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

PokerStars has officially announced, that the October tournament of the seventh EPT season will be organized in Vienna.

There have been rumors and debates going on since June on the whereabouts of the tounrey, held between the 26th-31st October, and the calendar issued by PokerStars in May did not have a venue yet.

With the Vienna tourney, Austria now has two official EPT stops, the other one being the very popular EPT Snowfest (made its debut last year) in Saalbach-Hinterglemm.

The buy-in for EPT Vienna will be €5,000+€300, and the event will take place at the Concord Card Casino.

Entrance of the Concord Card Casino

The Cake Poker Network has successfully changed its encryption method to SSL, and the problems detected earlier by PTR were not present in the software.

As I have mentioned before, PTR found a security gap in the Cake software. The weak XOR encryption made it available for hackers to access others’ passwords and view their hole cards.

Although Lee Jones, Cake Poker’s Card Room Manager said that their players were not in serious danger, as an expert hacker would be necessary to crack the software, he acknowledged that the software was not 100% secure and started fixing the problem immediately.

Cake Poker has now finished changing their encryption to SSL. Although there were smaller difficulties with the transition, PTR claims that the software is now secure.

Also, PTR advises players to check if the changes have been made to their own Cake skin, as they are unable to test all the platforms. This can be done by finding ssleay32.dll in the folder where the Cake software is installed. If the file is there, our safety is guaranteed.

After the last IPT event in Venice, the next stop of the series will be San Remo, where PokerStars is planning to hold an exclusive invitational tournament (the Pro Championship) besides the IPT main event.

The Pro Championship will have a buy-in of €3,500 and will be capped at 64 participants, the players being selected by a special points system.

PokerStars, however, will not allow players to wear other sites’ logos. Full Tilt Poker is, of course, objecting this, and has decided not to send any of its sponsored players to the tournament in exchange.

This past weekend, a strange casino appeared on the internet: covered with Michael Jackson themes and images, and lacking any kind of information related to the casino’s headquarters or licenses, the casino advertised real money games.

The Michael Jackson estate stated that the casino had nothing to do with the King of Pop and used his images without gaining authorization, with attorney Howard Weitzman adding that he would “take whatever legal actions that are necessary to shut this operation down”.

He probably didn’t hesitate too long, as the site was already shut down two days ago, with the domain provider GoDaddy.com being sued for allowing a company to register the MichaelJacksonCasino.com domain.

Howard Weitzman is asking for $100 million to compensate damages.

A GoDaddy.com spokesperson stated the following on the matter on Tuesday: "While we have not seen the lawsuit, if we are named, GoDaddy plans to vigorously defend itself. When customers are involved in a legal dispute, GoDaddy complies with court orders."

According to yet uncomfirmed sources on PokerAti, Harrah’s Entertainment has sold the Rio and it is “almost 100 percent unofficially semi-confirmed” that they found a new home for the 2011 WSOP.

Rio, the casino that had been bought and sold more times than any other casino in Las Vegas (if we believe rumors, that is) has once again been up for grabs, and will probably not be the venue that accommodates the 2011 WSOP.

No more World Series at the Rio?

According to LasVegasMichael’s investigations, the Rio All-Suite Hotel & Casino in Las Vegas has been taken. Of course, this is all just “word on the street”, without any confirmation from Harrah’s.
The identity of the buyer is unclear, but rumors had it back in April that Starwood Capital Group LLC and Colony Capital LLC were also among the companies bidding for the resort, valuing the Rio at about $500 million.

Running from 26th July to 1st August, PokerStars has once again organized the ’All Star Week’, during which Team PokerStars Pros play heads-up matches against the team of ’Challengers’. Members of the Challengers’ team are the winners of the Sunday majors, SCOOP, WCOOP, the yearly TLB table and a special Joker tournament. Also, some Supernova Elite players took part on the side of the Challengers.

With five heads-up matches a day (35 altogether), each game had a $1,000 prize pool, plus $25,000, awarded to the winning team in the end. The Challengers could increase their own bankroll with the money won, while the Pros’ winnings added to the prize pool of an $11 buy-in All Star Week Supporter Game, to be held on the 8th August.

The PokerStars Pros arrived with great hopes and determination, as last year they only managed to win by one point, that being the very last heads-up game at a 17-17 standing. According to previous statements, they were hoping for a much better performance this year.

This year’s IPT Venice tournament has ended two days ago. Attracting 505 players, the Ca’Noghera Casino in Venice was the home for the second season of the IPT.

It got down to the final 8  at the 25th blind level, when the chip counts were as follows:

Ali Tekintamgac - 2.254.000
Toby Lewis - 2.117.000
Davide Cerrato - 2.030.000
Giovanni La Padula - 914.000
András Kovács - 815.000
Cristiano Guerra - 806.000
Sandro Mazzei - 731.000
Tamás Lendvai -  429.000

Mazzei was the first to leave the final table, going all-in preflop with KJ and getting called by Andras Kovacs, holding JJ.

Toby Lewis followed after losing a hand against Tekintagmac, and took place 7, worth €25,000.

Andras Kovacs was the next to get busted, followed by Tekintagmac.

Holding A K, Tekintagmac bet 170,000 preflop, got called by La Padula (Q 6), went all-in on a 6 5 5 flop, and saw no help come on the turn and the river.

Ali Tekintamgac

On 27 July ESPN aired the $50,000 Poker Player’s Championship as the first event broadcast from the 2010 WSOP. The Tournament of Champions was the next chapter yesterday, but for those missed it live, it will take a couple of days to be able to watch it on PokerTube.com. Until then, here is the PPC Ep2, with Ep1 in my previous post. Have fun!  

