Poker Movie Reviews, Poker News, Poker Book Reviews, Casinos, Poker Humor, Polls and Surveys, Poker Videos, Poker Girls, Site & Blog Reviews, Poker Articles

PokerStars is closing in on its 50 billionth hand dealt during its operation of nearly a decade (another milestone they will celebrate more than adequately, I’m sure). The exact date can only be estimated, of course, but the celebration is already on with around a million dollars to play for.

“This is 50 Billion, and it‘s going to be massive,” PokerStars promises. Let’s take a look at what they have in store. For cash game players, there will be cash prizes from around 16th September: if you happen to be dealt in one of the millionth hands (counting starts at 49,700,000,000), you earn $50 for every VPP you accumulated during the last 50 hands on that particular table. If you even win that hand, your prize is doubled. The prize is exactly ten times higher for those lucky ones dealt in the Mega Milestone 50 billionth hand: its $500 for every VPP with double money and even an additional $50,000 for the winner. Moreover, players dealt in this hand are granted free entry to the $5,200 WCOOP Main Event on 26th September.

Michael Mizrachi, WSOP winner and pro player at Full Tilt Poker, is sued by Deliverance Poker, his previous sponsor, because of contract breach.

According to Deliverance, they signed with Mizrachi in July 2009, for which he received $150,000, a 1.75% interest in the company and "advance expenses related to poker tournaments in which Defendant Mizrachi would participate.” In return, he had to wear Deliverance patches and hats at all public appearances. Until the WSOP Main Event he did so but then he signed another deal with Tiltware and began to wear Full Tilt badges and hats. This is where the complaint stems from.

Michael 'The Grinder' Mizrachi

Deliverance claims their contract with the pro has been breached by the one with Tiltware because he previously signed that he would "exclusively wear site logoed shirts and caps during all tournament and Public Apperances" and that he would grant exclusive access to his name and likeness to Deliverance. They now seek lost profits and earning capacity as well as other damages the court might order.

Mizrachi and Full Tilt are yet to comment the case.

'Grolongo', a mysterious Swedish player playing Pot Limit Omaha and No Limit Holdem has appeared at PokerStars and is becoming more and more popular in cash game action. His identity is unknown, but there is much debate who he might be. Many people speculate that the man behind 'grolongo' is in fact the Swedish player 'Isildur1', Viktor Blom at Full Tilt Poker.

'Isildur1' became a poker superstar in 2009, when he earned a ton of of money, and played against such poker stars like Phil Ivey and Patrik Antonius, to whom he lost the biggest pot ever, $1,3 million, which was a serious blow for him.

ESPN’s coverage of the 2010 WSOP Main Event started to air on 10th August and continues to screen two episodes every Tuesday until 9th November, when the Finale will be broadcast. Eps 9 and 10 cover Main Event Day 3, while 11 and 12 are airing on Tuesday, as usual.

The event days present poker stars like Scotty Nguyen, Jason Mercier, Daniel Negreanu, Chris Moneymaker, the Mizrachi brothers, Patrik Antonius and Barry Greenstein.

Episode 9: 

Shooting in London at the moment, the fifth season of the Million Dollar Cash Game is promising to be more excting than ever. Although nobody knows the full list of players taking part in the event yet, Tom ‘durrrr’ Dwan has confirmed on Twitter that he is heading to the spot, and Ilari ‘Ziigmund’ Sahamies also made it public on his blog that he arrived in London to participate in this massive cash game show.

"Omw to ftp cashgame, hoping to run as good (or better) than last year" says durrrr on Twitter.

James Hopkins, managing director for Emblaze Productions, commented the following on the upcuming show:

 “We are delighted that Full Tilt Poker have continued their association with the Million Dollar Cash Game and we are expecting the strongest player line up yet for season 5.”

Aired in January 2011, I am once again hoping to see the biggest pot in the history of televised poker in season five.
So far, the biggest cash game pot has been almost $1.2 million, played by durrrr and Phil Ivey in the same show last year:

In 1997, Betsson charged the government for breaking the law of the European Union by imposing a ban on almost all land-based slot machines, only excluding those owned by Svenska Spel, Swedish gambling monopoly. Although the court agreed with Betsson on the interpretation of Swedish gambling laws, no compensation will be provided, says RakeRace.com.

When the ban was introduced by the Swedish government, Betsson was forced to shut down its slot machine business, and has been asking for a $14 million damage cost. The Stockholm District Court found the Swedish government guilty of violating European Union laws, but no other action will be taken because the main causes of the ban were changes in legal procedure.

Betsson is still allowed to provide its other services in Sweden’s regulated and unregulated markets, but they have been denied permission to operate their online sportsbook services because of Svenska Spel’s monopoly.

Pontus Lindwall

Betsson CEO Pontus Lindwall said the following about the issue:

“A clear case of court decay. Apparently the state can act outside the law while the law applies for everyone else.”

The British Poker Awards is now around the corner, coming on Monday, 13th September, with the polls open since early August. Pieces of news arrive regularly as we close in on the event and now the hosts of the show are announced: poker celebrity Antonio Esfandiari and Bluff Europe’s Michael Caselli.

