Poker Guru Blog

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

Already as of 15 February, British high stakes SNG player Ryan ‘MouldyOnions’ Bell was within arm’s reach of becoming the first SuperNova Elite (SNE) of 2013, as well as to break Andrew ‘azntracker’ Li’s “SNE speed record.” In 2011, ‘azntracker’ needed less than two months to collect the 1,000,000 VPPs required for the SNE status.

IveyPoker.com, the poker training site soon to be launched by legendary poker pro Phil Ivey, is now joined by Dan Shak in its pro team that already boasts the membership of Patrik Antonius, Greg Merson, Jackie Glazier, Jennifer Harman and Cole South.

Dan Shak

The IveyPoker.com website, a coaching enterprise with the promise of teaching everyone how to win, is still being developed and is currently in “the final stages of developing an innovative social poker game that also provides poker training content from some of the world's top pros.” The aforementioned, respectful list of players is now joined by Dan Shak.

Jonathan Grotenstein and Storms Reback’s latest book titled SHIP IT HOLLA BALLAS!: How a Bunch of 19-Year-Old College Dropouts Used the Internet to Become Poker’s Loudest, Craziest, and Richest Crew, details the story of arguably the most infamous poker crew from before Black Friday.

Advanced praises of the book go as follow:

"The loud narcissism and adolescent degeneracy of these talented 'ballas' ain't pretty, but the testosterroneous world of high-stakes online poker in America before Black Friday, in all its doomed glory, steadily throbs in Grotenstein and Reback's swift prose."

—James McManus, New York Times bestselling author of Positively Fifth Street

Patrik Antonius and Rui Cao are to enter a million dollar challenge. The online duel will take place on PLO, NLHE and 27TD tables, probably during next week.

High stakes pros Patrik Antonius and Rui Cao agreed in a chatbox conversation to enter a heads-up challenge, betting $1 million each. The session will be in PLO, NLHE and 27TD games: the bets are $350,000 in PLO, $350,000 in NLHE and $300,000 in 2-7.

The GPI European Poker Awards ceremony was held on 22 January at the Elysee Biarritz in Paris, France. Titles were awarded in a total of nine categories.

Marvin Rettenmaier

The most prestigious award, European Player of the Year, went to Marvin Rettenmaier. This was no surprise: this year Epic Poker League’s Global poker Index (GPI) was used to determine the winner. As of 31 December, 2012, Rettenmaier held the top position, which predestined him for the coveted title.

In addition to his major MTT successes, Johan Van Til wins dozens of WSOP packages each year. One will easily find periods when there are literally no Step 6 tournaments that kick off without him.

Johan ‘busto_soon’ Van Til

Dutch Johan ‘busto_soon’ Van Til gained fame around 2007 and 2008, when he was already able to show off a number of major results, after only 2 years into his professional poker career. He took down a number of $109 re-buy events and had tens of thousands of dollars in total winnings.

His biggest prize was $81,326 for the Full Tilt Poker Mini FTOPS Event #40 in 2011. His balanced performance can be easily followed in the charts below.

In 39 hours and 25 minutes, Alex ‘AWice’ Wice collected the 100,000 VPPs necessary for the PokerStars SuperNova status, becoming the first one to reach the level in 2013. Ryan ‘MouldyOnions’ Bell almost beat him to it but a software error crossed his calculations.

Alex Wice

To reach SuperNova status, a player needs to collect 100,000 VPPs, while 1,000,000 points are needed for the SuperNova Elite level in a calendar year. This is not an easy task, even for multi tabling pros: cash game ace Randy ‘nanonoko’ Lew reached the status as late as December last year.

In our end-of-the-year retrospective we take a look at the highlights of the past year. Let us review the most important moment of each month in 2012.

January

PokerStars pro Randy 'nanonoko' Lew set a new Guinness World Record at the PCA 2012, playing 23,493 hands in 8 hours with realizing profit.

Read more on the insane record here

The epic online poker documentary “BOOM: The Incredible True Story of Online Poker” can be out within weeks.

High stakes pro Jay ‘pr1nnyraid’ Rosenkrantz announced in October 2010 the start of the shooting of a feature length poker documentary, in cooperation with Taylor Caby and Ryan Firpo.

"Our goal: to use key events to chronicle the evolution of online poker and examine its impact on the lives of a handful of online poker players from around the world. We are not simply looking to recount the memes that we all know and love and make photoshops of.

Phil Galfond has launched a new coaching site with coaches like the Dang brothers and Steve ‘gboro780’ Gross.

Phil Galfond

Phil Galfond is considered a role model in poker, considering his results, his personality as well as his attitude towards the game, and few would doubt that rightly so. Accordingly, many have welcomed it warmly that he had launched his own coaching site, RunItOnce.

Facebook and Zynga have altered their partnership agreement, allowing Zynga to offer real money online poker directly through Facebook.

Zynga has previously made an agreement with bwin.party to launch its first real money online poker service in the UK in the first half of 2013. According to the original plans, Zynga would have used the PartyPoker platform to enter the real money online poker market but apparently, now the company has the opportunity to do that directly via Facebook.

It has been reported that the two social media giants have revised their partnership agreement, loosening their ties, which allows Zynga to offer real money gaming directly through the social network.

British MTT pro Chirs ‘Moorman1’ Moorman won three tournaments in three different online poker rooms within a week, collecting his 12th Triple Crown.

Chris 'Moorman1' Moorman

While it does not come with any special prize, the P5s Triple Crown is one of the most coveted title for online tournament players, right next to the great end-of-the-year awards. This is mainly due to the fact that it is outstandingly difficult to obtain, requiring victories in tournaments in three distinct online rooms within one week’s time.

The United States Department of Justice has currently no real idea on how exactly to repay the US players of Full Tilt Poker.

John Pappas, PPA

Three months after the acquisition of Full Tilt Poker and over a week after the reopening of non-US players’ accounts in the re-launching room, the United States Department of Justice has still not begun to compensate US players in the worth of a total of $200 million. It is not going to happen soon either, as it turns out following a meeting of representatives of the DoJ and the Poker Players Alliance (PPA).

Next year, it is time for the Little One and in 2014, the Big One returns to the World Series.

WSOP 2012 Big One - The Field

WSOP Big One organiser Guy Laliberté has officially announced that the $1,000,000 event returns to the schedule in 2014. The Big One was introduced this year and was an outstanding success with the top number of participants, 48 players. Antonio Esfandiari took down the tournament for $18.3 million.

A poker reality show is going to launch soon, highlighted by the names of poker legends Johnny Chan and Doyle Brunson. However, the promotional footage recently released met outrage from most of their fans.

Johnny Chan in the reality show

Ten times WSOP champion Johnny Chan will host the “Full House with Johnny Chan” poker reality show, which is planned to launch in February, 2013. A promotional footage has recently been released and it shocked the poker community. It is widely condemned as a mockery of poker, even among Chan’s most hardcore fans.