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WSOP 2010 Main Event – ESPN Coverage Ep 1 & 2

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 1 and 2 cover Main Event Days 1A and 1B, while 3 and 4 in my next post will be on Days 1C and 1D.

The very first event days present poker stars like Mike ‘The Mouth’ Matusow, Chris Moneymaker, Michael ‘The Grinder’ Mizrachi, Maria Ho and Tiffany Michelle.

Episode 1:

High Stakes Updates – Good Times for Antonius

Patrik Antonius’ performance, so to say, has not been even during the first half of 2010, with huge wins and losses that even tossed his 2010 profit under zero. Recently, however, the former underwear model seems to have found himself again, and is on a winning streak.

Patrik Antonius
Patrik Antonius

This last Staurday, for example, he managed to win $332,000 from Phil Galfond and Ziigmund in only 600 hands.
This means that Patrik has made $819,269 this year on Full Tilt, despite the fact that he is about $2 million behind in the ’durrrr challenge’.

Speaking of durrrr, things are not going so smooth for the Full Tilt Pro, who managed to lose a nice $758,000 last week, spending most of his recent $1 million winnings.

durrrr
Tom 'durrrr' Dwan

Durrrr’s 2010 balance is still incredible, though, with his winnings from this year almost reaching $4 million (exactly the amount that he lost last year ).
Dwan will soon have the chance to make up for his recent losses by doing his best in his upcoming challenge against jungleman12, set to start sometime soon.

Interview with Dusty Schmidt

Four timer PokerStars Supernova Elite Dusty ‘Leatherass’ Schmidt has recently been made PS Online Pro member, an honour even for him, as he admits. PokerNews.com asked him how to become an SNE.

Dusty Schmidt
Dusty ‘Leatherass’ Schmidt

Schmidt first tried to earn the VPPs necessary to make Supernova Elite in 2007, a time competition wasn’t as tough as today, he says. Although he admits he was “only skilled enough to 8-table” back then, it seems it was just enough and now it is even easier for him as he is able to play at 15-20 tables at the same time. He doesn’t even have to do it full time. Nice.

Durrrr Challenge 2 to Kick Off in Days

The 50,000 hands game between Tom ‘durrrr’ Dwan and Daniel ‘jungleman12’ Cates is now settled, the participants agreed to get the challenge underway in a couple of days. The news spread based on an FTP chat first appearing in the related 2+2 thread:

Durrrr vs junglemandurrrr: did u send ivey $$ yet?
jungleman12: not yet
jungleman12: ill send now
jungleman12: how soon is soon?
durrrr: read ur phone...
jungleman12: ah i see
durrrr: few days at most
durrrr: did u send yet?
jungleman12: yeah
jungleman12: sent
durrrr: then i can start talking &&%%
durrrr: since we're booked
jungleman12: ?
durrrr: and say that its cute u think u'll ever have an edge =)
jungleman12: lol
jungleman12: you never seemed like the type
durrrr: never wanna scare off the fish =)
durrrr: but if they escrow....
durrrr: haha ok
durrrr: lmk if u wanna play if not we'll start in a few days
durrrr: gl n stuff
jungleman12: u2

Gus Hansen Is Down $7,750,000 on FTP

From 1st January 2007 to 14th August 2010 Gus ’Great Dane’ Hansen experienced rise and fall in his Full Tilt Poker bankroll several times, but to date he is in a $7,753,624 minus overall. As far as individual accounts are concerned, he is currently ’leading’ with his losses, although Cirque du Soleil owner Guy Laliberté possesses the accounts placed 2nd to 5th on the list, accumulating an astonishing total of $23,845,229 in loss.

Gus Hansen
Gus Hansen

EPT Tallinn: Kevin Stani Wins

Norwegian online pro Kevin ’KevBoyStar’ Stani won the Main Event of EPT Season 7’s first stop in Tallinn.

