Poker Guru Blog

This week, a short interview with WSOP 2005 Main Event champion Joe Hachem stirred up the poker community. As usual, Daniel Negreanu could not help but contribute to the debate.

Earlier this week, Bluff published a short interview with Joe Hachem, recorded during the Aussie Millions. The Australian won the WSOP 2005 Main Event for $7,500,000 and has booked quite a number of impressive results ever since, including a victory in the WPT Five Diamond World Poker Classic 2006 for $2,207,575 and a 3rd finish in the Aussie Millions 2012 $100,000 Challenge for $339,726. His lifetime live tournament winnings total at $11,828,080.

Due to a technical issue – or as a well executed marketing pull – the first draft of the official schedule of WSOP 2014 was released for a short period of time.

The unofficial tournament schedule of this year’s WSOP was released by Caesars Entertainment in December 2013. The summer festival is running from 27 May to 14 July at the Rio All-Suite Hotel & Casino in Las Vegas, Nevada, USA and the Main Event kicks off on 5 July. While the released document revealed some key information, it was still a bit sketchy on the detail and the first official draft was promised to be published early this year.

Shawn ‘buck21’ Buchanan is the first player ever to win a WCOOP, a SCOOP as well as a TCOOP title. The question still remains: who takes down the Grand Slam first?

Shawn ‘buck21’ Buchanan is one of the most successful multi-table tournament players around. He is the holder of a WPT title, finale qualifier of multiple WSOP events and boasts lifetime tournament winnings of $5.6 million. He is also a successful online player, as demonstrates his triple PokerStars COOP title.

Full Tilt Poker Pros saw both the top and the bottom of the high stakes action in January: Viktor ‘Isildur1’ Blom finished as the biggest winner and Gus Hansen lost the most in the first month of the year.

Few high stakes players have grinded a lot in January; by far, ‘Isildur1’ played the most hands: 48,517 to be precise. He also managed to win the most, profiting $2,154,113. The Swede would take part in any action he could get; he earned the most in 8-Game, $1,373,677 in 8,528 hands. In Omaha Hi/Lo, he won $796,852 (7,046 hands), $532,389 in draw (4,827 hands) and 117,602 in NLHE (6,762). Only in PLO did he lose, $665,407 in 21,354 hands.

The weekend saw the conclusion of both the Main and the High Roller events of the European Poker Tour (EPT) Deauville 2014 stop. Victories went to Sotirios Koutoupas and Dominik Panka, respectively.

Dominik Panka

The eight-handed Final Table of the €10,300 High Roller event took place on Saturday. Albert Daher had a major lead but EPT Barcelona title holders Martin Schleich and Kent Lundmark, EPT Berlin champion Davidi Kitai, WSOPE 2013 Main Event winner Adrian Mateos Diaz, 2011 Player of the Year Ondrej Vinklarek and PCA Main Event champion Panka were also sitting at the table.

After two event days, the Final Table is formed in the EPT Deauville 2014 High Roller tournament. In the lead is Albert Daher but the likes of Davidi Kitai and Dominik Panka are in pursuit.

Albert Daher

On 30 January, the EPT Deauville €10,300 High Roller event kicked off with 95 entrants (and 18 re-entries). Eventually, 53 players survived the day with Marton Czuczor in the lead; he built his stack by eliminating players like David Vamplew and Lauri Pesonen. At the end of the day, Czuczor was accompanied by Konstantin Puchkov, Panka, Toby Lewis, Martin Staszko, Kitai, Steve O'Dwyer, Dominik Nitsche, Artem Litvinov and Stephen Chidwick, just to highlight a few of the illustrious field.

In the latest client update, PokerStars added an indicator to reveal mobile and tablet users. This surprised the community and many try to exploit the feature to find recreational players.

Recently, PokerStars has updated its client software and added the feature to signal smartphone and tablet users at the tables. The move caused a stir in the poker community, as it is considered a good way to reveal recreational players; this stems from the notion that fish are more likely to use such a device to play than regulars, who prefer desktop solutions, where they can play on multiple tables and use their utility software.

Christian Lusardi tried to get rid of the fake chips in one of the Harrah’s restrooms but failed.

