Event #2 of WSOPE London and he' doing fine so far. He's one of the 49 last men standing in the tournament, however, he's far from the top of the field where notables such as Barry Greenstein, Chris Bjorin, Erik Friberg and Jeff Madsen are battling with big stacks.

Click here to read more about Phil Laak's quad bike accident.

Phil and Sandra Sawyer had two reasons two celebrate last week - they had been married for 40 years and they won £2,6 million on Lotto. The couple, who had been buying Lotto tickets as a part of a family syndicate for 3 years, will share their winnings with their daughters Amanda, 28, and Nicola 39. After reading an interview with the couple, it doesn't seem like the big win will get to their heads.

Read more » Birmingham couple wins £2.6m on their 40th Wedding Anniversary

Even though there are so many tournaments, both online and live, running at the moment, it didn't stop a big field of poker players from taking part in the 2010 English Poker Open in London. Among the field of players were notables such as Phil Laak and Liv Boeree, however, there were no familiar names who made it to the final table.

After a 6 hour battle on the final table, Fabian Quoss stood as winner of the tournament after defeating his final opponent Sebastian Crul. A big congratulations to Fabian Quoss and to his biggest cash ever, £220,650.

Greg "Fossilman" Raymer, the 2004 WSOP Main Event champ, has been doing very well so far in PokerStars World Championship of Online Poker. He ended up in 13th place in event #25 for $4,000 and made it all the way to the final table in event #27 where he got knocked out in 3rd place ($10,000). It will be interesting to see if any other big names will have as big success in 2010 WCOOP as Greg Raymer.

Read more » WCOOP: ex-World Champion Greg Raymer places high in 2 events

After a traditional Haka welcoming at SKYCITY Casino in Auckland, Day 1a of PokerStars Asia Pacific Poker Tour kicked off yesterday. Eighty-nine players signed up for the first starting day and among them were Auckland Championships winner James Honeybone, New Zealand Poker Open Champion Jackson Zheng and APPT Auckland High Rollers Champ Kevin Clark.

But none of the ex-champs were among the 42 players who had chips left when the tournament manager called it a day. In the lead is Noah Vogelman with 128k chips, followed by John Harman and Tao Luo - both with 94k stacks. A bigger field of players are expected to participate today in the second starting day of the tournament, Day 1b.

WCOOP Event #22, a two-day tournament, was finalized this noon. The three last men standing in the tournament had even stacks and quickly agreed on making a deal. All of them walked away with a big piece each from the $3 million+ prize pool.

In Event #23, which finished last night, a three-way deal was made as well. However, there wasn't as much money up for grabs in this event as in Event #22.

A big congratulations to all the players who made it to the final table in both these events!

Read more » PokerStars - WCOOP: Three-way deal in 2 events

There were some quite interesting games going on at Full Tilt's nosebleed tables last week. We got to see Ilari "Ziigmund" Sahamies win $740k in just about 1000 hands and Cole South having another cold week and losing $622k. Interesting facts about last week's games is that 5 of the top 10 winners are from the Nordic countries - Patrik Antonius (1st place) and Ilari "Ziigmund" Sahamies (2nd) from Finland, skjervoy from Norway (3rd) and the swedes UaarePilous (8th) and DIN_FRU (10th).

Read more » HighStakes: Ziigmund is last week's biggest winner

It's not a secret that Phil Hellmuth has a big problem with his temper when playing poker. Even though Phil has a huge bankroll and probably seen it all when it comes to bad beats, he still can't control his feelings after so many years of experience. For quite some time now many of the world's best poker players have been trying to help Phil (in many different ways) to deal with his temper - but most of them have given up. Tony G, however, refuses to give up and in a recent video interview he said the following about his dear friend Phil Hellmuth. 

"Phil is a very nice person away from the poker table. But at the poker table he's mentally unstable and needs professional help", Tony G told the interviewer.

