Poker Guru Blog

After winning the $2,100 Stud and $2,100 Triple Stud events, Shaun Deeb also took down the $2,100 Stud Hi/Lo tournament in the PokerStars Spring Championship of Online Poker (SCOOP) 2012.

Shaun Deeb

Shaun Deeb has been performing brilliantly in this year’s SCOOP; it is becoming highly unlikely that anyone else could grab the Player of the Year title from him. Yesterday, he won his third SCOOP 2012 title, winning the $2,100 Stud Hi/Lo event after taking down the $2,100 Stud and the $2,100 Triple Stud, too. With all three high stakes Stud tournaments won, we could say he has his “Stud Triple Crown”.

The most recent poker documentary, the highly anticipated All-in - The Poker Movie was posted online in its entirety, and you can watch it right here, on Rakerace.com.

The documentary, directed by Douglas Tirola came out this March. The feature length film portrays the beginnings of poker through the poker boom to the Black Friday of poker on 15 April, 2011. Many iconic players and prevalent personalities in the poker industry appear in the documentary including Chris Moneymaker, Daniel Negreanu, Phil Hellmuth, Barry Greenstein, Phil Laak, and even the infamous Howard Lederer, who was interviewed prior to the Black Friday.

Daniel Negreanu’s latest clip in his video blog the “Weekly Rant” has recently come out.

Daniel Negreanu

Sharkscope and OPR, two data-mining sites that track MTT and SNG hands followed suit with PokerTableRatings, and removed the hands and statistics of PokerStars players from their website.

As Rakerace.com reported in April, PokerStars took legal action against PokerTableRatings (PTR) for hurting intellecutal property laws and room regulations. As a first step, PS sent PTR an official letter demanding that PokerTableRatings put an end to their sharing information on PS players. PS had announced that a group of lawyers were already working on analyzing the situation, and declared their determination towards their goal.

As a follow-up, PokerTableRatings quickly responded and agreed to PokerStars' terms and will only publish players statistics as per the explicit request of the players. A similar data-mining site Poker-Edge removed PokerStars data from their website on 25 April, and will not track them anymore. On 11 May, two other major data-miner sites, Sharkscope and Official Poker Rankings (OPR) decided to follow suit; they reported they will only disclose those players' data, who request their information to be public.

The player cap for the most expensive poker tournament ever, the WSOP $1,000,000 Big One has been set to 48 players. It seems more and more certain that this cap will be reached, which can mean a $15,000,000 prize for the winner alone.

The WSOP $1,000,000 Big One for One Drop tournament will be held on 1-3 July. The charity event will support Cirque Du Soleil owner Guy Laliberté’s One Drop foundation with 11.11% of the total prize pool. In order for the event to be an official part of the WSOP 2012 schedule, a minimum of 22 entrants are necessary to register. The Big One achieved that as early as December, 2011.

Tom ’durrrr’ Dwan has flopped two pairs for a gargantuan pot against a Chinese businessman in Macau.

Tom 'durrrr' Dwan

Although high stakes games in the StarWorld Casino on Macau are constantly running, only a handful of celebrated pros have shown up at the tables in the past days. Among the few who have, however, are Tom ‘durrrr’ Dwan and Andrew Robl, according to Poker Portal Asia. What is more, they are doing just fine, to say the least; ‘durrrr’ has just won a gigantic pot of HKD 30,000,000 or $3,800,000.

Following winning the PokerStars Spring Championship of Online Poker (SCOOP) #2-M $215 NLHE event, ‘Isildur1’ took down the #3-H $530+R NLHE 6-max event, too.

PokerStars pro Viktor ’Isildur1’ Blom accomplished something big on 6-8 May; despite the fact he has been always considered primarily a cash game and heads-up specialist, he has just taken down two consecutive SCOOP events. In addition to besting a field of 8,240 in the #2-M $215 NLHE event for $247,200, he also won the #3-H $530+R NLHE 6-max event.

A very lucky Spanish player, 'funex700' took down the 80 millionth milestone hand at PokerStars yesterday, earning him an additional $22,940 to the pot.

