Poker News

As you might know, Nanonoko has his own blog on the Pokernews coaching website, and this time, he used the free space there to tell his followers about his journey to Las Vegas and the accommodation he enjoys there.

In his latest blog entry, Nanonoko starts with recalling the details of his flight, which he almost missed because he wanted to save some money by parking his car in the ’economy’ section, which is a greater distance from the terminal as the ’premium’ parking lot. Realizing how little time he had, though, he finally put down his vote for the premium one.

"Well being the savvy saver that I am, I chose to go to the economy parking but as I was driving there...I realized how far it was and that if I parked here...there's no way I would have a chance to get to my flight. So I had to u-turn and circle around the whole airport and go to the premium parking lot."

After the airport incident (he arrived at 4:45 but luckily his plane got delayed to 4:55), he had some rest at his hotel room, the site of which he is grateful enough to share with the public in the video below.

Nanonoko will now be entering his first WSOP Side Event, with the hope of winning himself a bracelet.

Google, a company with a very strict advertising policy, has now decided to allow certain gambling ads to be presented on their sites, including YouTube from now on. Youtube, owned by Google, will allow ’licensed entities located in England, Scotland, Wales, Italy, France or Spain’ to display online gambling advertisements on Youtube. This content, however, will only be viewable by users who can verify they are over 18.

The advertising campaigns on Youtube will appear on the homepage of the site, video pages and the advertisers’ own channels. Google has gradually been lifting the restrictions on gambling advertisements, starting in 2008, when they lifted their AdWords ban on Internet gambling advertising in the UK only.

The first company to run a gambling ad on Youtube will be Ladbrokes, presenting their click-to-play advertising campaign booked by TBG Digital.

Phil Ivey, one of the biggest icons in the world of poker, has managed to retrieve his eighth WSOP bracelet by winning Event #37 ($3,000 H.O.R.S.E) after beating Bill Chen in the heads-up. Event #37 was followed by a huge crowd of spectators, as the final table happened to be one of the toughest seen at the WSOP this year. Ivey had to battle Chad Brown, David Baker, Bill Chen, Albert Hahn, Kenneth Aldridge, John Juanda and Jeff Lisandro in order to grab this very valuable 8th bracelet. 

With this first place, Phil has won $329,840, plus God knows how much more, with all the side bets going on. According to PokerListings, for example, Ivey and Howard Lederer have an ongoing 5 million dollar bet that Ivey would not win two WSOP bracelets until the end of 2011. Well, Howard can start trembling, as Phil has plenty of time to win another bracelet, and is quite confident about the subject. This is what Phil commented after his victory: “I think I can win 30 gold bracelets.  I think I can reach that if I keep playing and stay healthy.”

Even Phil Hellmuth seems to have respect for Ivey and his tremendous poker skills. Hellmuth reacted to Ivey's win on Twitter, saying: "Amazing win Phil Ivey: bracelet no 8, congrats! Ivey now best all around player in world!"

With this statement, he condradicts his earlier tweets and comments made before the start of the WSOP, all saying that he, Phil Hellmuth, is still the best poker player in the world, and could probably beat anyone.

With eight WSOP bracelets, Phil Ivey is currently at the fifth place (together with Erik Seidel) on the all-time WSOP bracelet list, behind Phil Hellmuth, Johnny Chan, Doyle Brunson and Johnny Moss.

Nicholas Beraud, the chief executive of Mangas Gaming (the company that owns BetClic and EverestPoker) made a statement regarding the recently introduced regulations licensing sports betting into the market. According to him, Mangas has now broken all previous records in France since the introduction of the new regulations.

Below you can find his speech on the newly regulated French market, as heard at the CEO Panel at EGR Live:
“On the one side, you pay a huge amount more tax in France, but on the other hand, it’s created a new market, a new business,” he said. “What we see of the French market so far is a boom in terms of new customers that until now didn’t want to play because it was thought that it was illegal to play on the internet.”

Beraud continued: “Now it is legal, we have beaten all our records in the last few days. Of course you include the World Cup effect, but despite that, in terms of conversion and activities, we have seen a huge move in terms of new customers that are joining BetClic to bet on the World Cup.”