EPT Tallinn FT
The EPT7: Tallinn Main Event Final Table

The chipleader of the final table was French PokerStars pro Arnaud Mattern with 3,720,000, followed by Sunday 500 winner Stani with 2,586,000 and Konstantin Bilyauer with 2,498,000. The game started on level 25 (ante: 4,000, blinds: 20,000/40,000). The finalists were as follows:

It Is Never too Early to Start Playing Poker

This statement has once again been proved by a very-very young girl, aged 7, to be precise.

Alexa Fisher was born in Cibolo, Texas, a tiny town close to San Antonio, where she lives and plays poker with her parents and younger sister.
Alexa has already been featured on TV shows, including a San Antonio morning TV program, called Great Day SA, was profiled in the Las Vegas Tradeshow Lifestyle newspaper and online magazines like CardPlayer.com.

Alexa Fisher
Alexa at this year's WSOP

She has also participated in a live tournament in Texas, which was a $30 buy-in charity event for Homes for Pets. She instantly became a celebrity at the tournament by outlasting more than half of the player base, including her own father.

Alexa is an exceptional student at Sippel Elementary School, where all the teachers know that she is playing poker at home.
At the age of 3, Alexa started showing interest towards poker and maths, when her father started to teach her to count by showing her cards. “Her math skills went through the roof”, her father says.

Interview with Daniel ‘Jungleman12’ Cates

Jungleman12 is one of the biggest names in the online poker world these days. He keeps hitting the headlines with huge amounts of money won in high stakes cash games, rumors of him accepting the ‘Durrrr Challenge’ and pictures of him partying with his buddies.

Daniel has recently also been making videos for CardRunners, while still going to college in Maryland.


Jungleman12 is in the middle with the hat on

Poker Curious has done an interview with Jungleman12, in which he is being asked about the launch of his poker career, his future ambitions and poker how-to.

From the interview it becomes clear that Daniel is truly a very honest and ambitious guy, with the kind of wisdom that is very rare among his contemproraries.
He talks about bankroll management, key moments of his career, personal characteristics that are a necessity to become a pro, his blog on CardRunners and a lot of other interesting topics.

The Story of the Best Poker Player in the World?

On the 11th August, a strange video appeared on the Internet, featuring Daniel Negreanu, Arnaud Mattern and Tiffany Michelle. They all are talking about a mysterious  person, a ‘poker god’, who is better than anyone in the world (including Phil Ivey) and whose identity remains concealed in this first video.

When the video appeared, it started a guessing frenzy, with people from all around the world 'yelling' names like Isildur1, Viktor Blom, and even 'the Ghost of Stu Ungar'.

Well, now that we have passed the 15th August, we know that this special person, the Poker God is no other than Chris Olaafson.

Can You Win With a Smile?

Erik J. Schlicht, a postdoctoral Harvard University student, has recently conducted a scientific research showing that poker face, as we know it, doesn’t really work.

poker face
A poker face?

In his research paper entitled 'Human wagering behavior depends on opponents' faces’, Schlicht presents his findings about novice players playing HE after being tested of their knowledge of poker. Based on their hands and a picture of the opponent facing them, they had to decide whether to call (winning or losing 5,000) or fold (losing 100 chips). The results of the experiment showed that neutral or threatening expressions did not affect decision-making, while friendly smiles discouraged the test subjects and their decisions were of reduced optimality.

Schlicht concluded that

"mistakes against trustworthy opponents resulted from increased loss aversion, suggesting that participants believed trustworthy opponents were betting with hands of greater value than neutral and untrustworthy opponents."

New EPT PoY Ranking System Introduced

Along with the 7th season of the PokerStars European Poker Tour, a refreshed version of the EPT Awards ranking system, debuted last year, was unveiled. Eight titles, including EPT Player of the Year, are there to compete for and winners receive trophies and packages for next season’s opening event, in addition to the recognition, as PokerNews.com reported.

