Poker News

888poker is really trying to capitalize on the amazing stories of this year's November Niners, and has signed professional foosball player Billy Pappas and back-to-back Main Event finalist Mark Newhouse, after signing Brazilian Bruno Politano in September.

As we have reported, the changes in the PokerStars rake system have caused a massive outrage in the online poker community, with many games becoming pretty much unbeatable because of the rake increases, which in certain cases are as big as 400%. Now several high stakes professionals have shared their opinion with PokerNews regarding the matter, including Phil Galfond, Ola "Odd_Oddsen" Amundsgard and Alex "Assassinato" Fitzgerald.

The Iipay Nation of Santa Ysabel tribe in California has announced that they will soon offer real money poker games to California residents back in July, but there has not been much new information ever since regarding the launch date. Now they have launched a real-money bingo client, with real-money poker to follow "in days".

Alexander ''PostflopAction'' Kostritsyn, who plays on PokerStars under the screenname ''joiso'', was the biggest winner in the high stakes games in October. With Gus Hansen and Viktor ''Isildur1'' Blom leaving the Full Tilt Professionals team, the highest stakes games have dried up, so noone had a chance to catch the Russian mix game specialist.

Phil Ivey has launched an appeal in the Crockfords edge-sorting case, after the High Court ruled that edge-sorting is considered cheating, and that Ivey has to forfeit his winnings of £7,3 million. Ivey's lawyer stated that the judge has evaluated some of the facts wrong, and has thus made an unlawful ruling.

High Plains Scuba from Colorado decided to host an Underwater Poker Tournament and Silent Auction which benefits the Veterans Helping Veterans Now foundation. The event is held on November 7 - 8, so if you are in the neighborhood and want to truly experience what it is to play with fish and sharks, be sure to attend!

Steve O'Dwyer had his biggest live tournament score ever after defeating a star-studded final table that included Joseph Cheong, Ryan Fee and Daniel Colman.

The final table of the HK$500,000 buy-in Super High Roller at the 2014 Asia Championship of Poker is one of the strongest final tables ever. The chipleader to start the day is Joseph Cheong, but Steve O'Dwyer, Davidi Kitai, and the beast of the high rollers, Daniel Colman are all in contest for the $1.8 million first prize.

This summer, Eugene Katchalov skipped the World Series of Poker to participate in a Ukranaian TV show called "The Mole". Maybe that's why he is on the cover of a Ukranian magazine, but unfortunately we have no way of knowing for sure since we don't speak the language. What we know however is that in case he gets bored with poker, he likely has a bright future as a cover boy, having also appeared in Men's Fitness magazine last year and being considered to star in the Ukranian version of "The Bachelor".

While players are doing everything they can to make PokerStars remove the recently introduced Spin & Go tournaments, PokerStars has announced a new TV show revolving around the format, called Spin & Go Show.

According to the Las Vegas Review Journal, professional poker player Phil Ivey is amongst the first people whose request for the medical marijuana dispensary permit has been approved in Las Vegas. The news instantly gained huge interest in the poker community, and the forums are already flooded with "pot committed" and "pot odds" jokes.

Back in July, Macau high roller and businessman Wei Seng "Paul" Phua was arrested along with his son, Wai Kit "Darren" Phua, Richard Yong and other members from the Macau high stakes scene on the charges of running an illegal sports betting ring. They were arrested at the Caesars Palace in Las Vegas, but according to new information, the FBI only managed to get evidence against the businessmen by using unlawful methods of getting into the suite.

The PokerStars PR Team has had it's fair share of embarassing mistakes, from sending promotional e-mails to customers with already fired Team Pros' recommending said promotion to a Grand Theft Auto themed spoof video of their new Spin & Go format was also posted and removed from their official YouTube channel recently. But making the definition of the week "Juice", which is a slang for rake, on the day that they announce huge changes in the rake system that the whole online poker community is speaking up against, well, that is probably their worst blunder yet.

Last week Phil Hellmuth tweeted about Mike "The Mouth" Matusow's spinal surgery, which was quite risky according to Matusow's tweets. After complications during the surgery, Mike is now all well and on his way to recover.

Last week, Full Tilt published an online survey in which they asked players about their experiences and impressions regarding GSN's hit poker show, High Stakes Poker. As soon as speculation started whether the company wants to bring back HSP, the survey was immediately removed from the web. High Stakes Poker was the most exciting poker show with star-studded field, the Season 5 lineup was extremely strong aswell. It consisted of young online wizards Tom "durrr" Dwan and Dario Minieri, old school live crushers like Doyle Brunson, Eli Elezra, David "Viffer" Peat and Phil Laak who all showed why they are amongst the best in the game. The two businessmen at the table, Mike "Silent Mike" Baxter and Alan Meltzer played very well also, and the great characters and agressive table dynamics made this season of HSP truly one of the best.