As previously reported, World Poker Tour Borgata Winter Open $560 Big Stack NLHE Re-entry event got paused and subsequently cancelled when a large number of counterfeit 5,000 denomination chips were found in players’ stacks. Of the 4,814 entrants, only 27 were in play at that point; following the investigation that revealed the scam, the remaining prize pool was withheld.

The official tournament schedule of the EPT Vienna festival has been released and it reveals a number of extraordinary events, including the Deuces Wild, Reverse Mix Max, Double Board and the Mozart MegaStack tourneys.

In May 2013, at the time of the kick-off of the EPT Monte Carlo Grand Final, the festival calendar of the 10th season of the greatest poker series of the old continent, the European Poker Tour, was released. On 28 August, the season launched in Barcelona and it is followed by another seven stops. EPT London took place in October, Prague hosted the Tour in December, the PCA has just recently ended and the Deauville stop is already underway, running through 1 February.

PokerStars has officially announced that this year’s EPT Barcelona event returns to host players at Hotel Arts, despite last year’s security scandal with pros’ laptops hacked.

In 2013, players of EPT Barcelona experienced a security breach at the Arts Hotel as several pros’ laptops got hacked and Trojan viruses installed on them. Now, PokerStars confirms that the festival is returning to the familiar venue to celebrate the 100th event in the series, after security issues at the hotel had been solved and players’ personal and material safety ensured.

Through its official Twitter, the Poker Players Alliance (PPA) announced that the Garden City Group (GCG), which had been tasked to coordinate the reimbursement process of US FTP players, would launch the transfer of a total of $82 million.

One of the most publicized and debated issue of online poker lately has been that of Full Tilt: the company was purchased by PokerStars in the summer of 2012 and they agreed to compensate all players for their money stuck on their FTP accounts. FTP was consequently re-launched in November the same year and non-American users got instantly reimbursed. However, the case of US players was handled by the Department of Justice (DoJ), using the money provided by PokerStars.

In his latest blog posts, Andre ‘acoimbra’ Coimbra described his plans for the year, including reaching the SuperNova Elite status, making strategy videos and running a marathon. He also announced giving away all his $100k challenge winnings to charity.

Portuguese Andre ‘acoimbra’ Coimbra’s $100k challenge at PokerStars was one of last year’s highlights in the poker world and was followed by many via the pro’s blog and the international forums. ‘Acoimbra’ aimed to boost his $100 bankroll to $100,000 in a year, exclusively playing multi-table tournaments. Eventually, he racked up some $70,000 in winnings, which is a respectable sum, regardless of not meeting his desired goal. More importantly, PokerStars is likely to have gained quite a number of new registrations from recreational players who had seen Coimbra play. In turn, the Portuguese’s popularity and advertising value increased exponentially.

Multiple players may be involved in a chips scam at the World Poker Tour (WPT) Borgata Winter Open: counterfeit 5,000 denominations were found during the $2,000,000 guaranteed live event.

The World Poker Tour Borgata Winter Open kicked off last week with the $560 Big Stack NLHE Re-entry event, which offered a $2,000,000 guaranteed prize pool. A total of 4,814 players registered and only 27 of them were left in play when organizers paused the tournament, while streaming, and cancelled it eventually. Behind the decision was the discovery of a number of 5,000 denomination chips with a paler tone than normal. The suspicion arose that one or more of the players used the fake chips to increase their stacks in-game.

Tom ‘durrrr’ Dwan has denied recently via his Twitter the allegation that he had won over $25 million in a Macau cash game session.

According to CardPlayer Latin America, Tom ‘durrrr’ Dwan has recently won a total of $25 million in a high stakes cash game session at the StarWorld casino in Macau. The magazine has cited a reliable source and the news have quickly become hot topic on the online poker forums and several major sites in the industry. Eventually, ‘durrrr’ himself reacted, too, only to refute the rumour:

Twister is a three-way Sit n’ Go to offer a prize of up to 1,000 times the buy-in to the winner. And this is not the only novelty to hit the iPoker network skins.

The iPoker network, home to renowned online poker rooms like Betfair Poker, William Hill Poker, Coral Poker and Everest Poker, introduces Twister on 20 January 2014. Twister is a jackpot-based Sit n’ Go game with three players and a single table, where the winner takes the entire prize pool. Buy-ins range from $1 to $10.