He also predicts that the countries to follow suit “after France will probably be in Denmark, then Germany, then Spain. It will create a stable business, and we will have the opportunity to get more customers in these regulated markets.”

H2 Gambling Capital, a gambling data business also shares Bereaud's predictions, stating that regulation can actually increase market size by two, or even three times. These new regulations on the gambling sector also mean that all companies need to acquire a licence in order to provide their services.

The PokerStars North American Poker Tour (NAPT) has made an official announcement regarding its next venue this November, which will be the Bicycle Casino, situated in Los Angeles, CA.

The Bicycle Casino is a place with a long history and strong local traditions which makes it a truly suitable venue. This is what Daniel Negreanu thinks about the NAPT at The Bike: “I have played at The Bike before. A strong presence of local players is really important for the success of this tournament. That will entice players from everywhere as they know there will be loads of money on the line. I am eagerly looking forward to this event.”

The Main Event of the NAPT will have a buy-in of $5,000.

I have already informed you about the WSOP Main Event ticket frenzy at PokerStars, which was a $370 buy-in mega satellite, organized last Sunday.

After seven hours of play, 281 players still had chips and the line-up included quite a few famous players, such as Team PokerStars Pros Jude "j.thaddeus" Ainsworth, Chris "Money800" Moneymaker, Veronica "Princesa" Dabul, Randy "nanonoko" Lew, Dusty "Leatherass9" Schmidt, Martin AAbenjaminAA" Hruby, Marcello Del Grosso, Grayson "spacegravy" Physioc, Ruben "rubenrtv" Visser, Martin "Goral" Horecki, Thierry "BOWPOWER" van den Berg, Raymond Wu, Julian Thew, Martha "marene" Herrera, Steven Paul, Grzegorz "Da Warsaw" Mikielewicz, Richard Toth, Tom McEvoy, Jorge Arias and Gualter Salles, but none of them managed to satellite their way to the Main Event.

280th place was the first one to provide some money back, $160, to be precise. 279th to 253th managed to get their buy-in back for eight hours of play, while 252nd to 1st were left praising God and starting packing for Vegas.

Congratulations to all the winners!

The WSOP Event #34 – ($1,000 Seniors’ No-Limit Hold’em) has broken all previous records concerning the number of participants. An astonishing 3,148 players took part in this tournament. This might prove all the players that prophesize the end of live poker wrong.

It is funny that Russ Hamilton was found in the form of a $5 memorandum chip from Palace Station 'The Seniors' Poker Player Hall of Fame, eventually won in a splash pot by Jack Ward:

Russ Hamilton allegedly played quite an important role in the UB cheating scandal. Russ Hamilton pulled the strings to develop a super-user 'tool' that cheated friends, associates, and UltimateBet customers out of millions of dollars.

The MyPokerCard is a prepaid gold MasterCard created by CashPlus specifically for the UK poker player. This new card which requires no credit checks offers applicants an easy way to manage their poker bankroll.

The MyPokerCard also offers its holders complete privacy, with no need to link it to their bank account. Being a prepaid card, card holders can top up their poker account by cash in over 12,500 participating stores located over the UK. The card can also be used for online purchases, paying bills and is the first debit card to be on offer in the UK with purchase protection.

Of course the card can also be used worldwide wherever you see the MasterCard acceptance mark, so it is easy to spend your winnings the next time you are on holiday.

The 2010 World Series Of Poker is here, and on 20th of June at 16:30 ET, PokerStars will be holding a WSOP Mega Satellite to the Main Event which will give away 200 packages guaranteed. PokerStars is the wold's biggest online poker room, so we can be sure, that this tourney will generate a lot of attention to draw in the fish.

The public has spoken and the votes are in for the top nominated players who will take part in the 2010 WSOP Tournament of Champions (TOC). In a recent public announcement the WSOP have released the top 20 vote-getters for 2010.

Lynn Gilmartin from PokerNews announces the 20 nominated players in this video: 

In a recent post, we looked at the arrest by the German police of the thieves and mastermind behind the EPT Berlin robbery. With all suspects now in custody, the trial of four young men has begun yesterday in Berlin State Court. The 31-year old person who was behind the whole operation and masterminded the raid, has been charged separately and is set to go on trial later this year.