On 27 July ESPN aired the $50,000 Poker Player’s Championship as the first event broadcast from the 2010 WSOP. The Tournament of Champions was the next chapter yesterday, but for those missed it live, it will take a couple of days to be able to watch it on PokerTube.com. Until then, here is the PPC Ep1, with Ep2 following in my next post. Have fun!  

The ’Year of the Brit’ in poker is to reach its climax on 13 September at the soon-to-be-opened Fox Poker Club with the inaugural British Poker Awards.

Voting is now open for the public on the official website: eight out of the eleven awards are Reader’s Choice. These categories are as follows: Best Cash Player, Best Tournament Player, Best Online Player, Best International Player as well as the Best Poker League, Best UK Card Room, Best Contribution to Poker and Best UK Poker Forum, which is sponsored by PokerNews.com. From the additional three awards, two are Player’s Choice (Best All Round Player, Best New Player) and one is Editor’s Choice (Player of the Year). Nominees for the different awards include Phil Ivey, Michael Mizrachi, Patrik Antonius, Neil Channing, Tom Dwan, Brunson 10 member Chris Moorman as well as Victoria Coren.

The event takes place during the London Poker Festival, just a day before the WSOPE launches. Tickets, unless you are the lucky voter to win one free, cost £100 and include a cocktail reception, apart from the opportunity to meet your favourites. You can also participate in an optional £50 NLHE tournament after the Awards Ceremony.

The latest episode of ‘The Hijack Seat’ at pokernewsdaily.com features WSOP bracelet winner Gavin Smith, Full Tilt Poker’s professional player.
 

Gavin has managed to secure his first WSOP bracelet this year, by winning Event #44, the $2,500 Mixed Hold’em tournament. With a total 507 entrants and a prize pool of $1,166,100, Smith made himself a nice $268,238 (and a very valuable bracelet, of course).

Gavin Smith was featured on a show called The Ultimate Poker Challenge in 2004, where he quickly became a favorite because of his gambler’s attitude, drinking habit and good humor. His other TV appearances included High Stakes Poker, Late Night Poker and NBC’s Face The Ace.

Having more than $4 million in career tournament earnings, Smith finally succeeded in winning a WSOP event as well.
In this interview, Gavin does not only talk about his WSOP victory; he also mentions charity work, and a very touching movie titled ‘Darius Goes West’.

Gigi Levy, CEO of 888 Holdings stated on eGaming Review (EGR) on Tuesday that it was “highly likely” that 888 would favor merger discussions with other online poker sites within the next six months. Levy also told EGR that their marketing tactics would remain the same regardless of other companies’ mergers.

 “I think that the first thing to remember is that the consolidated Party-Bwin, when the transaction is completed, will represent less than 10% of the market,” Levy told the online gaming news site.  “We are not talking about someone controlling 50% of the market, giving us no chance to compete. We are talking about an entity which is significantly larger than us, but still is less than 10% of a very fragmented market. In that regard, I don’t see us changing anything in our strategy because of that” said Levy.

Although it is definitely the silly season for poker right now, PartTimePoker.com presented their usual compilation on the week ahead in poker – and things don’t seem to be as bad as I thought they would.

To begin with, after the successful broadcast of the Player’s Championship, Tournament of Champions airs today on ESPN, ’starring’ among others Phil Ivey, Daniel Negreanu, Johnny Chan, Doyle Brunson and Phil Hellmuth. Regarding live action, we also entered into the second week of The Legends of Poker tournament with Events #3-12; meanwhile, three international events commence this week: the $2,600 Main Event of the Latin American Poker Tour Florianopolis (Brazil), the €2,000 Russian Poker Tour Riga (Latvia) as well as the $2,750 Scottish Poker Open. Also, FTOPS XVII with 34 events and a guaranteed $19 million prize pool launches tomorrow.

Norwegian PLO pro Andreas ‘Skjervøy’ Torbergsen has recently been announced to join CardRunners, also acquiring the Full Tilt Red Pro title.

Andreas ‘Skjervøy’ Torbergsen

Torbergsen is chiefly an online player of both micro and high stakes games but he has some live results as well. In 2008 he finished 551st in the WSOP Main Event and won $23,160. In addition, he went ITM two times in the Norwegian Poker Championship. This year’s WSOP, however, was a little less fortunate for him: “In the end I lasted 3 1/4 day in the Main Event without cashing,” he said in an interview posted on CardRunners.com.

After about a 3-months break, the Durrrr Challenge continued with Dwan and Patrik Antonius playing 280 hands. This weekend was more profitable for the Finnish, winning $244,672.

This Sunday’s turn of the 50,000 hands ’event’ saw Antonius taking the biggest pots, including one of $185,000 and another of $160,000. Although the final balance was as written above, Antonius finally managed to reduce Dwan’s lead in the challenge to $1,6 million, as pokernewsdaily.com reports.

Tom 'durrrr' Dwan and Patrik Antonius

Antonius has recently been considered the biggest loser of July, nevertheless he eventually raised about half a million dollar profit. Still, NEKOTYAN, the Russian player who beat him as well, finished well ahead of him with his winnings of $900,000 in total. Meanwhile, ’durrrr’ seems to be in a downturn with a loss of around $500,000.

While there are still 11,000 hands left for Antonius to beat the Durrrr Challenge, an achievement he might have a hard time to reach, the identity of the next candidates, Brian Townsend and Daniel ’jungleman12’ Cates, may already be considered confirmed.