"He has gotten one of those headshrinkers to help him now, and I also try to help him. One just feel like taking care of Phil. I lead him, just like my dog.

On Tuesday it's finally time for the 2010 World Series Of Poker Europe. The first stop on the tour will take place at the Empire Casino in London where 5 events will be played in 15 days. The most interesting of these events will for sure be the Main Event (£10,350 buy-in) on September 23. Many notables are expected to take part in the Main Event and hopefully some of them make it to the final table on September 28.

Here is the schedule for the first stop on the tour:

Tuesday 14 Sep: £2 650 No Limit Hold'em 6-max (3 days)
Thursday16 Sep: £5 250 Pot Limit Omaha (3 days)

Friday 17 Sep: £1 075 No Limit Holdem (5 days)

Tuesday 21 Sep: £10 350 No Limit Hold'em Heads-Up (3 days)

Thursday 23 Sep: £10 350 WSOPE main event (NLH) (6 days)

Ilari "Ziigmund" Sahamies games at the high stakes tables has been like a roller coaster lately. Some days he wins big and others he lose big. Some people think that his new date, Miss Finland, could be one of the reasons for this when others think that he's just running cold at the moment. However, between 8-9 September Ziigmund had a great run and won $740,000 in just about 1,000 hands. It will be interesting to see whether or not Ziigmund can keep it up and start playing more stable and avoid the big swings.

Read more » HighStakes: Ziigmund wins $740k in no-time

The International Poker Players Association (IPPA) will represent a championship event later this year with the biggest buy-in the world has ever seen. The buy-in for the IPPA Championship is nothing less that $250,000 and it will take place in Monte Carlo on Nov 29 - Dec 2 and there are 48 seats available. Two of these seats are reserved for sponsors and another 2 for the lucky poker players who qualifies through satellites in Monte Carlo and Los Angeles.

13 of the poker world's biggest names have already signed up for the tournament - Johnny Chan, Freddie Deeb, Tony G, Huck Seed, Robert Mizrachi, Phil Ivey, Gus Hansen, Allen Cunningham, Patrik Antonius, Allen Cunningham, Bruno Fitoussi, Michael "The Grinder" Mizrachi and Tom Dwan. The total prize pool will be 12 million dollars and and the winner will get 5 million dollars. Ladies and gents, this will be the most interesting and thrilling poker tournament ever! 

In case you missed it, PokerStars 2010 World Championship of Online Poker is running at the moment. $50,000,000 is up for grabs in 62 events and so far 10 of these events have found their winner. You can qualify for all the remaining events for as little as $1 - satellites are up running 24/7!

If you don't have an account at PokerStars already, then we can offer you a 100% up to $600 deposit bonus, but of course we think that everyone should take part in the 2010 WCOOP. It would be an honor for us if one of our members cashed in one of the events. Good Luck!

Read more » 2010 WCOOP: 62 Events and $50,000,000 in guaranteed prize pools!

The WPT High Roller event in London attracted a very small field of players this time. Only 18 players were willing to pay the buy-in of £15,000, among them were notables such as Tony G, Luke Schwartz and Freddy Deeb. It ended up being Freddy Deeb, Tony G and Justin "BoostedJ" Smith who made it to the money. First player to leave the tournament was Freddy Deeb, which left Tony G and "Justin Smith playing heads up, a heads up match which Justin Smith took home after some time. For the win he received nothing less than £141,000.

PokerStars World Championship of Online Poker is back! So far #6 events (final table results below) have been played, but there is a long way to go as the 2010 WCOOP includes 62 events and $50,000,000 is up for grabs. You can qualify for all the remaining events for as little as $1 - satellites are up running 24/7!

In case you don't have an account at PokerStars already, we can offer you a 100% up to $600 deposit bonus, but of course we think that everyone should take part in the 2010 WCOOP. It would be an honor for us if one of our members cashed in one of the events. Good Luck!

Read more » 2010 WCOOP: 62 Events and $50,000,000 in guaranteed prize pools!