Poker Guru Blog

Several Danish high stakes pros have reported finding a very advanced trojan program on their computers and have contacted the police regarding the issue. Police has stated that they are currently investigating a 32-year old Danish EPT champion, if all the accusations are correct, he might have committed one of the biggest cheating scandals in online poker history.

32 players started Day 2 of the EPT Prague €50,000 Super High Roller, including some of the biggest names in the game. By the end of the day, it was Russian player Leonid Markin who managed to collect the most chips with his unorthodox playing style, while 2014 WSOP Main Event champion Martin Jacobson finished on the money bubble. Markin is going to have to overcome tough competition to claim the €771,360 first prize, as Paul Newey, Stephen Chidwick, Juha Helppi, Ivan Soshnikov, Brian Roberts and Vladimir Troyanovskiy are all in the hunt for the title.

The Prague Poker Festival is now in full swing with the start of the €50,000 Super High Roller. A total of 41 players have entered on Day 1, there were 7 re-entries and registration is open until the start of Day 2. There are plenty of big names left in the field, including Tobias Reinkemeier, Mustapha Kanit, Stephen Chidwick, and last years €10,000 High Roller winner Ivan Soshnikov, who ended the day as the chipleader, which is no small feat considering he was also in play at the Eureka Main Event.

PokerStars has announced changes to their Tournament Leaderboards. The biggest change will be inflicted on the monthly TLB. The December Poker Festival on the site has also been a success, cash game traffic has increased by 18%.

Jennifer Shahade, an American chess Grandmaster and author of the book "Chess Bitch" who is getting more and more involved in the poker world won the €10,000 buy-in OFC Poker Live World Championship High Roller for €88,000.

The American pro defeated Kathy Lehne for the title, and has overtaken Scott Seiver on the all-time money list, where he now sits in 11th place with $12.89 million in career live winnings. 

Edward Norton was recently the guest of the The Late Show with David Letterman. The star of American History X and Fight Club was promoting his new movie, Birdman during the show, but he also talked about the possibility of a sequel for one of the best poker movies ever made, Rounders.

Mike "Timex" McDonald is one of the most accomplished tournament players on the planet, and he recently decided to do an AMA ("Ask Me Anything") on Reddit. We have compiled some of the most interesting answers from the discussion which you can read below. Did you know for example that the biggest tilt Mike ever went on was caused by a smoothie, or that he is completely addicted to a new video game developed by his friends?

Mexico is planning on introducing a new gambling regulation that would result in Mexico becoming one of the segregated markets like France and Spain. According to the regulation, Mexican players would only be able to play on .COM.MX sites, and can only participate in games that are hosted on Mexican servers.

While the holidays regularly create less traffic at the poker tables, PokerStars is doing everything they can to avoid this. They are raising tournament guarantees, there will be milestone hands, Zoom and Spin & Go promotions and the December Festival will culminate in a $5 million guaranteed Sunday Million tournament.

As we have previously reported, the driving force behind the action at the online high-stakes tables in November was Phil "Polarizing" Ivey, he was up $900,000 roughly one week before the end of the month. In the final week, unidentified German player SanIker showed up at the tables, and won more than $1 million to become the biggest winner of the month.

A French player recently published a poker documentary on the 2+2 forums, called "NOSEBLEED", which deals with high stakes limit game specialists Alex "Alexonmoon" Luneau and Sebastien "Seb86" Sabic. The movie is in French but English subtitles are now available, be sure to check it out below, it's definitely worth it!

Riera failed to show up for his championship match against Chievo, he has instead traveled to Slovenia to participate in a poker tournament, and as a result, had his contract terminated by the Italian club.

Carbon Poker has once again organized their online tournament series, creatively titled Online Poker Series, but on the last day of the series, players were plagued with disconnect problems, and several players who reconnected were reconnected to other players accounts. 

Victoria Coren-Mitchell has decided to leave PokerStars Team Pro after 7 years after the company announced the launch of their online casino platform. She has stated that she is not comfortable with promoting something that she believes is dangerous and will thus leave the company.