Poker Guru Blog

According to Seiska, a Finnish yellow press-style magzine, Ilari ‘Ziigmund’ Sahamies and Miss Finland 2010, Viivi Pumpanen are dating.

If I had to describe Ziigmund, I would say the following: a millionaire, one of the best PLO players in the world, and an infamous womanizer. Seiska says he has strengthened his fame for being a striker by dating Viivi Pumpanen, Finland’s latest beauty queen.

ziigmund has always known how to party

The 22 year-old lady has won the title this year, and immediately became a tabloid target. She broke up with her bridegroom, Pezhman Ahmadi (successful entrepreneur) just a few months ago, and can now often be seen on the side of Ziggy, and their relationship seems quite intimate.
Although Pumpanen denies that there is anything more than friendship between them, the local media already handles them as a couple.

As I have mentioned in a previous post, the 2010 Nominees of the Poker Hall of Fame have been chosen by public voting. The ten-name list did not bring real surprises.
This is the second time that the nominees have been chosen by public voting. The list was made official yesterday.

Below you can view Mike Sexton’s induction into the Poker Hall of Fame from last year.

The 2010 Nominees are as follows:

Chris Ferguson
Barry Greenstein
Jennifer Harman
Dan Harrington
Phil Ivey
Linda Johnson
Tom McEvoy
Daniel Negreanu
Scotty Nguyen
Erik Seidel

As I have mentioned in previous posts, Victory Poker officially became part of the Cake Network on the 1st September. Players can already enjoy the benefits of the brand new Victory Poker platform. Victory Poker’s website, however, has not yet been available yesterday, as they have been refurbishing it. Upon viewing the site yesterday, players saw the following message:

If we have a look at the Victory Poker website today, we can see that the software client has already been made available for downloading, and the site is promised to be back up in a few hours.

Fox Sports Net came to an agreement with WPT, so for the next three years FSN will televise the popular poker tour from the 9th to the 11th season. The new episodes will air on Sunday nights at 8 and 11PM starting with the 179th episode in January 2011. The show's commentators will be Mike Sexton, 2009 WSOP bracelet winner and Vince Van Patten actor along with Kimberly Lansing, reporter.

Phil Ivey doesn't give interviews very often, so it is exceptional that Tatjana Pasalic caught him at the WPT London. Ivey talks about his feelings about the tournament and he feels confident that he has serious chances of winning it this year. When asked whether poker's popularity is about to drop or not, he also talks about the reputation of poker worldwide.

An interesting video to watch, I highly recommend it!

Despite the falling traffic across various sports betting websites, Betfair can still boast about its growing weekly traffic, according to a weekly report at BetRankings.com

(BetRankings.com is an independent Web site compiling weekly Top 25 rankings for both the US and Global sports markets.)

The chart shows that Betfair still is the #1, Bet365 #2, Bwin the #4. Only these sites were showing upward traffic in the top 6.

The Earl hurricane caused major power outages on the island of Antigua, where many well-known off-shore gambling firms reside.

"Islands hit particularly hard were Antigua, Barbuda, Anguilla and St. Martin, where there are reports of roofs torn off, trees downed and numerous power outages," CBC meteorologist Johanna Wagstaffe said.

A Rancho Cordova, CA couple was arrested in April after a security guard found a seven-week-old baby in a parked vehicle outside the Thunder Valley casino. It turned out the Northern California couple went gambling into the casino, leaving the baby unattended for about 2 1/2 hours.

A Placer County Superior Court judge now sentenced the 27 year old parents, Thuan huy Nguyen and Panfila Phu Phan to 60 days. He also ordered them to attend parenting class and with a 4-year probation, they could get the baby back.

 

The biggest match was fought at the Elevado table ($100/$300/$600 PLO 6-Max) on Saturday, with many poker celebrities such as Phil Ivey, Tom 'durrrr' Dwan, Patrik Antonius, Di 'Urindanger'' Dang, Scott 'URnotINdanger2' Palmer, and a newcomer by the name of 'cadillac1944'.

This years' 5th biggest pot was on the table this day, $528.618.

