BankrollMob News: Poker, Casino, Crypto & Betting

Brian Hastings is not a newcomer when it comes to playing poker or blogging. Already back in 2005, when he had his first big win, he started writing about his life as poker pro in his blog. However, it's thanks to the big win against Isildur1 that Brian Hastings has been in the headlines on the most poker sites and poker magazines in the past few days.

In the latest blog post, Hastings writes that he still can't believe that he has the biggest winning day in online poker history thanks to the $4,2 million session against Isildur1. However, he doesn't write anything about any of the hands from the session. In other words, it seems like he doesn't want to reveal any info on how to play and win big against the Swede.

Read more » Brian Hastings feels bad for Isildur1 after the big win

It didn't take long before Isildur1 lost really big again. Yesterday night, the Unknown Swede was playing against Brian Hastings (member of Full Tilt Team CardRunners) in Pot Limit Omaha at the $500/$1000 stakes at Full Tilt poker. Isildur1 didn't have a chance against Brian Hasting this time and at around 6:00 O'clock in the morning, Brian Hasting called it a day, $4,200,000 richer.

Isildur1 is now once again about $1,5 million minus at Full Tilt poker and once again people are speculating in that his about to go broke. Many people that have been following Isildur1 thinks that he needs to stop playing PLO and instead should stick to NLHE if he want's to play as high as $500/$1000 against the worlds best players. Whatever game Isildur1 chooses to play - let's just hope that we haven't seen him for the last time!

Last month, Full Tilt Online Poker Series XIV was played and Full Tilt guaranteed 16 million dollars in 25 events. FTOPS XIV became a huge success as many players took part in the 25 events and more money was up for grabs than Full Tilt guaranteed.

Now, it's time for the MiniFTOPS XIV. MiniFTOPS features the same events as FTOPS, but all at 1/10 of the buy-in. The first event will be played today at 21:00 ET and not less than $250,000 is guaranteed by Full Tilt. However, there is another $3,750,000 up for grabs in the other 24 events as Full Tilt guarantees $4 million dollars in total.

Read more » MiniFTOPS XIV starts today

Yesterday, after another long break, durrrr and Dwan played 588 hands in 2 hours time - a quite short session in other words. The winner this time came to be Patrik Antonius who won $68,000 even though durrrr took home many of the bigger pots. However, Patrik was the one who took home the biggest pot this time, $143,193. This session was probably the most boring of all durrrr challenge sessions so far. Let's hope for longer sessions, more action and bigger pots the next time durrrr and Antonius play against each other.

Tom Dwan still has a big lead
Tom "durrrr" Dwan is in the lead with $711,556 after that 27,773 hands out of 50,000 hands have been played. It seems like we will have to wait a few more months (at least) for the durrrr challenge to come to an end if they don't start playing more often.

After that Isildur1 went from 6 million dollars plus to 1,5 million minus, no one thought that he would be able to play at the higher stakes again. Many were even speculating in that he was broke. However, it didn't take long before Isildur1 returned...

In the past few days, he has been playing a lot of PLO at the $300/$600 & $500/$1000 stakes at Full Tilt poker. Isildur1's game hasn't changed a bit since the tilt sessions. In other words - it's still the same kind of roller coaster poker as he played before. Well, something has changed, and that is that everyone wants to play against him.

A very successful comeback
Isildur1 is doing very, very well and he has went from 1,5 million minus to about $2 million plus. A lot of this money comes from Ziigmund, Brian Townsend and durrrr. The luck has really been on Isildur1's side in the past few days. For example, he flopped top set versus bottom set against Townsend and won $720,000. In another pot, Ziigmund made a move at the wrong time and was 4-1 underdog when Isildur1 called his all in. Already on the turn, Ziigmund's chances of winning the pot were gone and Isildur1 just had to wait for the river card before the pot of $788,000 was his.

We have just updated our November leaderboard at Titan Poker with the latest standings as of November 30th.

The top 10 prize winners are as follows:Read more » Titan Poker November Leaderboard Finished

We just received another standings update for our exclusive BigBet Poker $25,000 RakeChase.

