Poker Guru Blog

On the first two days of Event #46 $50,000 Poker Players Championship, a total of 102 players registered, accumulating a prize pool of $4,896,000. With the top 14 finishes paying, the winner takes home a handsome $1,517,767.

Phil Hellmuth

The first day saw the elimination of Sergii Baranov, Dan Shak, Michael Glick and Phil Galfond, while the second that of even more seasoned pros. For instance, Phil Hellmuth called all-in in a PLO hand on David Steicke’s shove on the 2 Q 6 flop. They were both called by Michael Mizrachi from a larger stack.

Full Tilt Poker card room director Shyam Markus announced yesterday that FTP introduced a range of changes, effective 24 June 2014.

Following the payment scandal after the Black Friday, Full Tilt Poker re-launched in November 2012 as a skin of market leader PokerStars owner Rational Group. While many had expected FTP to quickly retake its former number #2 position on the market under Rational, this has not or only partly been realised.

In order to increase the popularity of poker in the USA, Poker Nigh in America will be screened through 26 weeks, from late June to December.

CBS Sports Network has announced that the larger than life poker show, Poker Night in America kicks off on 29 June. The show runs each Sunday at 22:00 ET, in the course of 26 weeks until December.

The nine-handed Final Table of WSOP Event #43 $1,500 Limit Hold’em took place on tournament Day 3.

Dan Kelly

WSOP 2010 $25,000 NLHE Six-Handed champion and former online MTT money list winner Dan ‘djk123’ Kelly had the lead, but he was accompanied by the likes of five times WSOP champions Jeff Lisandro and David Chiu, or this year’s $1,000 PLO title holder Brandon Shack-Harris.

Day 3 of WSOP Event #38 $10,000 Seven Card Stud Hi-Lo Split-8 or Better saw 13 players returning, including chipleader George Danzer, as well as the likes of Jeff Lisandro, Brian Hastings, Ted Forrest and Calvin Anderson.

Todd Brunson, Alexander Jung, Forrest and Norman Chad got eliminated before Danzer railed Richard Sklar and John Monnette in the same hand and the rest of the field was seated at the Final Table. The chip counts were as follows:

Day 1 of WSOP Event #36 $1,500 No Limit 2-7 Draw Lowball saw 241 entrants and a prize pool of $325,350. The 28 ITM finishes were reached on Day 2, where 38 players returned.

Steven Wolansky

Among the players finishing in the money, one will find Max Pescatori (27th, $2,837), Chino Rheem (25th, $2,837), Mike Leah (22th, $2,837), John Racener (21st, $3,471), Eli Elezra (19th, $3,471), Phil Hellmuth (18th, $3,471), Brian Rast (16th, $3,471), as well as Ali Eslami (11th, $5,371), among others.

A total of 550 players registered for WSOP Event #35 $5,000 No Limit Hold’em Eight Handed, accumulating a prize pool of $2,585,000. Only 170 of them survived Day 1 and 23 returned on Day 3, including a selection of the very elite of the industry.

Brian Yoon

In the course of Day 2, a number of pros got eliminated before reaching the money, including the likes of Fabian Quoss, Jennifer Tilly, Shaun Deeb, Jason Mercier, Griffin Benger, Dan Shak, John Juanda, David Pham, Philipp Gruissem, Igor Kurganov, Vanessa Selbst, Stephen Chidwick, Sorel Mizzi and Jason Somerville.

Ten players returned on Day 3 of WSOP Event #33 $1,000 No Limit Hold’em. In the field was two times WSOP champion Dutch Boyd, behind Will Givens and Steven Norden in the chipcount.

