Poker News

The chances of depriving Kassela of the title of WSOP Player of the Year are close to zero; since his closest rival, John Juanda is out of the Main Event, there are in effect only mathematical odds to beat him.

Frank Kassela

WSOP $10.000 PLH bracelet winner Akos ’Luigi’ Kwaysser (HUN) is contracted by Full Tilt Poker. Luigi made it to Day 3 in the Main Event with 81,900 in chips, already in the colours of his new sponsor.

Akos 'Luigi' Kwaysser

At the Court of Justice in The Hague poker has recently been judged not being a gambling game, according to Dutch laws.

In 2006 commenced a lawsuit in the case of players who were accused of organising illegal gambling, poker to be precise. Despite poker had been considered gambling since 1998, the Court thought it otherwise and dropped the charges.

Advocate Peter Plasman

The model had been set up at the French PokerStars site, and players of PokerStars.com now following suit by planning to paralyze cash game tables this Sunday. The strike is already under planning on 2+2.

As I have mentioned in the post linked above, players at PokerStars.fr have to pay a larger amount of rake, than players at PokerStars.com. Clubpoker organized a strike, and on the 4th July the French players invaded the cash game tables at PokerStars.fr to go on sit-out, thus protesting against the high rake fees. 

Click to enlarge

On the 2+2 forums, another strike is planned to be held, but this time on PokerStars.com. Their main goal is to represent solidarity with the French, although several other goals have been discussed. One of the organizers; ’real fix’, for example, would recommend the following slogan: 

"We cannot keep playing against the French and Italian fish. Please join our global strike!"

The PokerStars.com strike will be held on Sunday, 11th July (4-7 pm GMT). The organizers are requesting the players that choose to join the strike to buy in at ten cash game tables with one tenth of their bankroll (if, for example, we have $1000, we should sit down to 10 NL1000 tables). This is to make sure that the strike does not only affect micro-limit tables. 

As I have mentioned yesterday, the number of World Series Of Poker Main Event participants was an estimated 7,000 players. 

Well, here is how the numbers exactly worked out for this year’s Main Event: 

Day 1a - 1,125

Day 1b - 1,489

Day 1c - 2,314

Day 1d - 2,391

These add up to 7,319, the second largest WSOP player field of all times, the first one being 8,733 players, reached in 2006.

2010’s World Championship of Online Poker is scheduled to start on September 5th, with a total of 62 events to be held. 

The opening day of the WCOOP will feature the $215 NLHE Six-Max event, a $10,300 NLHE High Roller Tournament and a $215 Two-Day event. 

The $5,000 Main Event will be held on 26th September at 17:00 ET. 

The tournament schedule basically features all the popular poker variants and buy-in amounts, so that every player will surely find several suitable tournaments to take part in. 

Below, you can find the full preliminary schedule for the 2010 WCOOP:

As I have hinted earlier, already at the beginning of the WSOP Main Event it was estimated to house over 7,000 participants.

Ilari ‘Ziigmund’ Sahamies, one of the most feared players at online high stakes tables is spending his summer traveling, drinking and thumbing his nose at the WSOP. 

He has now come up with the idea that he would use part of the money he collected at Full Tilt Poker to support the Finnish film industry.

Ilari ‘Ziigmund’ Sahamies

The movie is in the making at the moment, and will tell the story of C.G.E. Mannerheim, the Commander-in-Chief, Marshal and later President of Finland during the second World War. He is celebrated as a national hero for not giving in to the Germans and supporting his citizens at all times.

C.G.E. Mannerheim

The amount of money Ziggy puts into this movie has not yet been declared, but it is for sure, that he will cover at least 10% of the filming costs.

The movie is set to be introduced world-wide in the fall of 2011.

Doyle Brunson is putting together his own pro team at Doyle’s Room. Before the start of the WSOP, Doyle announced that he had chosen four online poker players, out of which one would become part of his pro team, based on their performance at the WSOP.

These four players were Daniel ‘djk123’ Kelly, Faraz Jaka, David Sands and Michael Martin.

Although this has been his first WSOP, Kelly was thought to have the greatest chance to win, even before the launch of the Series. Seeing his current results, this is understandable.

Bwin has recently signed Eurosport Poker to the OnGame Network in France.

A popular brand all over Europe, Eurosport Poker and the Eurosport TV channel are owned by TF1, which already operates a UK-facing betting site on the OnGame Network.

Peter Eastgate, WSOP winner of $9.15 million in 2008 and another sum of around $2 million on following races, released a statement via PokerStars, his sponsor, on 6 July.

The statement reads as follows:

Jamie Gold, winner of $12 million on the 2006 WSOP Main Event, has already said goodbye to this year’s championship in just about a few hours into the game.

Gold’s behaviour suprised the participants, as when reaching the money bubble, he threw in his chips and his hand without even taking a look at it, announcing that he would be drinking in the bar in case anybody wanted to see him. He also added that he won an ’incredible’ amount of money with a bet.

Jamie Gold with his 2006 Main Event Winnings

Democrat State Senator Roderick Wright has proposed than repealed a draft legislation to legalise and monitor online poker and gambling in California, USA. Consensus on the proposal seems distant as several groups of various interests are protesting against it in its present form.

On 5 July 2010 the WSOP Main Event took a head start at 12:05 PM at the Rio with the welcome speech of 2004 WSOP champion Greg ’Fossilman’ Raymer, showing off his 18-karat gold bracelet, which the players „all came here for”.

This year’s event is expected to exceed the current record of 63,000 participants with more than 70,000 players estimated. The Main Event alone houses about 7,000 champion wannabes.  The prize pool is over $100 million, which means WSOP is still among the leading sport and gambling events around the world.

On Sunday, a huge mass of spectators gathered around the poker tables at the WSOP to watch the Tournament of Champions (TOC) in the Amazon Room.

A tournament with a million dollar prize pool, the TOC is only available on an invitational basis and is a non-bracelet event organized for former WSOP champions.

27 players took part in this special event, and we could see: Phil Ivey, Daniel Negreanu, Doyle Brunson, Phil Hellmuth, Chris Ferguson, Allen Cunningham, Johnny Chan, Scotty Nguyen, Barry Greenstein, John Juanda, Erik Seidel, Jennifer Harman, Huck Seed, Dan Harrington, T.J. Cloutier, Sammy Farha, Howard Lederer, Greg Raymer, Joe Hachem and Antonio Esfandiari compete for the glory of becoming Champion of the Champions.

Huck Seed