The BigBet Poker $25,000 RakeChase is exclusive for BankrollMob members and it's really simple. Just hit each of the 9 VIP Point Milestones and get RakeChase Prizes for hitting that level.

There's a massive $5000 up for grabs for the 1st person to reach the last level and if you make it through each of the 9 levels, you will get nearly $10,000 in RakeChase Prizes!!

The RakeChase runs betwen 20th November 2009 and Sunday 28th February 2010 - still plenty of time to get involved. Read more » BigBet Poker $25,000 RakeChase - Standings (Dec 7th)

European Poker Tour in Prague saw a huge field of players this time. Not less than 584 (219 Day 1a and 365 Day 1b) players entered the tournament and created a total prize pool of €2,842,100. After that Day1 a & b, Day 2, 3 & 4 had been played, it was finally time for the final table. These were the 8 players who were about to battle for the EPT Trophy and the first prize of €682,000.

Seat 1: Anthony Roux (2,839,000)
Seat 2: Stefan Mattsson (3,553,000)
Seat 3: Laurence Ryan (1,338,000)
Seat 4: Gustav Ekerot (502,000)
Seat 5: Sven Eichelbaum (658,000)
Seat 6: Jan Skampa (3,985,000)
Seat 7: Eyal Avitan (2,627,000)
Seat 8: Luca Pagano (2,119,000)

Read more » EPT - Prague: Jan Skampa wins after an amazing comeback

We're used to bad beat stories all the time so here's a story from the other side of that cliff. One lucky BankrollMob member, won two times in our 4-day old Christmas Calendar. Not just any two days, but two days right after each other.

And as if that's not enough, he even won the same prize both times. An Apple iPod Shuffle 4GB sponsored by Cool Hand Poker.

Congratulations with your iPod's, MacLennane. Also congratulations to all our other Christmas Calendar winners the first 4 days of December - remember to come back and click every day. As you can see, it's not impossible to win more than once...

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. 

We just received the first standings update for our exclusive BigBet Poker $25,000 RakeChase.

The BigBet Poker $25,000 RakeChase is exclusive for BankrollMob members and it's realy simple. Just hit each of the 9 VIP Point Milestones and get RakeChase Prizes for hitting that level.

There's a massive $5000 up for grabs for the 1st person to reach the last level and if you make it through each of the 9 levels, you will get nearly $10,000 in RakeChase Prizes!!

The RakeChase runs betwen 20th November 2009 and Sunday 28th February 2010 - still plenty of time to get involved. Read more » BigBet Poker $25,000 RakeChase - Standings

EPT Prague attracted a huge starting field this time. Not less than 584 (219 Day 1a and 365 Day 1b) players entered the tournament and created a total prize pool of €2,842,100. 12 poker tables are now waiting for the remaining 95 players who have made it to Day 3 of the tournament. The one that will bring the most chips with him from Day 2 to Day 3 is the Frenchmen Yann Brosolo with 574,000 chips, closely followed by Rui Cao on second place with 522,500 chips and Team PokerStars PRO Pieter de Korver with 465,800 chips on third place.

Luca Pagano, the Italian Team PokerStars PRO, keeps on impressing as he's once again in the top of the field in an EPT event. Luca has accumulated 280,400 chips and is on 16th place at the moment, but he's definitely one of the hottest candidates to reach the final table.

The Swedes are doing well
Many Swedish players have been doing very well in EPT Prague. Kristoffer Edberg, Gustav Ekerot, and Stefan Mattsson are the top 3 Swedes who all are in the top of the field with a good chance of reaching the final table. Most notable of these 3 players is Stefan "Matadoren" Mattsson who has had some fantastic results in EPT, WSOP, Aussie Millions and WPT.