According to RakeRace.com, an unusually grim debate seems to evolve between the Poker Players Alliance and top California-based card rooms. The dispute revolves around the Congressional testimony from Commerce Casino board member Tom Malkasian on HR 2267.

In July, Malkasian testified against the bill before the House Financial Services Committee. First, he questioned the revenue estimations that forecast about $42 billion tax income in 10 years: “The problem with these estimates is that they are all built on false assumptions and conflicting representations,” he stated. He added that with the states being allowed to opt out, the revenues were even less guaranteed. This would also mean that “supporters of HR 2267 are straddling two conflicting claims” as they could either have the estimated incomes or the option for opt-out.

ESPN’s coverage of the 2010 WSOP Main Event started to air on 10th August and continues to screen two episodes every Tuesday until 9th November, when the Finale will be broadcast. Eps 5 and 6 cover Main Event Day 2, while 7 and 8 are airing tomorrow.

The event day presents poker stars like Daniel Negreanu, Patrik Antonius and Michael Mizrachi. 

Episode 5:

Please note: due to bug in the embed code, Ep5 part 1 is only available at PokerTube. The link above will take you there. You can watch the rest and Ep6 here.

In this episode of "This Week In Poker by WickedChops.com" guests include Kimberly Lansing, who talks about the WPT, Legends of poker and much more; Phil Laak, who gives a Skype interview, in which he talks about his horrible ATV quad accident (which I already wrote about) in which he broke 7 bones; and Jess Wellman, with some of the most important poker news. Finally, we have some comments on the recent Negreanu vs. Duke affair.

If you won't watch the whole 1:19 minutes of the video, I definitely suggest you watch the bit from 49:28 till 1:14, where Phil Laak talks about his accident, it is really worth watching.

As it was big news for a few days now, on August 5th  the San Jose mine collapsed in Chile, trapping 33 Chilean miners half a mile inside the earth. All the miners are safe and sound thankfully, though their rescue might take very long, approximately 4 months.

Through the 6 inch (15cm) wide tube that leads to the survivors, where they get food and air supplies, the miners requested a deck of poker cards, and they have been playing poker to pass the time ever since.

Have you ever though about what happens to the poker pros that stop playing?

Well, some of them obviously go on living average lives, or go broke and live worse-than-average ones. Others continue grinding under secret nicknames, or just find other activities to do. Former Full Tilt Poker sponsored player Thomas Wahlroos decided to try himself out in investing after closing the poker chapter in his life.

According to a Norwegian newspaper Dagens Näringsliv, Wahlroos has made a massive $15 million through his and his father’s investing company. And that is only the last year. Wahlroos has a degree in financing, but before his investing adventures, he was a professional poker player who made more than a million dollars in live tournaments, finishing 3rd at the EPT Paris in 2006, and 7th at the WPT Championship in 2007.

Wahlroos ended his poker life in 2008, when he decided to go into investing. He still plays poker as a hobby, and sometimes he can be found on Full Tilt under the nick ’susisisu’.

The video below was made when Thomas eliminated Phil Hellmuth, who immediately started his usual ranting, of course. 

59-year-old Ron Wall is a very popular person in the Las Vegas poker rooms: the well-known poker player basically got stuck in the ‘50s, and cruises between casinos dressed up as a gangster from that time. The whole thing, of course, is just a joke mixed with a bit less common sense, as the guy called ‘Duke’ never hurts anyone.

Somebody, however, thought the guy’s time on Earth had expired and tried to finish with him. Thirty-year-old Edmond Price and girlfriend Victoria Elizabeth Edelman cheated Duke into a hotel room with the promise of selling him gold, and Wall happily went with them, as, according to him, he had several successful deals with them in the past. This time, though, the business did not go down smooth. Both Edmond and Elizabeth instantly started hitting Duke when he entered the room. They wanted to take hold of the $137,000 that was in Duke’s bag.

But the old man did not obey easily. He knew that if he had abandoned fighting, he would have been killed and hidden somewhere in the desert. But the couple was stronger, grabbed the money and left the room. Duke was left there bound by ropes in the room, but somehow he managed to free himself and call the police.

They soon caught the two robbers, who – as it later turned out – were already sought after by the police for some time.