Poker News

With the WPT Prague Main Event, the Prague Poker Festival kicked off yesterday, featuring a total of 18 events, including the EPT and GSOP Main Events as well. Jungleman12's HU challenge is, however, probably cancelled.

EPT Prague 2010 Winner Roberto Romanello

Between 1 – 12 December, the Prague Poker Festival takes place and hosts a WPT, an EPT and a GSOP Main Event. The first major tourney is the €3,500 WPT Prague, launched on Thursday, 1 December and held through 5 December. The €5,300 EPT Prague starts right after that, running 5 – 10 December. The €1,650 GSOP Prague takes place on 8 – 11 December.

Spain legalized online poker. From 2012 on, Spanish players will be able to play in a separate market, cash game up to NL1000, tournaments up to €250 buy-in. The Spanish government accepted the legalization of online poker in Spain, therefore, another nation separates from the global poker market. Poker providers who want to offer online poker in Spain will need to acquire a license from the state and must have at least one office in the European Union and have to delegate a Spanish representative.

Such poker providers will have to offer their services through Spanish .es poker rooms, and can advertise themselves with their local domain names. They will also have to provide free access to their servers' data to the license providers and financial institutions and pay a 25%-30% tax after their income.

Players will also face several limitations. In cash games, the highest allowed big blind will be €10, meaning poker will only be offered up to NL1000 in Spain. The maximum allowed buy in at tournaments will be €250.

PokerStars released it's first mobile client ever - at the moment only available to Italian players, and offers play money games only. Italians can already download it for free through iTunes.

PokerStars released two iOS applications in the past, PokerStars TV and the PokerStars Clock. Now they decided it's time to release an official client for their poker service. However, the software is very limited at the time, it is only available to the Italian market, and only offers play money ring games and tournaments.

The Italian market seems an obvious chice; according to research conducted by H2 Gambling Capital in 2010 34% of the Italian population uses a smartphone, which is a European record, and there are 1,5 mobile phones for every person in Italy, whic is again a European record.

The best poker player on the planet, former Full Tilt Poker pro Phil Ivey decided to return to his beloved poker tables. He is currently playing at the Asia Pacific Poker Tour (APPT). Phil Ivey is considered the best poker play in the world, however, he didn't attend a live poker event since the Black Friday of poker. He issued a statement in May, in which he announced he sues FTP for not paying their customers. He also said he would not play at this year's WSOP, if the situation doesn't change. He revoked his lawsuit later, but he never attended the World Series, nor other tournaments, until now.

Ivey is currently in Macau, and reportedly plays at high stakes cash game tables. It has been rumoured that he entered the APPT Main Event as well, but many people in the Macau casinos doubt that.

Ivey at the APPT Macau

After Ray Bitar's resignation and GBT's (Groupe Bernard Tapie) settlement with the DoJ (Department of Justice), the Department of Justice finally released the details of their agreement. Only the shareholders have to agree to this, and Full Tilt's reopening alongside with all the payouts can get a green light. Subject:Poker reported that Full Tilt Poker has released a statement about their current situation.

"Full Tilt Poker is pleased that the terms of the agreement between Groupe Bernard Tapie (GBT) and the Department of Justice have been finalized, and that the agreement provides for GBT to repay or make whole players outside of the United States and provides a mechanism for U.S. players to get repaid. Since Black Friday, repaying customers has been FTP’s number one priority."

Ray Bitar stated that he is extremely pleased with the efforts of the Department of Justice, and the Groupe Bernard Tapie corporation, and appreciates their continued dedication in working towards a mutually beneficial agreement that will facilitate repayment of the players.

Ray Bitar, Howard Lederer, Chris Ferguson and Rafe Furst, the four main defendants of the Full Tilt Poker (FTP) scandal have declared their resignation and thus cannot be reagrded as the leaders of the poker room anymore.

The Russian player Max Katz, who is known to be a better backer than player did well again; it turned out he and his team had a major share in Pius Heinz' Main Event, therefore they win lots of money on the German pro.

As we already reported, Max Katz has a great sense for choosing whom to stake. He is a very interesting, but controversial part of the poker community. His name has been connected with scandals sometimes, but he makes enormous amounts of money on his sponsoring deals.

His most interesting investment was in January, when he bought 50% Galen 'GasparLeMarc' Hall's PCA actions for $16,638. Hall won the Main Event, which earned Katz $1,150,000. But of course, we could mention David Vamplew's EPT London or Ben Wilinofsky's EPT Berlin victory as well, in all of which Katz had his percentage.

While Pius Heinz and Sam Holden keep all of their World Series of Poker (WSOP) winnings, the others will have to pay a huge amount to taxes.  Ben Lamb and Eoghan O'Dea are the biggest losers.

According to the German-American agreement on taxes, the newest poker world champion, Pius Heinz can keep all his WSOP Main Event winnings of $8,715,638 withouth having to pay any taxes. This agreement states that he doesn't have to pay taxes in the USA as a German citizen, neither he has to in his hometown, Vienna, Austria.