During December, the home of online rummy games will be hosting four private freerolls specially made for BankrollMob members. All freerolls have $100 prizes and will be played with games of Kalooki 51 and Rummy 500, one by one. So you collect the freebies elsewhere, RummyRoyal is all about cash
 
Here is the Freerolls schedule and the games for each one:

• Tuesday, December 8th, 19:00 GMT – Kalooki 51
• Tuesday, December 15th, 19:00 GMT – Rummy 500
• Tuesday, December 22nd, 19:00 GMT – Kalooki 51
• Tuesday, December 29th, 19:00 GMT – Rummy 500

 Read more » RummyRoyal Hosts Four BankrollMob Freerolls for Xmas Month

Isildur1 came from nowhere and crushed the most successful high stakes player (at that time), Tom "durrrr" Dwan. Isildur1 won about 5 million dollars in no time from "durrrr" who had to ask his dear friend Ziigmund for a buddy transfer a couple of times. It's mostly thanks to the crazy heads-up sessions against "durrrr" that the unknown Swede became one the most talked about persons in the world of poker.

It only took Isildur1 two and a half week until he had won more than $6 million dollars. At this point, many thought that he would be the new king of high stakes and that he was here to stay. However, it didn't take long before Isildur1 started playing pros he stood no chance against - Ziigmund, Phil Ivey Patrik Antonius and Brian Townsend. All of these players have completely crushed Isildur1 and taken about $2 million each from him.

Read more » Isildur1 is soon gone from the high stakes scene?

Below you can now see the winners of yesterday's calender "openers".

A big congratulations to all winners. Dont forget to check out today's hatch, you might be a winner!!

On Tuesday night, Isildur1 and Ilari "Ziigmund" Sahamies were once again playing against each other. In the previous heads-up match, Ziigmund crushed Isildur1 and won around $1,5 million in just 600 hands. This time was no different than the previous session as Ilari "Ziigmund" Sahamies once again dominated and got the Swede on tilt. After 1123 hands, Isildur1 had lost a bit more than a million and Ziigmund decided to call it a day. Ziigmund's decision to stop for the day just made the Swede even more frustrated and angry.

A very tired, frustrated and angry Isildur1 started to make fun of Ziigmund in the poker chat by writing stuff like "How can you stop playing when you are winning and I almost can't keep my eyes open". Ilari "Ziigmund" Sahamies didn't let Isildur1's talk get to him, and he left the table $1 million richer. Isildur1, however, had no plans on stopping after this as he started playing against Tom "durrr" Dwan, Cole South and Patrik Antonius instead. Isildur1 continued playing bad the rest of the night, and after he had lost about $2,7 million, he finally gave up and went to sleep.

Below you can now see the winners of yesterday's calender "openers".

A BIG congratulations to all the winners. Today we have a bunch of great prizes again in our calendar including tournament tickets, free bets, an iPod, mobpoints and much more, so dont forget to login to your account and click hatch number #2!

GOOD LUCK ALL !

Dear all,

It seems that Bwin has a chat directly in their client, which have made the distribution of tonight's freeroll password somewhat easy. As a result tonights tournament will probably be "less" than exclusive as promised.

However Bwin has generously already promised us a new $600 freeroll later in December to make up for it. We will try and find a way to make sure only BRM members gets access to the next one.

Meanwhile we do hope that the eventual winners of tonight's freeroll (which we will of course play anyways) will be BRM Members!!!

New freeroll date will be annouced probably later this week.

GOOD LUCK ALL!

It seems like Doyle Brunson has no plans to retire from poker as he continue playing at the highest stakes and contributing to the game in many different ways. One of the ways Doyle Brunson is still contributing to the scene is through his blog where anyone can follow his daily life and poker experiences. In his latest blog post one can read some thoughts of his regarding the quality of today's PROS compared to old ones.

"Are today's players better than the old timers? Nah, different but not better. The truth is some of these "pros" play so bad it's hard to lose."

Doyle also writes that he thinks he's lucky to still be able to play so well against today's PRO's even though he thinks that many PRO's including himself tend to lose at least part of their game after reaching the age of 50.

"Time marches on. That's something every poker player has to be aware of. I try to monitor my play regularly because of my age. I'm lucky to still be hanging in there but as I've always said, poker players tend to lose at least part of their game after reaching the age of 50. Even though I won 16 straight in TV cash games, I seem to have reverted to a defensive style of play that I'm not comfortable with. Even though the way your opponent plays dictates the way you play, I've found myself not following my instincts as I've always done."