Dutch Boyd

With the elimination of David Olmsted, the Final Table seats were drawn as follows:

Seat 1: Pok Kim – 222,000
Seat 2: Vinny Pahuja – 339,000
Seat 3: Dutch Boyd – 1,185,000
Seat 4: Steven Norden – 743,000
Seat 5: Paul Cogliano – 823,000
Seat 6: Christopher Sensoli – 148,000
Seat 7: Chad Dixon – 180,000
Seat 8: Will Givens – 1,229,000
Seat 9: Gabriel Nassif – 199,000

The news of Amaya purchasing PokerStars parent company Rational Group almost instantly gave rise to concerns among players regarding the future of the market leader room. Steve ‘PokerStars Steve’ Day responded to counter these voices.

Mark and Isai Scheinberg

On 12 June, it was officially announced that Amaya Gaming had purchased the Rational Group for $4.9 billion, meaning the Ongame parent company is now the owner of PokerStars and Full Tilt Poker. The deal has been in the centre of discussion ever since in the poker community with a wide range of questions arisen and concerns voiced. Rumour has even had it that PokerStars would stop accepting players from Canada.

12 players survived until Day 3 of WSOP Event #30 $1,500 Seven Card Stud Hi-Low 8-or-Better. In the lead was Eric Kurtzman with 490,000 in chips, ahead of online MTT ace Calvin ‘cal42688’ Anderson, who sat back behind a stack of 356,000.

The eight-handed Final Table was formed after Matthew Kelly, David Brooker, Robert Goldfarb and six times WSOP champion Ted Forrest got eliminated. In addition to Anderson, Jimmy Fricke and Joe Tehan were also at the table, to name a few notables.

As of 16 June, iPoker discontinues a range of cash game tables and gametypes unpopular with users to increase the liquidity of the more frequented games.

The iPoker network, home to skins like Everest Poker, Betfair and Winner Poker, has announced the implementation of a range of substantial changes to its cash game offering to increase its liquidity, effective today, 16 June. Most importantly, high stakes and anonymous tables will be completely discontinued: NL1,000 remains the highest limit available. Additionally, shallow and deep ante tables are also withdrawn from the heads-up and full ring offerings.

Day 3 of WSOP Event #21 $1,000 No Limit Hold’em saw 16 players returning with November Nine member Bob Bounahra in the lead ahead the likes of Thayer ‘THAY3R’ Rasmussen, Dominik Nitsche and Mickey ‘mement_mori’ Petersen.

The seat draw of the nine-handed Final Table was as follows:

A collection of PokerStars-related news has surfaced late last week. The room has closed and then reopened the accounts of a pair of renowned pros, meanwhile announcing a staggering WCOOP Main Event prize pool guarantee.

PokerStars has recently announced that a prize pool larger than ever will be guaranteed in this year’s World Championship of Online Poker (WCOOP) Main Event: at least $10,000,000 will be up for grabs. In 2012, the event offered $5,000,000 and in 2013 $8,000,000. The $5,200 WCOOP Main Event kicks off on 28 September this year, yet no additional information has been revealed, not even a full schedule. The announcement comes with the launch of the WCOOP ME online satellites, running from as little as $1.65 (Round 1).

After three lost WSOP heads-ups, including this year’s $10,000 Limit 27TD event, Justin Bonomo has finally scooped in the coveted gold bracelet.

10 players qualified for Day 2 of WSOP Event #11 $1,500 6-max No Limit Hold’em with Mike Sowers in the lead; the holder of numerous WSOP, WPT and EPT ITM finishes had 1,413,000 in chips to his name. He was closely followed by this year’s Event #6 $ 10,000 Limit 2-7 Triple Draw runner-up Bonomo with 1,294,000 and an ambition to finally score a title after three 2nd finishes in the series. WSOP 2013 Event #18 $1,000 No Limit Hold’em winner Taylor Paur came in third with 1,120,000.

Jonathan Dimmig became a millionaire by winning this year’s WSOP Event #8 $1,500 Millionaire Maker, beating the odds.

On Day 4 of WSOP Event #8 $1,500 Millionaire Maker, the nine-handed final table took place. Chipleader Stephen Graner was the favourite to win the life changing sum: with a stack of 12,005,000, he had three times as many chips as chip counts runner-up James Duke. The Seat Draw was as follows: