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

The model had been set up at the French PokerStars site, and players of PokerStars.com now following suit by planning to paralyze cash game tables this Sunday. The strike is already under planning on 2+2.

As I have mentioned in the post linked above, players at PokerStars.fr have to pay a larger amount of rake, than players at PokerStars.com. Clubpoker organized a strike, and on the 4th July the French players invaded the cash game tables at PokerStars.fr to go on sit-out, thus protesting against the high rake fees. 

Click to enlarge

On the 2+2 forums, another strike is planned to be held, but this time on PokerStars.com. Their main goal is to represent solidarity with the French, although several other goals have been discussed. One of the organizers; ’real fix’, for example, would recommend the following slogan: 

"We cannot keep playing against the French and Italian fish. Please join our global strike!"

The PokerStars.com strike will be held on Sunday, 11th July (4-7 pm GMT). The organizers are requesting the players that choose to join the strike to buy in at ten cash game tables with one tenth of their bankroll (if, for example, we have $1000, we should sit down to 10 NL1000 tables). This is to make sure that the strike does not only affect micro-limit tables. 

As I have mentioned yesterday, the number of World Series Of Poker Main Event participants was an estimated 7,000 players. 

Well, here is how the numbers exactly worked out for this year’s Main Event: 

Day 1a - 1,125

Day 1b - 1,489

Day 1c - 2,314

Day 1d - 2,391

These add up to 7,319, the second largest WSOP player field of all times, the first one being 8,733 players, reached in 2006.

There have been several rumors during the WSOP, stating that Liv Boeree and her sponsor, UB.com will stop cooperating. PokerNews Daily, however, has information saying that the two sides are only renegotiating. 

Liv has won the EPT San Remo Main Event, with which she gained a stunning $1.7 million.

Although Liv’s contract with UB has truly expired, according to a UB spokesman they are discussing renewing of the contract. 

“Liv’s contract has expired. We are in contract renegotiation discussions now.” 

2010’s World Championship of Online Poker is scheduled to start on September 5th, with a total of 62 events to be held. 

The opening day of the WCOOP will feature the $215 NLHE Six-Max event, a $10,300 NLHE High Roller Tournament and a $215 Two-Day event. 

The $5,000 Main Event will be held on 26th September at 17:00 ET. 

The tournament schedule basically features all the popular poker variants and buy-in amounts, so that every player will surely find several suitable tournaments to take part in. 

Below, you can find the full preliminary schedule for the 2010 WCOOP:

Pokernewsdaily.com has recently released an interview with WSOP Tournament Director Jack Effel. Besides some advice for beginners and also regarding registration to the latter days, Effel provides insight into the way he and his team deal with the tension of organising WSOP, the ‘Olympics of Poker’. No wonder they confess to tend to get drawn into playing themselves.

As I have hinted earlier, already at the beginning of the WSOP Main Event it was estimated to house over 7,000 participants.

Ilari ‘Ziigmund’ Sahamies, one of the most feared players at online high stakes tables is spending his summer traveling, drinking and thumbing his nose at the WSOP. 

He has now come up with the idea that he would use part of the money he collected at Full Tilt Poker to support the Finnish film industry.

Ilari ‘Ziigmund’ Sahamies

The movie is in the making at the moment, and will tell the story of C.G.E. Mannerheim, the Commander-in-Chief, Marshal and later President of Finland during the second World War. He is celebrated as a national hero for not giving in to the Germans and supporting his citizens at all times.

C.G.E. Mannerheim

The amount of money Ziggy puts into this movie has not yet been declared, but it is for sure, that he will cover at least 10% of the filming costs.

The movie is set to be introduced world-wide in the fall of 2011.

Doyle Brunson is putting together his own pro team at Doyle’s Room. Before the start of the WSOP, Doyle announced that he had chosen four online poker players, out of which one would become part of his pro team, based on their performance at the WSOP.

These four players were Daniel ‘djk123’ Kelly, Faraz Jaka, David Sands and Michael Martin.

Although this has been his first WSOP, Kelly was thought to have the greatest chance to win, even before the launch of the Series. Seeing his current results, this is understandable.

PokerTube made a 2-part compilation available evoking the most memorable moments of The Big Game show. The events star among others Phil Laak, Daniel Negreanu, Jason Mercier, Joe Cada and some talented loose cannons as well.

Bwin has recently signed Eurosport Poker to the OnGame Network in France.

A popular brand all over Europe, Eurosport Poker and the Eurosport TV channel are owned by TF1, which already operates a UK-facing betting site on the OnGame Network.

Peter Eastgate, WSOP winner of $9.15 million in 2008 and another sum of around $2 million on following races, released a statement via PokerStars, his sponsor, on 6 July.

The statement reads as follows:

Jamie Gold, winner of $12 million on the 2006 WSOP Main Event, has already said goodbye to this year’s championship in just about a few hours into the game.

Gold’s behaviour suprised the participants, as when reaching the money bubble, he threw in his chips and his hand without even taking a look at it, announcing that he would be drinking in the bar in case anybody wanted to see him. He also added that he won an ’incredible’ amount of money with a bet.

Jamie Gold with his 2006 Main Event Winnings

Democrat State Senator Roderick Wright has proposed than repealed a draft legislation to legalise and monitor online poker and gambling in California, USA. Consensus on the proposal seems distant as several groups of various interests are protesting against it in its present form.

The Full Tilt Poker Channel has just made a video interview with Phil Ivey, in which he shares his opinion on the WSOP, his performance at the tournaments and Las Vegas in general.

Phil was not very keen to talk about his bracelet bets, which have been attracting a lot of attention since the start of the WSOP. What he did tell, though, is that he didn’t bet against anyone except one person, whose identity remains a mystery.  

On 5 July 2010 the WSOP Main Event took a head start at 12:05 PM at the Rio with the welcome speech of 2004 WSOP champion Greg ’Fossilman’ Raymer, showing off his 18-karat gold bracelet, which the players „all came here for”.

This year’s event is expected to exceed the current record of 63,000 participants with more than 70,000 players estimated. The Main Event alone houses about 7,000 champion wannabes.  The prize pool is over $100 million, which means WSOP is still among the leading sport and gambling events around the world.