Poker Guru Blog

Daniel Negreanu is, of course, currently at the 43rd World Series Poker in Las Vegas. In these videos, he shows us around his luxurious trailer he lives in during the championship and also reports on that in his latest vblog rant.

Daniel’s trailer interior in the Rio parking lot...

Following a review conducted by the new leadership, it has been revealed that the financial position of Purple Lounge is no longer tenable. The staff of the poker room has been made redundant and Media Corp. seeks a solution to the compensation of players.

Purple Lounge parent company Media Corporation PLC announced on 31 May that the financial position of the room revealed by a recent review requires the liquidation of the Purple Lounge companies.

Four days into the 43rd World Series of Poker (WSOP), two events have already been completed. Event #1 $500 Casino Employees NLHE was won by Chiab Saechao, while Event #2 $1,500 NLHE victory went to Brent Hanks. Phil Ivey was eliminated early in the tournament.

Phil Ivey

On 27 May, the 43rd WSOP launched with Event #1 $500 Casino Employees NLHE, the traditional opening event of the championship. The first bracelet went to Chiab ’Chip’ Saechao, along with the $70,859 first prize, besting a field of 732 that included WSOP Executive Director Ty Stewart. The results were as follows:

On 27 May, the 43rd Annual World Series of Poker (WSOP) launched with Event #1 $500 Casino Employees NLHE. A total of 732 players registered, accumulating a prize pool of $329,400.

2011 WSOP Event #1 Winner Sean Drake

This year’s WSOP kicked off yesterday, on 27 May with Event #1 $500 Casino Employees NLHE. Compared to 2011’s 850 entrants, the 732 buy-ins paid is a bit of a drop but the total prize pool is still nothing to be ashamed of: a handsome $329,400. Last year’s champion Sean Drake also entered but has been eliminated since, shoving with J8 and getting called with a pair of 6s on a neutral board. 46 players made it to Day 2.

Marvin Rettenmaier started the World Poker Tour (WPT) $25,000 World Championship main event 6-handed final table with a major edge in the chiplead and he did not miss out on winning it either.

Marvin Rettenmaier

Only the 6-handed final table remained to be played on Day 7 of the WPT $25,000 World Championship main event, with Marvin Rettenmaier in the chiplead:

Finnish high stakes pro Jens Kyllönen (Jeans89) will also take part in the most expensive tournament of all time.

Jens "Jeans89" Kyllönen is doing great at the high stakes tables this year, having led the profit list for quite a long time, and currently being placed fourth with a profit of $1,109,215. The young PLO specialist has also proven his abilities in tourneys, his biggest success so far being a first place at the 2009 EPT Copenhagen. His all-time tourney winnings make $1,393,900.

Jeans89

Kyllönen would like to increase his all-time results at this years WSOP, and has decided to take part in the million dollar tourney. He announced this in an interview given to the Finnish magazine Pokerisivut. 

Bwin.party may be the first to get a Spanish licence. The company announced on Monday they would pay €31 million as back-tax for the government.

About three weeks prior to the opening of the legalized online poker market on 1 June in the country, the Spanish government announced that they had altered the gambling act, requiring licensed rooms that had previously offered their services in Spain (which basically means all of them) to pay back-taxes for the period between 2008 and 2012. For some of the major operators, this could mean a not so small fortune, which rendered it uncertain if any of those would still be willing to enter the market.

WSOP has commissioned the Beverly Hills jewelry designer Jason Arasheben to redesign the iconic WSOP bracelets. The renewed jewels were presented to the public at WSOP.com

Jason Arasheben, the celebrity jewelry designer has been working in Beverly Hills for quite some time and has produced the two world championship rings for the Los Angeles Lakers and custom jewelry for celebrities such as Justin Bieber, Katy Perry, Rihanna and Diddy and athletes like Matt Kemp, Dwayne Wade and LeBron James.