A part of the London Poker Festival, the BPA takes place at the Kensington Close Hotel, a new venue that can host more attendants than the originally planned Fox Poker Club. Entry fee will be £39 or free in case you are the lucky voter to win your ticket for the show. Comedian Yianni Agisilaou will warm up the audience for the event, starting at 8.00 PM after a cocktail reception and before an optional £50 NLHE tournament at 9.00 PM. You can vote nominees like Neil Channing, Chris Moorman, Luke Schwartz or Phil Ivey in eight categories. From the additional three awards, two are Player’s Choice and one is Editor’s Choice. You can cast your vote at the official website until 10th September.

Atlantis Internet Group Corp. and Cake Gaming has recently signed an agreement that allows the latter to provide interstate online poker on Indian lands in the 30 US states where tribal casinos are operating. The National Indian Gaming Commission supports the deal that creates the new provider called Tribal Gaming Network, writes PartTimePoker.com.

Tom 'durrrr' Dwan was interviewed by Tatjana, PartyPoker's reporter yesterday after he got busted at the PartyPoker World Open in London. He talks about the durrrr challange in general, because not everybody might have heard about it yet, and about his biggest opponent at the moment, jungleman12.

If you don't know who that is, you can watch an interview with him here, and understand why durrrr mentions the 20-year-old high stakes pro instead of Gus Hansen and Patrik Antonius for example.

PokerStatic has made a quite long video interview with Daniel ’jungleman12’ Cates, in which he recalls the beginning of his career, talks about the currently ongoing durrrr challenge and poker in general.

Jungleman12 is definitely one of the most frequently mentioned names in the poker world these days, mainly because of the durrrr challenge, in which he is leading by $692,000 at this point, and also because of his very young age and almost miraculous poker career.

Aging only 20, Daniel Cates started getting into online poker only two years ago, and managed to move from NLHE heads-up limits of $0.25/$0.50 to $25/$50 in as little as 10 months time. Although he admits that his bankroll was not at all suitable for these stakes at that time (he only had around 40 buy-ins), Cates, with a very aggressive bankroll management, managed to pile up a nice sum of money, even including a few setbacks, like losing $500K to Isildur1 in only 1 day.

In 2010, his profits exceed $2.2 million so far, with which he takes place 3 on this year’s profit leaderboard, with only Phil Ivey and Tom Dwan having accumulated more in 2010. 

More and more students decide to try and make a living out of poker in the United States.

Although they are not old enough to enter a casino, nothing prevents them from playing online poker. This phenomenon has spread so widely that ABC News has also recently dealt with it in their Nightline news programme, in which they interviewed last year’s WSOP ME winner Joe Cada and teenage poker player Blaine Brount.

You can view the video below.

I am sure a lot of you have heard about Neil Andrew Channing. He  is an professional poker player from London.
Neil became a truly well-known poker player when he won the Irish Poker Open in 2008. Channing has cashed 18 times at the WSOP, and his live career winnings accumulate to more than $1,900,000. Neils writes regularly for Bluff Europe Magazine. In 2009, he and fellow poker player Nick Persaud launched their own site, Black Belt Poker.

Neil is also known for staking a lot of players, like James Akenhead, for example. James has won cash in a lot of events in which Neil had percentages in the past few years, including a WSOP Main Event final table last year.

In the interview below, you can hear ‘the English Santa Claus of Poker’ talk about staking usually works, and the general concepts behind it. 

The Palm Beach Casino in Mayfair, London once again hosts the PartyPoker World Open. The $10,000 event, starting today on 6th September, is played by 48 poker pros and the winner will take $200,000 of the $480,000 total prize pool.

Starting stacks are three times bigger than last year in the eight-handed Heats and seven of the 48 players will be seated at the final table on 10th September. PartyPoker World Open V winner Phil Laak returns to defend his title from aspirants like Tom 'durrrr' Dwan, Neil Channing, Brandon Cantu, Huck Seed, Luke Schwartz, Annette Obrestad, Yevgeniy Timoshenko, Jake Cody, Jennifer Tilly and Dave ‘Devilfish’ Ulliott. “Last year was a wild roller coaster ride. This year, I am looking forward to coming back to defend my title – it is ideal that it comes straight off the back off the WPT London Poker Classic – hopefully I can win both,” Laak commented.

The Heats will be played from 6th to 9th September and Jesse May and Kara Scott will cover the happenings of the tourney.

Ub.net seems to get into a new advertising campaign in which they are trying to reach players with a funny, new approach. The reasons, however, remain unclear why they must have chosen this awfully executed awful commercial with that awful CG Dog featuring those awful poker pro look-alikes acting out those awful lines. Really, when I watch this ad, I feel sorry for the actors and everybody involved in this trainwreck, and I definitely don't want to register a UB account because of the commercial.

How about you? You think they are funny? Or do you know worse?
Please let me know in the comments section below.

ESPN’s coverage of the 2010 WSOP Main Event started to air on 10th August and continues to screen two episodes every Tuesday until 9th November, when the Finale will be broadcast. Eps 7 and 8 cover Main Event Day 2B, while 9 and 10 are airing tomorrow.

The event days present poker stars like Phil Ivey, Phil Laak, Doyle Brunson, Barry Greenstein and Dan Harrington.

Episode 7: