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After Ray Bitar's resignation and GBT's (Groupe Bernard Tapie) settlement with the DoJ (Department of Justice), the Department of Justice finally released the details of their agreement. Only the shareholders have to agree to this, and Full Tilt's reopening alongside with all the payouts can get a green light. Subject:Poker reported that Full Tilt Poker has released a statement about their current situation.

"Full Tilt Poker is pleased that the terms of the agreement between Groupe Bernard Tapie (GBT) and the Department of Justice have been finalized, and that the agreement provides for GBT to repay or make whole players outside of the United States and provides a mechanism for U.S. players to get repaid. Since Black Friday, repaying customers has been FTP’s number one priority."

Ray Bitar stated that he is extremely pleased with the efforts of the Department of Justice, and the Groupe Bernard Tapie corporation, and appreciates their continued dedication in working towards a mutually beneficial agreement that will facilitate repayment of the players.

Ray Bitar, Howard Lederer, Chris Ferguson and Rafe Furst, the four main defendants of the Full Tilt Poker (FTP) scandal have declared their resignation and thus cannot be reagrded as the leaders of the poker room anymore.

The Russian player Max Katz, who is known to be a better backer than player did well again; it turned out he and his team had a major share in Pius Heinz' Main Event, therefore they win lots of money on the German pro.

As we already reported, Max Katz has a great sense for choosing whom to stake. He is a very interesting, but controversial part of the poker community. His name has been connected with scandals sometimes, but he makes enormous amounts of money on his sponsoring deals.

His most interesting investment was in January, when he bought 50% Galen 'GasparLeMarc' Hall's PCA actions for $16,638. Hall won the Main Event, which earned Katz $1,150,000. But of course, we could mention David Vamplew's EPT London or Ben Wilinofsky's EPT Berlin victory as well, in all of which Katz had his percentage.

While Pius Heinz and Sam Holden keep all of their World Series of Poker (WSOP) winnings, the others will have to pay a huge amount to taxes.  Ben Lamb and Eoghan O'Dea are the biggest losers.

According to the German-American agreement on taxes, the newest poker world champion, Pius Heinz can keep all his WSOP Main Event winnings of $8,715,638 withouth having to pay any taxes. This agreement states that he doesn't have to pay taxes in the USA as a German citizen, neither he has to in his hometown, Vienna, Austria.

Pius Heinz with the millions of dollars

The Czech Martin Staszko won $5,433,086, which, according to the Czech-American agreement, he doesn't have to pay in the States, however, he has to in the Czech Republic. He has to pay 15% of his winnings, which is $814,963, a quite nice sum.

Pius Heinz, to first German player in the history of the WSOP won the 2011 World Series of Poker Main Event. He defeated the Czech Martin Staszko for the amazing $8,711,956 main prize, and of course the WSOP bracelet.

The 3-handed final table of the 2011 WSOP Main Event was held yesterday, with the participation of the 3 remaining players:

Seat 7: Pius Heinz - 107.800.000
Seat 8: Ben Lamb - 55.400.000
Seat 9: Martin Staszko - 42.700.000

The day has finally arrived; the WSOP November Nine got underway yesterday. Pius Heinz, Ben Lamb and Martin Staszko made it to the final three, who will face each other on Tuesday in the Grand Finale of the WSOP 2011. Dealing has started yesterday at the 2011 World Series of Poker Main Event final table. The Czech Martin Staszko lead with 40,175,000 chips. Jack Effel, tournament director of the WSOP announced the November Niners, who entered the Rio Casino's Penn&Teller room to the entry music of their choice.

Chip count:

Seat 1: Matt Giannetti - 24.750.000
Seat 2: Badih Bounahra - 19.700.000
Seat 3: Eoghan O'Dea - 33.925.000
Seat 4: Phil Collins - 23.875.000
Seat 5: Anton Makiievskyi - 13.825.000
Seat 6: Samuel Holden - 12.375.000
Seat 7: Pius Heinz - 16.425.000
Seat 8: Ben Lamb - 20.875.000
Seat 9: Martin Staszko - 40.175.000

November Niners, 2011

2011 does indeed seem to be the year of online poker scams; add Max ’mexx86’ Ashkar to the list, who is accused of using a Trojan virus to win over $2 million in total.

Max 'mexx86' Ashkar

The latest scandal in the online poker world broke out during the EM Championship in Austria, when an Austrian and a Swiss player reported that a German person who resides in London had installed a Trojan virus on their laptops, making their hole cards visible when playing against them online.

The brand new version of the most popular poker software suite, Hold'em Manager is out today, you can now purchase it online. If you already have Hold'em Manager 1, you are eligible for an upgrade at a discount price. As we already reported, the team behind the highly successful poker software, Hold'em Manager was working hard on the next version of their software, Hold'em Manager 2. We've shown you the beta version, but since earlier today, you can actually buy it at www.holdemmanager.com.

The new version is more responsive, more stable since September thanks to the beta-testing. According to the developers many bugs have been fixed, new features added, and although there are still more updates and new features to come, it was finally ready to be rolled out. Of course it still contains the new design, the dark theme, the light theme and all the goodness the programmers worked into this major overhaul.

The HM2/OM2 will be priced as follows:

HM2 Pro: $89,99
HM2 Small Stakes: $59,99

OM2 Pro: $89,99
OM2 Small Stakes: $59,99
  
HM2+OM2 (Pro version): $149,99

After a long and tirening wait, finally here's some good news for the FTP players out there. Groupe Bernard Tapie and the US Department of Justice reported that they struck a deal, allowing FTP's acquisition to continue.

Subject:Poker reported today that they received the news from multiple sources, that the United States Department of Justice and Groupe Bernard Tapie came to the end of their negotiations with a quite positive result. Ray Bitar, CEO of Full Tilt Poker sent out an email to shareholders informing them about the details of the agreement:

"Dear members,

-Ray"

Bwin.Party has come to an agreement with MGM Resorts International and Boyd Gaming. It is only a regulation that is missing for them to be able to hit the US market.

Online poker market money list runner-up Bwin.Party has recently announced that they had made a deal with US land-based casino giant MGM Resorts International as well as with another casino- and hotel market player, Boyd Gaming. The agreement basically paves the company’s way to the to-be-legalized online poker market in the USA, which is to come soon, hopefully.

ChicagoJoey wants to reach the SuperNova Elite level at PokerStars this year, although at the beginning of October he only had 347K VPPs. 12-16 hour PLO sessions until the end of this year is the plan.

Joe 'JoeIngram1' Ingram, alias ChicagoJoey is not known in the poker world for his exceptional knowledge, but for his exceptional endurance and the fact that he can play a large number of tables simultaneously. Joey has already broken several records in online poker, like playing the most hands in one month (600,000) or playing the most hands in one day (51,312 hands). In both cases, he finished with minimal profit, but the prop bets probably made the whole thing worth it.

In the middle of October, ChicagoJoey set out another incredible goal for himself: he made a 3:1 prop bet with his flatmate BallCup that he would reach SuperNova Elite at PokerStars until the end of this year.

Maintaining his lead throughout the finale, Elio Fox won the World Series of Poker Europe (WSOPE) Main Event for €1.4 million. Chris Moorman barely missed the bracelet.

Moritz Kranich, Chris Moorman and Brian Roberts

The Final Table of the €10,400 WSOPE Main Event featured a line-up that showed off many of the most prominent online and live players of today. In the chiplead started the US online pro Elio ’smokrokflock’ Fox.

Patrik Antonius, former Full Tilt Poker Pro claimed in a recent interview that he has nearly $5 million at stake at Full Tilt Poker. If the company goes bankrupt, and players won't be paid, he is bound to lose all his money. The Finnish poker pro Patrik Antonius might be in serious trouble in many ways. As one of Full Tilt Poker's pro, he must have lost access to his bankroll on the Black Friday, when the DoJ shut Full Tilt Poker and PokerStars down, which must have been a huge problem for him. He explained his situation in the interview below:

It turned out later that he only had $100 on his poker account, which is highly suspicious for a nosebleed player like Antonius. Noah 'NoahSD' Stephens-Davidowitz, who is regarded nowadays as poker's number one private (and also interviewer, who made interviews with Daniel 'Jungleman12' Cates concerning the Macedo scandal) detective found out that Antonius only had $100 on his account when Full Tilt Poker was closed. He posted on 2+2:

"Eh.. I'll post this because that interview pissed me off: Antonius has less than $100 in his FTP account, and he owes FTP a smallish amount." - wrote NoahSD. He added later: "PA's not a US resident, so he had 2.5 months to get his money off the site. I don't know if that's what happened, but it seems reasonable to assume. He stopped playing in May. FTP shut down June 29th. He has less than $100 in his account right now. People were talking about how it was surprising that PA and Dwan both have very little money in their accounts right now. I pointed out that there was a 2.5 month gap between when Tom was no longer able to cash out and when PA was no longer able to cash out. I didn't say that he cashed out all of his money on April 16th."

The United States/Canada team revenged their defeat in 2009 by Europe in the World Series of Poker Europe (WSOPE) invitational event Caesars Cup. Phil Hellmuth’s team won 3 – 1.

On Wednesday in the morning, Casears Cup launched, an unofficial event of the WSOPE organised for the second time. Teams USA/Canada and Europe clashed with 5 renowned pros on each side. Team Captain Phil Hellmuth lined up Jason Mercier, Ben Lamb, Johnny Chan and Daniel Negreanu against Bertrand ‘ElkY’ Grospellier’s platoon of Jake Cody, Gus Hansen, Maxim Lykov and Tony G.

Yesterday, the Australian-Lithuanian poker pro, Antanas 'Tony G' Guoga announced that he is willing to take legal action against the AGCC, because they were negligent in the handling of FTP's case and are responsible for the delay of the payments.
Tony G, the 13th most influential man in poker (according to BLUFF Magazine's most recent Power 20 list) proposed that he intends to sue the Alderney Gambling Control Commission. He claims that the AGCC was "negligent in the handling of the Full Tilt Poker situation". He goes on to say that Alderney knew that FTP players' money was not held on a separated account, therefore, they are responsible for the current situation:

Tony G getting ready for the fight

"We believe they knew about it a long time ago, that security for the players’ money was not there, they hid this fact together with their auditors for years, benefiting in return. We raised it with them and they knew then and there," said Tony G.