Pius Heinz with the millions of dollars

The Czech Martin Staszko won $5,433,086, which, according to the Czech-American agreement, he doesn't have to pay in the States, however, he has to in the Czech Republic. He has to pay 15% of his winnings, which is $814,963, a quite nice sum.

Pius Heinz, to first German player in the history of the WSOP won the 2011 World Series of Poker Main Event. He defeated the Czech Martin Staszko for the amazing $8,711,956 main prize, and of course the WSOP bracelet.

The 3-handed final table of the 2011 WSOP Main Event was held yesterday, with the participation of the 3 remaining players:

Seat 7: Pius Heinz - 107.800.000
Seat 8: Ben Lamb - 55.400.000
Seat 9: Martin Staszko - 42.700.000

The day has finally arrived; the WSOP November Nine got underway yesterday. Pius Heinz, Ben Lamb and Martin Staszko made it to the final three, who will face each other on Tuesday in the Grand Finale of the WSOP 2011. Dealing has started yesterday at the 2011 World Series of Poker Main Event final table. The Czech Martin Staszko lead with 40,175,000 chips. Jack Effel, tournament director of the WSOP announced the November Niners, who entered the Rio Casino's Penn&Teller room to the entry music of their choice.

Chip count:

Seat 1: Matt Giannetti - 24.750.000
Seat 2: Badih Bounahra - 19.700.000
Seat 3: Eoghan O'Dea - 33.925.000
Seat 4: Phil Collins - 23.875.000
Seat 5: Anton Makiievskyi - 13.825.000
Seat 6: Samuel Holden - 12.375.000
Seat 7: Pius Heinz - 16.425.000
Seat 8: Ben Lamb - 20.875.000
Seat 9: Martin Staszko - 40.175.000

November Niners, 2011

2011 does indeed seem to be the year of online poker scams; add Max ’mexx86’ Ashkar to the list, who is accused of using a Trojan virus to win over $2 million in total.

Max 'mexx86' Ashkar

The latest scandal in the online poker world broke out during the EM Championship in Austria, when an Austrian and a Swiss player reported that a German person who resides in London had installed a Trojan virus on their laptops, making their hole cards visible when playing against them online.

The brand new version of the most popular poker software suite, Hold'em Manager is out today, you can now purchase it online. If you already have Hold'em Manager 1, you are eligible for an upgrade at a discount price. As we already reported, the team behind the highly successful poker software, Hold'em Manager was working hard on the next version of their software, Hold'em Manager 2. We've shown you the beta version, but since earlier today, you can actually buy it at www.holdemmanager.com.

The new version is more responsive, more stable since September thanks to the beta-testing. According to the developers many bugs have been fixed, new features added, and although there are still more updates and new features to come, it was finally ready to be rolled out. Of course it still contains the new design, the dark theme, the light theme and all the goodness the programmers worked into this major overhaul.

The HM2/OM2 will be priced as follows:

HM2 Pro: $89,99
HM2 Small Stakes: $59,99

OM2 Pro: $89,99
OM2 Small Stakes: $59,99
  
HM2+OM2 (Pro version): $149,99

After a long and tirening wait, finally here's some good news for the FTP players out there. Groupe Bernard Tapie and the US Department of Justice reported that they struck a deal, allowing FTP's acquisition to continue.

Subject:Poker reported today that they received the news from multiple sources, that the United States Department of Justice and Groupe Bernard Tapie came to the end of their negotiations with a quite positive result. Ray Bitar, CEO of Full Tilt Poker sent out an email to shareholders informing them about the details of the agreement:

"Dear members,

-Ray"

Bwin.Party has come to an agreement with MGM Resorts International and Boyd Gaming. It is only a regulation that is missing for them to be able to hit the US market.

Online poker market money list runner-up Bwin.Party has recently announced that they had made a deal with US land-based casino giant MGM Resorts International as well as with another casino- and hotel market player, Boyd Gaming. The agreement basically paves the company’s way to the to-be-legalized online poker market in the USA, which is to come soon, hopefully.

ChicagoJoey wants to reach the SuperNova Elite level at PokerStars this year, although at the beginning of October he only had 347K VPPs. 12-16 hour PLO sessions until the end of this year is the plan.

Joe 'JoeIngram1' Ingram, alias ChicagoJoey is not known in the poker world for his exceptional knowledge, but for his exceptional endurance and the fact that he can play a large number of tables simultaneously. Joey has already broken several records in online poker, like playing the most hands in one month (600,000) or playing the most hands in one day (51,312 hands). In both cases, he finished with minimal profit, but the prop bets probably made the whole thing worth it.

In the middle of October, ChicagoJoey set out another incredible goal for himself: he made a 3:1 prop bet with his flatmate BallCup that he would reach SuperNova Elite at PokerStars until the end of this year.