The scene of the robbery at EPT Berlin

Three out of the four accused suspects have reportedly broken their silence admitting to their involvement in the crime, but have still not given up the location of the stolen money.

The players that attended a suburban Dallas poker game got more than they expected when a robber bust in resulting in a gun battle leading to the death of two people.

According to Fox 4 and Mesquite Police, the robber (whose identity has not yet been released) broke into the apartment of the 5900 block in Northwest drive just after midnight yesterday. The 35 year old host Tracy Moore was then shot and killed, after getting into a scuffle trying stop the intruder.

It was then another card player Jerome Johnson, fearing for his safety and of the others, pulled out a licensed concealed weapon and shot the robber dead. As of yet no charges have been laid on Jerome and police believe that it was cause for reasonable self-defense. But the case will be reviewed by a grand jury to decide if Jerome will face any charges.

Sammy Farha  the Lebanon poker professional, is considered one of the best Omaha players of our time. The 51-year-old who now lives in Houston, Texas demonstrated his dominance this week by winning the $10,000 Omaha High-Low Split Eight or Better Championship (Event #25) and taking home his third WSOP Omaha bracelet.

In the final table it came down to a heads-up match between Sammy and James “Flushy” Dempsey. But despite James attempts to outwit Sammy, in the end it was Sammy who was stronger, knocking out James, to take the number one spot and the $488,237 dollar first place prize.

Sammy Farha, the Omaha legend

After being arrested in Chile on 3rd of June 2010, the Dutch poker player didn’t take too long to confess to the murder of the 21-year-old Stephany Flores. With the confession now behind him, Van der Sloot who knows he is likely to receive extensive prison time and is apprehensive about remaining in the Peruvian jail, named Miguel Castro. 

According to a 2009 U.S Department of State Human Rights Report conducted on this prison they found the following:

• This maximum security prison as of last year had 44,800 inmates (2,794 women) locked up in Peru
• Its conditions are described as 'harsh'
• The prison is considered to be overcrowded and have very poor sanitation.
• Epidemic levels of HIV/AIDS and also tuberculosis

The Dutchman, who is terrified of what will happen to him serving his sentence in the Peruvian jail, is now trying to work out a deal with authorities. In the proposition, Van der Sloot has suggested to reveal the body location of Natalee Holloway (who he was also suspected of murdering after her disappearance in 2005) if he can serve the remainder of his sentence in an Aruban jail.

It seems that Twitter is one of the main communication interfaces of this year's WSOP, because of its ability to reach so many people for quick status updates. But when Victory Poker pro Dan Bilzerian posted a tweet quoting a line from the box office hit movie Gran Torino, he wasn’t expecting the reaction he received.

In the controversial tweet recently posted by Bilzerian, he quoted the line used by Clint Eastwood saying, “A Mexican, a Jew and a colored fellow walk into a bar… The bartender looks up and says… Get the **** out of here”. Unaware to Bilzerian his quote wasn’t taken that light-hearted by many. This was especially the case for the poker reporter Joy Miller, who expressed her outrage to Bilzerian in a hostel way.

Dan Bilzerian's later posted about the situation in a thread on the TwoPlusTwo Forum:
“She told the CEO from victory poker that neither myself or any of the 20 sponsored pros would get any ESPN coverage until I gave a formal apology. I explained to her that it was a quote from a movie. She flipped out and started swearing and screaming at me about using the word colored. She sent me a bunch of angry texts, yelled at the CEO, and you can hear the voicemail she left swearing and yelling at me in the link below. I explained to her that the NAACP stands for the National Association for Advancement of Colored People, and if had a problem with the use of the world colored, she should seek an apology from them as well.”

Joy Miller claimes to work for ESPN, but sources close to ESPN denied her claims.

YouTube was then used to publicizes the message Dan received from Joy on his phone: “I don’t give a **** if the quote was from a movie. I asked you to apologize because you said ‘colored’ and I just don’t get what you don’t get about that. I don’t even want an apology anymore. Good luck to you.”