The 2013 Retrospective Part 1

In the first part of our retrospective take on the year 2013, we recall the highlights of the poker world from January and February.

January

On 13 January, the PCA $10,300 Main Event Final Table took place with eight participants. Jerry Wong had a slight lead ahead of Joel Micka but eventually, Dimitar Danchev came back from the 6th position of the chip counts and took down the championship for $1,859,000.

The High Roller event of the PCA was concluded by the victory of Vanessa Selbst. The $1,424,420 first prize raised the pro’s lifetime live tournament winnings to 7,004,036, which gave her the lead over Kathy Liebert ($5,855,655) as well as the title of the most successful female poker player ever.

Read more on Selbst’s victory here

The Final Table of the $25,000 NBC National Heads-Up Poker Championship invitational festival was played on 27 January with eight world class pros. In the end, Phil Hellmuth and Mike Matusow played heads-up ant the latter took down the event for $750,000.

Read more on the entrants of the National Heads-Up Poker Championship here

On 28 January, the video below hit YouTube. Its publisher, Nordine Bouya claimed that Partouche Poker Tour (PPT) 2009 Grand Final winner Jean-Paul Pasqualini and runner-up Cedric Rossi were colluding at the final table. Pasqualini won $1,429,797 and Rossi took home $867,458.

Viktor ‘Isildur1’ Blom shocked the poker community by his run in January at the online high stakes tables. The Swede had $5,159,380 in annual profit to his name as early as 12 January and while lost some of it later on, he still finished the month with a staggering $2,819,384 in winnings.

Read more on the incredible run of ‘Isildur1’ in January here

February

Ryan ‘MouldyOnions’ Bell reached the SuperNova Elite VIP level in only 53 days, breaking Andrew ‘azntracker’ Li’s speed record of barely two months.

Read more on the new SNE record here

Despite having to part ways with a couple of millions of dollars, Howard Lederer, Chris Ferguson as well as Rafe Furst managed to strike deals with the United States Department of Justice. The FTP ex-leaders therefore avoided prison, regardless of the charges of cheating, money laundering and organising illegal gambling activity.

Read more on the controversial deals here

Members of the international poker forums were outraged over the unannounced segregation of winning players from recreationals at the bwin.party skins. The network only admitted the change when confronted with clear evidence by players. Later, Revolution followed suit in the practice but had enough sense to announce the update beforehand.

Read more on the updates by bwin.party and Revolution here

Tom ‘durrrr’ Dwan accumulated the largest winnings in February, a total of $2,293,368. He played 20,794 hands, most of them in draw games (12,794), the game type that earned him the most, $1,884,633. On his most successful day in the month, ‘durrrr’ won $934,097.

Read more on Dwan’s insane session here