Poker Guru Blog

In September, WSOP released the list of the nominees for the Poker Hall of Fame 2012 induction, as a result of a public vote. 10 players and background workers made it to the final stage, namely Chris Bjorin, David Chiu, Eric Drache, Thor Hansen, George Hardie, Jennifer Harman-Traniello, John Juanda, Tom McEvoy, Scotty Nguyen and Brian "Sailor" Roberts.

The living members of the Poker Hall of Fame and a few poker media representatives then got the list, and in the end elected two persons, who met the following criteria:

• A player must have played poker against acknowledged top competition
• Be a minimum of 40 years old at time of nomination
• Played for high stakes
• Played consistently well, gaining the respect of peers
• Stood the test of time
• Or, for non-players, contributed to the overall growth and success of the game of poker, with indelible positive and lasting results.

Reese Newell, Michael Leow, Michael Song, Kurt Fruchtman and recent WCOOP champion Michael ‘mrw8419’ Weisbrod are highs stakes pro players from the United States, now residing in Budapest, Hungary. Watch our video interview with the guys here!

In this years’ WCOOP, a “Hungarian” player, ‘mrw8419’ took down the #21 $215 NLHE Event, besting 8,226 players. Following a deal in the 4-handed phase, ‘mrw8419’ added $164,619 to his bankroll.

Full Tilt Poker has officially announced to have their former pro, WSOPE and WPT champion Dane Gus Hansen back representing the room. Hansen is the first official ambassador of the re-opening FTP.

Full Tilt Poker (FTP) is to re-launch on 6 November at the latest, repaying 100% of non-US players’ money frozen on their accounts. Preparations of the restart are well underway, including the transportation of some of the room’s assets, including its servers, to the PokerStars headquarters on the Isle of Man in late September.

According to several of the most reliable media sources, Amaya Gaming Group, Inc. has purchased the Ongame network. It appears that the final price for Ongame is between $6.5 and $8 million, which is about 25% the amount Shuffle Master had originally offered.

Montreal-based online gaming provider Amaya has been said to be interested in acquiring the network for the past two weeks. Official announcement of the acquisition is expected to happen next week, during the G2E gaming expo in Las Vegas.

SrslySirius, the autotune artist of the poker community is back with his latest brainchild, 'Howard Lederer Confesses EVERYTHING'. The remix made up of The Howard Lederer Files presents viewers with a fun reinterpretation of what FTP's leader had to say. We have posted many of the remixes the amazing SrslySirius did, so we couldn't leave out his latest creation, which portrays the Howard Lederer interview from a very different angle as we've seen so far. Enjoy!

he two high-profile pros, the trash talk king Antanas 'Tony G' Guoga and Phil 'Poker Brat' Hellmuth, the 12-time WSOP champion decided to find out who's tougher in a more physical challenge. They set out to battle in Basketball, Swimming and Running. The official judge came to be Jesse May poker commentator.

Now you can see all the events and the exciting finale of the Match-Up. Enjoy!

Rakerace.com's newest partner, the Finnish gambling company PAF entered a sponsorship agreement with the Spanish football league, La Liga. PAF stats that their agreement with Liga Nacional de Futbol Profesional, the top football league in Spain is goint to be a great success, as they'll reach an even wider audience in the regulated Spanish market. As Chief Executive Officer for PAF puts it:

"We are very happy to be able to align ourselves with the world’s premier football league. In cooperation with La Liga, we have the opportunity to provide our customers with unique experiences and products. As relative newcomers to the market, this partnership also gives us greater exposure and credibility with the Spanish people. We appreciate that the Liga Nacional de Futbol Profesional has chosen us as a partner. PAF is an event-oriented company and I am impressed by the Liga Nacional de Futbol Profesional’s activities with its sponsors. I firmly believe that this partnership will strengthen the growth of PAF, which already has gained momentum in Spain.”

Caesars Entertainment and the WSOP have released the list of nominees for the Poker Hall of Fame 2012 induction, as a result of a public ballot.

This week saw the publication of the list of 10 persons who have a chance to be inducted into the Poker Hall of Fame in 2012, among the greatest names of poker history. The list has been complied as a result of a public voting; the following players and background workers have made it to the final 10:

The IGT network, also known as Entraction, has closed its Stockholm headquarters and is going to shut down by the end of this year. Player bankrolls are safe, IGT rooms join other networks.

International Gaming Technologies (IGT) has notified its partners that, due to the significant drop in revenues from real money gambling services, the company remains to focus on a limited number of high priority, regulated markets. It appears IGT is primarily interested in the Nevada online poker market where their licence request has already been granted.

‘Patpatman’ played a 7 hours long PLO session earlier this week, crushing his opponents.

‘Patpatman,’ whom many believe to be Tom ‘durrrr’ Dwan, started the 2012 online high stakes season exceptionally well, leading the profit list in January with $858,821. However, the great kick-off turned into an equally large downswing and ‘patpatman’ dropped to the bottom of the list with $835,139 in losses at the beginning of September, continuing to lose.

The International Stadiums Poker Tour (ISPT) had previously lowered the guaranteed prize pool and now “guaranteed” is gone, too, from the official website.

The International Stadiums Poker Tour (ISPT) is scheduled to launch in May 2013, planned to be the biggest tournament ever with 30,000 players. The tens of thousands of players will play simultaneously; however, not on the field but at touch screen pads in the seats of the stands. Once the player pool drops to 3,000, players will take their seats on the field at live tables – this is also the money bubble. The final table will be 10-handed.

The enormous tournament had been advertised with an equally large guaranteed prize pool of $30 million, later reduced to a still handsome €20 million. However, this is not certain, either, anymore.

The latest superstar to be added to the marketing faces of the International Stadiums Poker Tour (ISPT) is Patrik Antonius. First, three times WSOP and two times WPT champion Michael Mizrachi was signed as an ambassador of the International Stadiums Poker Tour (ISPT), launching 2013. He was followed by European Poker Awards Player of the Year title winner and WSOP $1,000,000 Big One runner-up Sam Trickett.

In the photo: ISPT Ambassadors Patrik Antonius and Liz Lieu with ISPT co-owner Prosper Masquelier (middle):

While the Partouche Poker Tour (PPT) Cannes Grand Final is well under way, a scandal has erupted concerning the €5 million guaranteed prize pool, which had mysteriously melted down to €4.3 million. Patrick Partouche apparently got offended and cancelled any future PPT events, but unexpectedly added the remaining money to the prize pool.

On Day 1B of the PPT €8,500 Cannes Grand Final, registration closed with 573 players, resulting in an overlay, as the amassed money did not reach the €5,000,000 guaranteed prize pool. On Day 2, the tournament team published the official payout structure (see at the bottom of this article) that contains handsome sums but not the €5 million many players went for.

The iPoker network split its player pool into two tiers, effective 4 September. Since neither the network nor the rooms have issued any official statements on the matter yet, most players are uncertain concerning their situation. We have looked into it a bit more closely.

As reported, the iPoker network split its player pool into two tiers on Tuesday, 4 September. The network started to rate its rooms, starting 1 July, and getting into the top tier required at least 6,000 active real money players to play in the room every month (an active player being one who generates at least $1 rake), in addition to acquiring 850 new real money players. They also considered player balances and the regular:fish ratio.

Bwin.Party promises significant improvements in its poker operations, including a new software and design, coming early 2013.

Bwin.Party has released its mid-year business report, in addition to interesting bits of information concerning their plans to come back from their recent downswing. According to the report, they are definitively in one, with a drop of 46% in their shares, primarily due to the underperformance of their poker operations.