After winning the $2,100 Stud and $2,100 Triple Stud events, Shaun Deeb also took down the $2,100 Stud Hi/Lo tournament in the PokerStars Spring Championship of Online Poker (SCOOP) 2012.

Shaun Deeb

Shaun Deeb has been performing brilliantly in this year’s SCOOP; it is becoming highly unlikely that anyone else could grab the Player of the Year title from him. Yesterday, he won his third SCOOP 2012 title, winning the $2,100 Stud Hi/Lo event after taking down the $2,100 Stud and the $2,100 Triple Stud, too. With all three high stakes Stud tournaments won, we could say he has his “Stud Triple Crown”.

The most recent poker documentary, the highly anticipated All-in - The Poker Movie was posted online in its entirety, and you can watch it right here, on Rakerace.com.

The documentary, directed by Douglas Tirola came out this March. The feature length film portrays the beginnings of poker through the poker boom to the Black Friday of poker on 15 April, 2011. Many iconic players and prevalent personalities in the poker industry appear in the documentary including Chris Moneymaker, Daniel Negreanu, Phil Hellmuth, Barry Greenstein, Phil Laak, and even the infamous Howard Lederer, who was interviewed prior to the Black Friday.

Daniel Negreanu’s latest clip in his video blog the “Weekly Rant” has recently come out.

Daniel Negreanu

Sharkscope and OPR, two data-mining sites that track MTT and SNG hands followed suit with PokerTableRatings, and removed the hands and statistics of PokerStars players from their website.

As Rakerace.com reported in April, PokerStars took legal action against PokerTableRatings (PTR) for hurting intellecutal property laws and room regulations. As a first step, PS sent PTR an official letter demanding that PokerTableRatings put an end to their sharing information on PS players. PS had announced that a group of lawyers were already working on analyzing the situation, and declared their determination towards their goal.

As a follow-up, PokerTableRatings quickly responded and agreed to PokerStars' terms and will only publish players statistics as per the explicit request of the players. A similar data-mining site Poker-Edge removed PokerStars data from their website on 25 April, and will not track them anymore. On 11 May, two other major data-miner sites, Sharkscope and Official Poker Rankings (OPR) decided to follow suit; they reported they will only disclose those players' data, who request their information to be public.

The player cap for the most expensive poker tournament ever, the WSOP $1,000,000 Big One has been set to 48 players. It seems more and more certain that this cap will be reached, which can mean a $15,000,000 prize for the winner alone.

The WSOP $1,000,000 Big One for One Drop tournament will be held on 1-3 July. The charity event will support Cirque Du Soleil owner Guy Laliberté’s One Drop foundation with 11.11% of the total prize pool. In order for the event to be an official part of the WSOP 2012 schedule, a minimum of 22 entrants are necessary to register. The Big One achieved that as early as December, 2011.

Tom ’durrrr’ Dwan has flopped two pairs for a gargantuan pot against a Chinese businessman in Macau.

Tom 'durrrr' Dwan

Although high stakes games in the StarWorld Casino on Macau are constantly running, only a handful of celebrated pros have shown up at the tables in the past days. Among the few who have, however, are Tom ‘durrrr’ Dwan and Andrew Robl, according to Poker Portal Asia. What is more, they are doing just fine, to say the least; ‘durrrr’ has just won a gigantic pot of HKD 30,000,000 or $3,800,000.

Following winning the PokerStars Spring Championship of Online Poker (SCOOP) #2-M $215 NLHE event, ‘Isildur1’ took down the #3-H $530+R NLHE 6-max event, too.

PokerStars pro Viktor ’Isildur1’ Blom accomplished something big on 6-8 May; despite the fact he has been always considered primarily a cash game and heads-up specialist, he has just taken down two consecutive SCOOP events. In addition to besting a field of 8,240 in the #2-M $215 NLHE event for $247,200, he also won the #3-H $530+R NLHE 6-max event.