EPT PokerStars

According to feedback from players, PS modified last year’s system so that it is now not possible to gain the PoY title with a single victory at one of the largest events. Additionally, field size is now a factor in rewarding points, which was a key issue last year, as Maxim Lykov was able to beat Kevin MacPhee to the title by defeating a field of 296 players in Kiev for the same number of points MacPhee received for beating 945 people in Berlin.

Ivey Cashes Again: $435,000 in Total

Only a couple of days after his $200,000 winning, Phil Ivey is once again on ‘killing spree’; he drained all his opponents the other night, cashing $435,899 in total.

Phil Ivey

The first and probably the most interesting two hours of the night were provided by his heads-up games with Tom ‘durrrr’ Dwan. They played 132 hands in $300/$600 PLO, 108 hands in $500/$1,000 Cap NLHE and 66 hands of $500/$1,000 Cap PLO. Ivey won in each, $210,160 in all. After two losses in a row, which were arguably bad beats, durrrr quitted, but that didn’t stop Ivey.

EPT Tallinn: Main Event Day 1B

The second Day 1 event of the first stop of EPT 7 took place yesterday with a number of renowned players once again. Among the 239 people entering the day were Betrand 'ElkY' Grospieller, bracelet winners Dario Minieri and Richard Ashby as well as EPT Berlin winner Kevin MacPhee.

The day, as the one before, saw 9 levels with stacks rising from 50/100 with no ante to 500/1000 with ante of 100. While 89 players survived Wednesday, about 130 were eliminated during Day 1B, making up a total of around 190 participants to enter Day 2 today. For the race with the €400,000 first prize 420 players have registered, which is a record number in the history of Estonian tournaments, according to PokerNewsDaily.com. What is more, it is truly an international filed, as opposed to US tourneys: no one nation gives more than 13% of the field, the top countries represented being Russia and Finland with 53-53 players.

In the end, Perica Bukara, who placed 6th in Prague at the Unibet Open, became chip leader of the day and he even took the overall lead from Ali Tekintamgac with his stack of 210,600. Top 10 Day 1B chip counts are as seen below:

EPT7 Day1B Top10 Stacks

You can follow PokerNews.com’s live reporting on Day 2 here.

Raids on Poker Players in Hong Kong

Macau and Hong Kong may have little else than their special governmental status in common; whereas the former can be considered the "Las Vegas of Asia", the latter has strict rules against poker and gambling in general.

The latest issue was DonkDown.com forum member hongkonger’s. PokerStars co-sponsored room The Hong Kong Poker House organised a final all-you-can-eat party the other night, together with a freeroll tournament, before closing doors. The 160 participants got raided by the police who were looking for money and confiscated their stacks. Even though prized tourneys are legal in Hong Kong, all players were arrested “under suspicion of illegal gambling.” Although the tournament started at 7 pm, the raid, together with identifying the players, moving them to the police station by two(!) vans in 9 trips and keeping them at the station, took several hours. Eventually, they all could go from around 5:30 am on a bail of HKD $400 (USD $50) per person.

Hong Kong arrest
Hongkonger's fellow players get arrested

EPT Tallinn: Main Event Day 1A

As I have noted, EPT Season 7 started yesterday with the main event of the first stop, Tallinn. The Swissôtel in the downtown of the Estonian capital hosted 181 players, including several PokerStars pros like Vanessa Selbst, Pierre Neuville, Michael Keiner and Ivan Demidov.

The term ‘Year of the Brit’ doesn’t seem to apply to the day as both promising names Praz Bansi and James Mitchell (Irish Open winner) were eliminated. The cards favoured the Russians instead, as Matvey Linov was in lead for most of the time, and although the end of the day saw German Ali Tekintamgac gather the greatest stack, it is Linov and his fellow countryman Artem Litvinov right behind him.

The Top 10 Day 1A chip counts are as follows:

EPT7 Day1A Top10 Stacks

Day 1B is already under way right now; you can follow PokerNews.com’s live thread here.

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