Poker News

Phil Galfond has launched a new coaching site with coaches like the Dang brothers and Steve ‘gboro780’ Gross.

Phil Galfond

Phil Galfond is considered a role model in poker, considering his results, his personality as well as his attitude towards the game, and few would doubt that rightly so. Accordingly, many have welcomed it warmly that he had launched his own coaching site, RunItOnce.

Facebook and Zynga have altered their partnership agreement, allowing Zynga to offer real money online poker directly through Facebook.

Zynga has previously made an agreement with bwin.party to launch its first real money online poker service in the UK in the first half of 2013. According to the original plans, Zynga would have used the PartyPoker platform to enter the real money online poker market but apparently, now the company has the opportunity to do that directly via Facebook.

It has been reported that the two social media giants have revised their partnership agreement, loosening their ties, which allows Zynga to offer real money gaming directly through the social network.

British MTT pro Chirs ‘Moorman1’ Moorman won three tournaments in three different online poker rooms within a week, collecting his 12th Triple Crown.

Chris 'Moorman1' Moorman

While it does not come with any special prize, the P5s Triple Crown is one of the most coveted title for online tournament players, right next to the great end-of-the-year awards. This is mainly due to the fact that it is outstandingly difficult to obtain, requiring victories in tournaments in three distinct online rooms within one week’s time.

The United States Department of Justice has currently no real idea on how exactly to repay the US players of Full Tilt Poker.

John Pappas, PPA

Three months after the acquisition of Full Tilt Poker and over a week after the reopening of non-US players’ accounts in the re-launching room, the United States Department of Justice has still not begun to compensate US players in the worth of a total of $200 million. It is not going to happen soon either, as it turns out following a meeting of representatives of the DoJ and the Poker Players Alliance (PPA).

Next year, it is time for the Little One and in 2014, the Big One returns to the World Series.

WSOP 2012 Big One - The Field

WSOP Big One organiser Guy Laliberté has officially announced that the $1,000,000 event returns to the schedule in 2014. The Big One was introduced this year and was an outstanding success with the top number of participants, 48 players. Antonio Esfandiari took down the tournament for $18.3 million.

A poker reality show is going to launch soon, highlighted by the names of poker legends Johnny Chan and Doyle Brunson. However, the promotional footage recently released met outrage from most of their fans.

Johnny Chan in the reality show

Ten times WSOP champion Johnny Chan will host the “Full House with Johnny Chan” poker reality show, which is planned to launch in February, 2013. A promotional footage has recently been released and it shocked the poker community. It is widely condemned as a mockery of poker, even among Chan’s most hardcore fans.

In September, WSOP released the list of the nominees for the Poker Hall of Fame 2012 induction, as a result of a public vote. 10 players and background workers made it to the final stage, namely Chris Bjorin, David Chiu, Eric Drache, Thor Hansen, George Hardie, Jennifer Harman-Traniello, John Juanda, Tom McEvoy, Scotty Nguyen and Brian "Sailor" Roberts.

The living members of the Poker Hall of Fame and a few poker media representatives then got the list, and in the end elected two persons, who met the following criteria:

• A player must have played poker against acknowledged top competition
• Be a minimum of 40 years old at time of nomination
• Played for high stakes
• Played consistently well, gaining the respect of peers
• Stood the test of time
• Or, for non-players, contributed to the overall growth and success of the game of poker, with indelible positive and lasting results.

Full Tilt Poker has officially announced to have their former pro, WSOPE and WPT champion Dane Gus Hansen back representing the room. Hansen is the first official ambassador of the re-opening FTP.

Full Tilt Poker (FTP) is to re-launch on 6 November at the latest, repaying 100% of non-US players’ money frozen on their accounts. Preparations of the restart are well underway, including the transportation of some of the room’s assets, including its servers, to the PokerStars headquarters on the Isle of Man in late September.

According to several of the most reliable media sources, Amaya Gaming Group, Inc. has purchased the Ongame network. It appears that the final price for Ongame is between $6.5 and $8 million, which is about 25% the amount Shuffle Master had originally offered.

Montreal-based online gaming provider Amaya has been said to be interested in acquiring the network for the past two weeks. Official announcement of the acquisition is expected to happen next week, during the G2E gaming expo in Las Vegas.

Rakerace.com's newest partner, the Finnish gambling company PAF entered a sponsorship agreement with the Spanish football league, La Liga. PAF stats that their agreement with Liga Nacional de Futbol Profesional, the top football league in Spain is goint to be a great success, as they'll reach an even wider audience in the regulated Spanish market. As Chief Executive Officer for PAF puts it:

"We are very happy to be able to align ourselves with the world’s premier football league. In cooperation with La Liga, we have the opportunity to provide our customers with unique experiences and products. As relative newcomers to the market, this partnership also gives us greater exposure and credibility with the Spanish people. We appreciate that the Liga Nacional de Futbol Profesional has chosen us as a partner. PAF is an event-oriented company and I am impressed by the Liga Nacional de Futbol Profesional’s activities with its sponsors. I firmly believe that this partnership will strengthen the growth of PAF, which already has gained momentum in Spain.”

Caesars Entertainment and the WSOP have released the list of nominees for the Poker Hall of Fame 2012 induction, as a result of a public ballot.

This week saw the publication of the list of 10 persons who have a chance to be inducted into the Poker Hall of Fame in 2012, among the greatest names of poker history. The list has been complied as a result of a public voting; the following players and background workers have made it to the final 10:

The IGT network, also known as Entraction, has closed its Stockholm headquarters and is going to shut down by the end of this year. Player bankrolls are safe, IGT rooms join other networks.

International Gaming Technologies (IGT) has notified its partners that, due to the significant drop in revenues from real money gambling services, the company remains to focus on a limited number of high priority, regulated markets. It appears IGT is primarily interested in the Nevada online poker market where their licence request has already been granted.

‘Patpatman’ played a 7 hours long PLO session earlier this week, crushing his opponents.

‘Patpatman,’ whom many believe to be Tom ‘durrrr’ Dwan, started the 2012 online high stakes season exceptionally well, leading the profit list in January with $858,821. However, the great kick-off turned into an equally large downswing and ‘patpatman’ dropped to the bottom of the list with $835,139 in losses at the beginning of September, continuing to lose.

The International Stadiums Poker Tour (ISPT) had previously lowered the guaranteed prize pool and now “guaranteed” is gone, too, from the official website.

The International Stadiums Poker Tour (ISPT) is scheduled to launch in May 2013, planned to be the biggest tournament ever with 30,000 players. The tens of thousands of players will play simultaneously; however, not on the field but at touch screen pads in the seats of the stands. Once the player pool drops to 3,000, players will take their seats on the field at live tables – this is also the money bubble. The final table will be 10-handed.

The enormous tournament had been advertised with an equally large guaranteed prize pool of $30 million, later reduced to a still handsome €20 million. However, this is not certain, either, anymore.

The latest superstar to be added to the marketing faces of the International Stadiums Poker Tour (ISPT) is Patrik Antonius. First, three times WSOP and two times WPT champion Michael Mizrachi was signed as an ambassador of the International Stadiums Poker Tour (ISPT), launching 2013. He was followed by European Poker Awards Player of the Year title winner and WSOP $1,000,000 Big One runner-up Sam Trickett.

In the photo: ISPT Ambassadors Patrik Antonius and Liz Lieu with ISPT co-owner Prosper Masquelier (middle):