Poker News

The American Daniel Cates (jungleman12) became the 2010 high stakes poker king with $5,5 million in profits. The fish of the year is Brian Townsend.

Daniel ’jungleman12’ Cates made his first appearance at Full Tilt Poker’s high stakes tables in 2009. His first season was not successful; Brian had lost $453,056 in 45,396 hands. The 21 year-old high stakes specialist, however, has improved a lot, and in 2010, the breakthrough came: he has won the yearly high stakes crown with $5,503,296 (145,212 hands).

Jungleman12 dominated in NLHE and became the best in this game type with $3,519,502 (105,917 hands). His other winnings came from PLO ($1,353,855 in 32,990 hands) and mixed games ($632,939 in 6305 hands).

Daniel 'jungleman12' Cates

In a recent chat between Dani ’Ansky’ Stern and Daniel ’jungleman12’ Cates, appearing on a 2+2 thread, jungleman states there is currently a break in Durrrr Challenge 2. There is no action since 16th December, which means it might turn deep into January, 2011 until the challenge is up and running again.

A conversation between Dani ’Ansky’ Stern and Daniel ’jungleman12’ Cates has been put on the 2+2 forum, and it seems we have a break in the ongoing Durrrr Challenge 2. To Ansky’s question “Are you and Tom playing any time soon?” jungleman replied: “idk… Seems like there will be a big hiatus… Tom is hard to work with.” The challenge is offline since 16th December, and 2010 is obviously not going to see any more action here either.

Annie Duke, our favourite best female player in the world, whose charming style never ceases to amaze us (also host of the Annie Duke Show) recent tweet, she is now engaged to her long-time lover, Joe Reitman. The director and actor has been dating Annie Duke since his divoce with his previous wife, Shannon Elizabeth, actress and poker player.

UB's sponsored pro (also Howard Lederer's sister) wrote "I said yes!" on her Twitter, attaching a picture of her showcasing her newest piece of jewellery on the appropriate finger. She continued:

 "I am still shaky. Total surprise from @JoeUgly. I am the luckiest woman ever. Best man on earth. I am so in love. Sigh."

PokerStars has officially announced that Isildur1 plays against Tony G in the second game of the SuperStar Showdown, a challenge specifically designed to face the elusive Swede pro. Play begins at 16:00 ET on Sunday, 2nd January, 2011.

The first instalment of the Showdown hosted Isildur1 and Isaac 'philivey2694' Haxton; although the Swede led for the better part of their clash, Haxton ultimately managed to win, earning $41.701. Isildur1 almost instantly demanded a re-match, arguing Haxton could only win due to his luck. His chance for compensation has to wait, though; PokerStars has just announced that his next opponent is no other than Tony G.

Cake Poker’s card room manager and tournament director, Lee Jones and Serge Ravitch, announced on Tuesday that they resigned from Cake Poker.

Lee Jones

Lee Jones, former senior manager of PokerStars as well as CardRunners, signed as card room manager for Cake Poker in May, 2009. He was behind the Gold Chip and the Gold Card programs, among other things; as of Tuesday, however, he is no longer member of the Cake Poker team.

Miramax, "leaked" (which is really phoney, and I don't really understand how such a huge studio can afford advertising like this) the following video of their upcoming reality show following the lives of 4 young online poker pros living moving together to a fancy Hollywood villa for 2 months. The show is going to be called "Young Guns".

There has already been a show called 2 Months, 2 Million, if you missed it out just search YouTube, it's a pretty good show. Young Guns will be basically the same: 4 online pros moving together to a house and living their dream: earning a ton of money playing poker, partying and having fun. The 4 players in the video will not necessarily be the same people in the final show, so there's hope for the guys at 2+2, who complain that the players are playing at low stakes and one of them is a massive loser. There's also no known release date yet, it's rumored it will air in the 2nd half of 2011.

If you are a tech guy, and into mobile gaming, you must have thought that the Zynga people are bastards, because they won't release an Android version of the Zynga Poker app, available to Apple iPhone and iPod Touch users since 2008. Well, that changed now.

Zynga Poker on Android

Rumors had it that Zynga will port their application to the fast-growing mobile smartphone platform, Android sometime, but it not happened as quickly as some of the Android fans might have thought. As Android's market shared doubled, and seems to go through the roof nowadays (even surpassed iPhone's OS in August)  they finally decided to release the application.

Phil Hellmuth, 11-time WSOP champion, my favourite tilt monster can now try anger management at another genre: dancing. He tweeted this weekend that he might be on the next season of "Dancing with the Stars":

"OMG! Phil Hellmuth (me!) on 'Dancing with the Stars!' Outrageous! Might make a fool out of myself on Worldwide Television one more time..."

Phil Hellmuth is Next?

The "poker brat" has already auditioned for the previous season of the show with professional ballroom dancer Karina Smirnoff (pictured above), but she danced with Steve Wozniak, Apple's co-founder instead. Which is funny in itself, really, you should search for it in google, to get a grasp of what you can expect from Hellmuth if he makes it.