The milestone hand was reached in Spain, at a $0.1/o.25 No Limit Hold'Em table yesterday afternoon. When the PokerStars client stopped the game to announce the players are dealt into the milestone 80 billionth hand, the chatbox went wild. All the players were very excited and eager to start the highly profitable hand:

Starfighte86: OMG
PatrickStoia: yes
Starfighte86: this is so wonderful
Starfighte86: i could cry

Dealing was started by the PokerStars host after waiting for spectators to gather. Naturally, everone went all in, but the luckiest came to be funex700, who caught a runner-runner two pair with his A 5 on the Q 4 T A 5 board.

!P0krparty¡ has lost his entire bankroll in 2011, but he now returned to the tables, and in just 3 weeks, he got to the high stakes tables from $100. Will the mystery player stay longer than last year?

Of course many players are dubbed the new Isildur1 recently, since the Swedish pro was not seen online for quite a while, but  seems to be a valid heir. He is extremely agressive, does not care for bankroll management one tiny bit, and it doesn't matter whom he plays with. He usually plays at numerous tables at once in marathon sessions, playing NLHE, PLO SH and HU as well at the same time. Moreover, if he is bored with it, buys in to some tournaments as well.

HSDB writes the following about the mysterious player grinding from a Canadian account:

"We can only speculate about !P0krparty¡'s true identity. But some things are certain, In times like these when Full Tilt poker is down,  is just what all the railers out there need. For whenever the Man comes around, action follows with him. I'm sure that some of the pros also more than welcome the action he brings.

He might not be the most frequent visitor at PokerStars' tables, but when he does decide to log in and play, he means business. We have witnessed 30 hour sessions, at more tables simultaneously than we could count, where he played both PLO and NLHE shorthanded."

Player of the Year 2011 British Sam Trickett has announced to leave his sponsor company Titan Poker. It is widely assumed he will sign to PokerStars.

Sam Trickett

Sam Trickett has got behind him an exceptional year of 2011. The British poker pro has acquired a total of $4.5 million in live tournament winnings. Among others, he won the Aussie Millions High Roller and the Partouche Poker Tour Grand Final, not to mention his Macau cash game earnings and the fact that he is considered to be the best live cash game player in the world.

A hacker has attacked the 2+2 forum, gaining access to user data and passwords. If you use the same password that you used on 2+2 elsewhere, like in e-mail clients or poker rooms, I suggest you change it immediately.

If you are a registered member of the online poker forum 2+2 and you use the same password on other sites, too, it is highly advised that you change it. The forum has been hacked and is currently unavailable. The hackers gained access to e-mail addresses and passwords, among others.

According to a forum post on 2+2, PokerStars has acquired Full Tilt Poker.

After PokerStars issued a Cease and Desist order to PokerTableRatings, the data mining site deleted all information on PokerStars players from their main page.

As previously reported (on RakeRace.com), PokerStars took legal action against PokerTableRatings (PTR) for hurting intellecutal property laws and room regulations. As a first step, PS sent PTR an official letter demanding that PokerTableRatings put an end to their sharing information on PS players. PS had announced that a group of lawyers were already working on analyzing the situation, and declared their determination towards their goal. 

Laurent Tapie and Prosper Jerémy Masquelier are now appointed director and deputy director, respectively, of New Full Tilt Limited in Dublin, Ireland.

Full Tilt Poker shows activity

Positive news has surfaced recently regarding Full Tilt Poker (FTP). New Full Tilt Limited has been registered and Groupe Bernard Tapie CEO Laurent Tapie has been appointed director of the firm. Next in line is Prosper Jerémy Masquelier, a renowned French businessman and TV show producer, who created Tournament of Aces, a French poker series, among else. Previously, he has been part of the Partouche Group. New Full Tilt Limited, officially founded on 14 February, 2012 has a starting capital of €1,000,000; none of this information has been published until now.

“Rounders” writers David Levien and Brian Koppelmann are working on the script for “Runner, Runner”. Shooting may start as early as this summer.

Justin Timberlake and Ben Affleck

Sources from Hollywood, including the Variety and the Hollywood Reporter report that a new poker production is underway. The project is running under the working title “Runner, Runner” and is written by “Rounders” writers David Levien and Brian Koppelmann. In the director’s seat sits Brad Furman, to whom we can owe the critically acclaimed title “The Lincoln Lawyer”.