Poker Guru Blog

Phil Ivey is currently battling two casinos which have accused him of cheating and withheld his winnings. On October 7, Ivey will discuss the lawsuits and defend himself in 60 Minutes Sports with James Brown. CBS News released a teaser from the show that you can check out in the article. 

We have heard that beloved EPT commentator Joe Stapleton has written for MADtv, The Two Coreys, and other shows, but we didn't know he was a stand-up comedian aswell! We have found the following picture of Joe at Dirty Dicks Comedy Monday on Twitter, and after a little research we even found an old interview where he states that he hopes that one day the PokerStars Caribbean Adventure will have a Stapes Comedy night with everyone in poker attending. "But I think I'm at least a couple years away from that."

PokerStars has withdrawn from from 30 countries without giving any prior notice to players. They have assured players that their funds are safe and will be paid out, but players from the affected countries are very upset and concerned about how PokerStars handled this issue. In other PS related news, they have introduced the Spin & Go tournament format in their .EU/.COM sites, and have started to offer casino services to the Spanish market.

As we have reported, young Austrian staker/poker player Fedor "CrownUpGuy" Holz won the WCOOP Main Event for $1.3 million. The PokerStars blog interviewed him after the victory, you can read the excerpt  below, and you can also learn about Alan "Mr Negreanu" Gold, who cashed an astonishing 17 times and won the Player of the Series award with his amazing performance.

Pablo "gordiju" Gordillo had arguably one of the sickest days ever in online tournament poker. He won three big tournaments, including a win in the field of 35,594 players in the Sunday Storm. Check out all the details of the UK-based Spanish grinder's amazing day below.

The second day of the $5,200 buy-in World Championship of Online Poker started with 271 players, and plenty of great players managed to reach the final table, including Faraz "The-Toilet 0" Jaka, Dylan "PokerI)eviL" Hortin, Viktor "Isildur" Blom and Elior "Crazy Elior" Sion. In the end, it was young Austrian player/staker Fedor Holz who took down the event for $1.3 million.

The $5,200 WCOOP Main Event is already underway, currently there are 271 players left battling for the $1.8 million first prize. There a still plenty of qualifiers in the tournament, trying to make a huge score from a couple of bucks. In the infographic below you can see how high a stack of real $1 chips would stack when spun up to millions of dollars in prize money...Click on picture to enlarge!

In 2012, Partypoker decided to ditch all of it's high stakes tables, and this May, they have introduced so called "Casual" Cash Games. Players playing on these tables are limited to playing only one cash game table, to purpose of which is to "protect" recreational players from multitabling grinders. Now they are extending the format to levels up to $0.50/$1, aswell as a $10/$20 game.

Scott Ricotta, known online as "ICANTSNG"  has made a post on the twoplustwo forums stating he got a lifetime ban for PokerStars for multi-accounting, and that he is going to work with regulators to prove that PokerStars is abusing their powers and that the multi-accounting charges are fake.

While researching for details for today's Dan Bilzerian article, we came accross the Instagram account of Nad Bilzerian, Dan Bilzerian's poor twin brother. We had a really hard time picking our favorite, the whole account is full of great parody pictures of the Bilzerian lifestyle, but the picture below is probably one of the best from the page. 

Last week, the Wall Street Journal ran an article with the title "Dan Bilzerian's Life of Partying and Poker". The article discusses his lifetsyle, his Instagram celebrity status, and his alleged poker winnings of $50 million, as well as his "origin story".

We know Phil Hellmuth loves to hang out with celebrities and brag about it, and here is the next picture in his collection. He recently posted the following picture, and we can't help but wonder what topic was so interesting for the former President and so dull for Jack Black. Maybe he just saw plenty of European Poker Tour episodes online and is now going for the Mike "Timex" McDonald staredown...

Due to a legal technicality, PokerStars players in the UK don't have their auto-rebuy option anymore. Players are now writing a petition on the 2+2 forums where they ask the United Kingdom Gambling Commission to change the rules.

The 2014 WSOP APAC is starting in less than two weeks and with 10 events when you can win a gold bracelet. Besides the prestigious AU$10,000 Main Event there will be a AU$25,000 High Roller event which is expected to draw a big crowd.

RedLudmilla has been trying to get his money back for 1,5 years, that he won at a room called Win Cake, which was formerly known as Cake Poker. From this interview, you can get to know his story.