Isildur1 (a.k.a. The Unknown Swede) is still doing very well at Full Tilt's highest stakes, and it seems like he is here to stay unlike the other unknown Swede, Martonas. Last Saturday, Isildur1 took on Patrik Antonius and Tom "durrrr" Dwan and emptied both their accounts and ended up around $2,5 million plus. However, he lost a lot of those winnings to Ilari "Ziigmund" Sahamies in Omaha just a few moments later. It only took "Ziigmund" about 600 hands to take $1,5 million from the unknown Swede. Even though Isildur1 lost so much to Ziigmund", he was still $1 million dollars plus for the day.

Many people that have been following Isildur1 at Full Tilt poker can't understand why he's playing against Ziigmund when he's winning big against almost all other players? The answer for this question might be that the unknown Swede is looking for revenge and want to win back the money he has lost, or it might have something to do with pride? 

Read more » Isildur1 is still going strong

The first BankrollMob Christmas Calendar has arrived. We have more than $10,000 in prizes to be won by our Mob Members between 1st and 24th of December.

We have lots of different prizes available, such as:

• Tournament buy-ins for various pokersites
• Merchandise from poker sites
• Mob Points for your Mob account
• Bonus shots at the Mob Safe
• Tickets for a weekly $50 Mob Draw

It's so simple, all you have to do is login and click - once a day.

Go to your Mob account page and you'll find the Christmas Calendar. Click on the door that corresponds to the date of each day (for example, click on door "1" on December 1st) and you'll instantly know if you have won one of the daily prizes.Read more » Win Daily Prizes During Christmas - More Than $10,000 In Prizes

BankrollMob is happy to announce a new no deposit poker bonus has been added to our arsenal of free poker bankrolls for Mob members.

Celeb Poker is the new partner just added and comes with a $199 no deposit bonus. Start out with a free $19 bonus and earn points to release the final $180 bonus.

There's also a bonus available for countries that doesn't qualify for the no deposit bonus.

Check it out and apply NOW (there's a daily limit on available bonuses): Celeb Poker $199 no deposit bonus.

Amer Sulaiman never knew that his relaxing holiday trip in Costa Rica would be his ticket to become the first LAPT Season 3 Champion! What started out as playing on a whim, this man born in Iraq had never realized that his vacation would turn out to be a blessing and actually win a poker championship.  After four extremely tough days on poker, Sulaiman had successfully beat all his opponents and emerged as the winner.  He will be taking home the $172,095 prize money which is the biggest win of his poker-playing career.Read more » Amer Sulaiman – The Champion of 2009 PokerStars LAPT

Playing poker just for fun and winning in the end must be overwhelming for others, but not for a man named Antonio Matias, a 54-year-old Portuguese travel agency director.  He may be kind of disappointed when he missed to see his much awaited football game earlier, but that did not made him lose his concentration on playing poker.  In fact, he was seriously playing.  He has beaten other 322 adept poker players to achieve the Portuguese EPT title with the last opponent being Pierre Neuville.

Matias’ cards were 7 8 while Neuville's were 10 J.

The 5 cards presented on the table were J 7 8 7 2, which obviously made Matias the winner of PokerStars EPT Vilamoura.Read more » EPT Vilamoura: Antonio Matias Wins Against Pierre Neuville

177 out of 322 players made it to Day 2 of EPT Vilamoura. Notable players that made it this far with decent stacks were the PokerStars PRO's Luca Pagano, JP Kelly, Bertrand "ElkY" Grospellier and Henrique Pinho. Unfortunately neither of them came to be among the 69 players who made it to Day 3 of the tournament. Jeff Sarwer, the chip leader as Day 2 started, keept the lead all day 2 and will bring 549,800 chips to Day 3 of the tournament.

Team PokerStars PRO's that made it to Day 3 of the tournament are Jude Ainsworth (230,600), Jan Heitmann (173,800), Johannes Strassmann (120,700), Nuno Coelho (28,900), and Alexander Kravchenko (27,100). 48 of the remaining 69 players will receive a piece of the total prizepool of €1,561,700. The winner will however receive nothing less than €404,793.