The official cast has not yet been revealed, it is expected to be announced until next month, so we must wait a few weeks to see this confirmed.

Isildur1, the famous Swede lost his first SuperStar Showdown to Isaac 'philivey2694' Haxton, his first challenger. As I announced last time, as soon as PokerStars signed Isildur1, they offered challengers the chance to take down the young Swedish player. The first showdown was played yesterday at the $50/$100 NLHE tables at PokerStars. The challenger came to be Isaac 'philivey 2694' Haxton, runner-up of the 2009 WSOP $40,000 NLHE event.

 

Tom ’durrrr’ Dwan and Daniel ’jungleman12’ Cates work hard lately; Durrrrr Challenge 2 is on with a new, 1,214 hands long session played yesterday. Dwan managed to reduce his deficit by around $60,000, while Cates swept in the biggest pot in the Challenge so far.

Jungleman cs. Durrrr

In two hours time, durrrr and jungleman got 1,214 hands closer to the 50,000 mark of the Challenge yesterday afternoon. Although Dwan closed in significantly on Cates, reducing his deficit to $200,000, the latter eventually succeeded in keeping up his considerable lead of $500,000. Three pots were over $150,000 and another totalled at $210,000; this was won by jungleman. He also leads in total number of pots won with 8,265 (58%).

Since 2010 WSOP Main Event runner-up John Racener has been arrested for the 4th time, a lot of confusion and debate is on at 2+2 forums. To clarify some of the misconceptions, I collected some now information that surfaced about the case and the Racener also commented on his behaviour for the first time.

Johnny Racener was arrested for his 3rd DUI (driving under the influence) 5 days ago in Tampa, Florida as you might have heard. Now Gambling911.com received the official police report, according to which he raised the attention of the police by stumbling to his car looking drunk. Police officer Julius Cannon followed the poker pro as he ran the red light in his grey Range Rover, after that, he was pulled over by the squad car. He refused to complete all the field sobriety exercises and asked the officer to go home on foot. After refusing to take the breath test (which is also a misdemeanor), he was taken into custody. He stayed there for 9 hours and after that, after paying the $1,000 bail (which is a really small pot for him, really), was released. What he was doing in the area where he was caught remains unknown, but as Tampa Police Department spokeswoman told Gambling911.com, "The area where Racener was observed walking along and stumbling is right near an area of town with a lot of bars and nightclubs."

When Isildur1 was signed by PokerStars, the site immediately announced a challenge for players to take on their newest prot at he Superstar Showdown. The first challenger is already here: Isaac 'philivey2694' Haxton.

Isaac Haxton

Haxton, a pro grinder, who had very great results through his carreer (a runner-up finish at PCA for $861,789 and at the $40,000 No Limit Hold’em event at the 2009 World Series of Poker) is to first to take on Isildur1 at the virtual $50/$100 No Limit Hold’em heads-up table. They will play until 2,500 hands or until one of them goes busto, whichever comes first. They will take $150,000 to the table, and the winner will be the one with more profit. The deep structure will allow them to do some interesting and tricky stuff, so if you don't already have a PokerStars account go ahead and register one, and be sure to watch the game's tables (under "Hold'em" tab, then "No Limit/Pot Limit.") this Sunday, December 19th at 6:00pm ET.

Unlike HP7, this is not the title of a current fairy tale: following the rumors of Full Tilt Poker banning its pros from the show High Stakes Poker Season 7, a couple of other top players have cancelled their participation, too.

Daniel Negreanu

The blow to the GSN show HSP that FTP considers not to let its pros participate being only the beginning, two of the remaining “draw” names, Daniel Negreanu and Phil Hellmuth now also either are uncertain to show up before the cameras or have already called it off for good. The former has just finished 9th in the APPT Sydney main event and has posted the following statement on his Twitter recently: "Sad news: at airport headed home which means the trip is over have a commercial shoot when I land which means no HSP for me this year."

A gunman wearing a motorcycle helmet and jacket robbed the Bellagio (Las Vegas) early Tuesday. Police stated he took about $1.5 to $2 million in chips.

Around 3:50 a.m. on 14th December a man wearing a motorcycle helmet and armed with a handgun entered the Bellagio and went straight to the Craps table cashier, where he seized around $1.5 to $2 million in chips. He then escaped on his motorbike, riding towards Flamingo Road. The festive 10th heist in Las Vegas in 2010, the action was “a very quick, in-and-out type of job,” nobody got hurt.

PokerTableRatings is one of the best known poker databases, and sometimes buggy and problematic, they are still among the best around. They recently annunced voting for for this year's best players on all stakes. You can now vote for your favourites now at PokerTableRatings.com.

The voting is only on until the last day of the year, Dec 31, 2010. Everyone is eligible to vote for an unlimited number of players. The winners in each categories (basically stake levels) will win cool prizes such as an own custom themed PTR page, a BLUFF Magazine feature or mention, and DragTheBar coaching video subscription. Get out there, and vote for your favourites, or, if you registered 10,000 played hands on PTR, even for yourself.
N.b.: You will need a Facebook account (which I doubt you don't have) to be able to vote.