Poker Guru Blog

Following a three-way deal, Dan ‘mrGR33N13’ Colman won €1,539,300, defeating another ace of the game, Daniel ‘jungleman12’ Cates heads-up.

The eight-handed finale of the EPT Grand Final 2014 €100,000 Super High Roller event started with a dominant player of the Macau high stakes cash games, Lo Shing Fung aka Rono Lo in the chiplead. Paul Phua and Richard Yong also represented Macau at the Final Table and they were joined in the hunt for the €1.8 million first prize by the very elite of poker these days, Ole Schemion, Cates, Colman, Olivier Busquet and Igor Kurganov.

PokerTracker has launched a promotion to lure over Holdem Manager users, running through 5 May.

In early April, Holdem Manager announced that they cease to support HM1 as of 30 April 2014. This effectively means that players will be able to log in, use the software including the HUD but need to expect that no more updates will be released and bugs and crashes will not be fixed. Players owning the HM1 licence are eligible for a major discount on HM2: until 30 April, they can get it 40% cheaper.

German high roller aces dominate the action at the EPT Grand Final Super High Roller: Philipp Gruissem in the lead, Ole Schemion is close behind.

The EPT Grand Final €100,000 Super High Roller event launched on 24 April with 48 entrants on Day 1 and 11 re-entries. This means 59 buy-ins so far, although registration is still open at the start of Day 2, so expect more entries and an even larger official prize pool.

The 2014 WSOP Asia-Pacific takes place in October and features ten gold bracelet events, including some exotic ones like the Terminator No Limit Hold’em tournament.

Last November, Caesars Entertainment announced that the WSOP Europe and WSOP APAC series were going to take place on a rotational basis in the future, each being held in every other year. This year, the Asia-Pacific is up and the WSOPE returns in 2015.

The 11th season of the European Poker Tour (EPT) kicks off in Barcelona this August. Additionally, London, Prague, Deauville and Monte Carlo have been confirmed for the next run of the European series.

Five stops with dates have been confirmed for the schedule of the 11th season of the European Poker Tour. The opening is held in Barcelona between 16-27 August, which also happens to be the 100th stop in the history of the series. Participants can therefore expect a major poker festival, which will include the events of the Estrellas Poker Tour for an even wider variety.

Daniel Negreanu disclosed via his Twitter his take on the recent issue of Phil Ivey versus the Borgata. Essentially, the renowned Canadian pro considers the casino beaten in its own game and whining about it.

Recently, the Borgata Hotel Casino & Spa has sued one of the best and most renowned poker players ever, Phil Ivey. The charge is multiple accounts of edge-sorting cheating in baccarat games and the casino sues the nine times WSOP champion for a compensation of $9.6 million.

PokerStars Pro Vicky Coren started the Main Event Final Table of the European Poker Tour (EPT) Sanremo 2014 stop as short stack but managed to win the €476,100 first prize. She is the first player ever to earn two EPT Main Event champion titles.

Eight players were left for the final day of the EPT Sanremo 2014 €4,900 Main Event, including chipleader online multi-table tournament pro Jordan ‘JWPRODIGY’ Westmorland and short stack PokerStars Pro Vicky Coren.

Daniel 'jungleman12' Cates, one of today's best high stakes cash game player recently visited the Hungarian capital Budapest, this is where he gave an exclusive interview to Rakerace.com. He mentioned the possibility of a Jungleman challenge happening in the near future. As he said:

"Unfortunately, I think that to offer one similar to the durrrr challenge, in terms of offering 3 to 1 in 50,000 hands would not be profitable for me. People are becoming more and more competitive and there’s only so much that you can really even push in No Limit. Doug and I talked a little bit about doing such a thing, but, fingers crossed, maybe it’ll happen. No disrespect for him, he is a very good player, of course, maybe even the best at this point. I’d personally wanna do it against Isildur. Just because, you know, it’s kind of a long-standing rivalry between us, to some extent, in addition, right now I think I have an edge versus him. I don’t think it’s gonna happen, though, because of other reasons."

The iPoker Online Poker Series (iPOPS) launches for the sixth time this weekend, with a total guaranteed prize pool of €1,000,000.

The iPoker network, home to skins like Everest Poker, Betfair, Winner Poker or Coral Poker announces the sixth instalment of their popular online multi-table championship, the iPoker Online Poker Series (iPOPS). After the system successfully debuted in iPOPS V, the championship will be held both at low and at high stakes.

A technical issue at PokerStars caused the $215 Sunday Warm-Up tournament on 6 April to run with only 1,204 players. Consequently, the prize pool accumulated from the buy-ins was nowhere near the guaranteed $500,000.

As a result of an unusual technical issue, the PokerStars $200+$15 Sunday Warm-Up of 6 April ran with a gargantuan overlay of about $260,000. By default, in the first three hours of the tournament, late registration is open and a lot of players indeed tend to skip the first couple of blind levels. This time, however, late registration was disabled and the field was closed when they shuffled up and dealt. A relatively small player pool of 1,204 participants could therefore play for the $500,000 in prize money.

Effective 1 May 2014, no more updates will be released and no technical support available for Holdem Manager 1.

Holdem Manager has notified players in an e-mail that, as of 30 April 2014, they no longer support HM1. This effectively means that players will be able to log in, use the software including the HUD but need to expect that no more updates will be released and bugs and crashes will not be fixed. The company ceases to support the first version of the popular poker tool from this May.

IPN, shutting down in May, has recently withdrawn its Bad Beat Jackpot promotion. The €145,000 left in the prize pool is given away in freerolls for players who have played at least one raked hand in the past 365 days.

International Poker Network parent company GTECH announced last December that it would focus on the regulated markets in the future. As a result, IPN, or the former Boss Media, operating on the .com market as one of the five networks managed by GTECH online gaming branch SPIELO G2, is to shut down soon. The remaining four networks, Canadian Poker Network, Poker Club Italia, Spain Poker Network and Svenska Spel are active on the regulated markets.

Following a three-way deal, Oleksii Khoroshenin won €578,392 for his victory in the EPT Vienna 2014 Main Event. High Roller tournament winner Fabrice Soulier earned €392,000.

Last weekend saw the eight-handed finale of the European Poker Tour Main Event with Anthony Ghamrawi in the chiplead (stack: 5,150,000). Favourites of the final nine, however, were SCOOP champion and $1,000 NLHE Hyper-Turbo HU regular Frei ‘deamon10’ Dilling, WSOP 2013 $1,500 NLHE Shootout winner Simeon Naydenov and PokerStars Sunday 500 winner online MTT pro Marko ‘BriDge2PaiN’ Neumann, whose short stack was still sufficient for him to come back.

888 has recently published the annual results for 2013 and the numbers are more than impressive: with a 7% grow in revenues and 21% more players than in the previous year, 888Poker is now the undoubted runner-up in the online traffic list on the .com market.

In 2013, 888 showed off an incredible increase both in revenues and active player numbers: the figures have increased by 7% and 21% over the previous year, respectively, which is even more stunning if you consider the general decline of the industry and shrinking numbers all across rival operators. As a result, 888Poker has reached the second position in the online cash game rankings by the end of the year.

Russian internet providers started to ban online gambling sites but to no avail.

While online gambling is illegal in Russia, internet providers had previously taken no steps to block similar content. The issue took legal course in 2012, when prosecution tried to make Rostelecom ban illegal gambling sites.