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While the Swedish high stakes player Isildur1 had won and then lost huge amounts of money on Full Tilt Poker, a new player, XBLINK started a career on UB by building a bankroll of $800,000 out of as little as $11 in just one month. Is he a new wonder outclassing everyone or is he simply lucky? XBLINK had previously made more than 20 deposits of $500 in different poker rooms, but went bankrupt in all cases.

XBLINK registered to UB’s $11 tournament with his last dollars in November 2009, and his winnings started a fairytale-like series of success. He took the $750 he had won at this tournament to PLO and NLHE cash game tables and the next day he already had $4,000. In the next few days this sum grew to $20k - $60k, and he was already playing $25/$50, $50/$100, $100/$200 and $200/$400. XBLINK’s bankroll was $833,193 on the 11th December.

According to PokerTableRatings XBLINK’s current UB balance is $990,010 with 157,764 hands played. His winrate is 3.67BB/100.

He also joined the conversation on the 2+2 forums. Check out what he commented on the issue under the name 89blist.

The brand new Cake Poker client will soon be available for everyone, players of the Cake network will probably be able to try it out in June. A short introductional video, however, is already available for my readers in this blog post.

"We are excited to launch the private beta for our new Cake Poker client and to get some further feedback on our efforts. We are delighted at the how the client is currently operating and looking forward to being able to offer an improved online poker experience to all our players." – says Lee Jones, Head Director of the Cake Network.

Super System, written by Doyle Brunson, the grandfather of poker, would have to be as important to poker as the first television broadcast was for TV. Super System is nothing else than a milestone and, in short,  it is the Bible of Poker.

Super System was published in 1979 by Cardoza Publishing. At this time, Doyle Brunson already held the title of two-times WSOP Main Event winner (1976 and 1977). The original title of the book was ’How I Made Over $1,000,000 Playing Poker’. Of course, a lot of years have passed since 1979 and the book still had relevance to today’s gameplay, but after heavy thoughts, they decided it was best to rewrite it and give it a fresh new title ’Super System 2’, publishing it in October 2004.

Has it really gotten impossible to win money by playing heads up? Crazychips has started a topic at the TwoPlusTwo forums with the title ‘No Money Heads Up, Everyone is Solid’. He is mainly complaining about having played small stakes NLHE for the past four years, with barely any profit. He claims that the heads up field and player base is pretty solid, with almost no fish at all.

As always, a few members of the TwoPlusTwo community chose to react to this post in a quite creative way. I have selected some of the funniest ones. Enjoy!

This first one is a short music clip made by IheardJoeblows:

Daniel Negreanu has competed for the biggest pot in the 12th episode of Hish Stakes Poker, season 6. Although he managed to win the biggest pot, Daniel didn’t have Lady Luck on his side when facing Doyle Brunson.

Full Tilt Poker has reinforced its pro team by signing the Norwegian WSOPE champion, Annette Obrestad. Annette started playing online poker when she was 15, using the nickname Annette_15. She claims that she had never needed to deposit money to any online poker room and won her starting bankroll by playing freerolls. Her talent came to the surface very quickly: by the age of 18, her winnings reached $500,000 on PokerStars, $200,000 on UltimateBet and $136,000 on Full Tilt Poker. P5s already considered her one of the world’s best tournament players at the time. The real breakthrough for Annette came with the 2007 World Series of Poker Europe (WSOPE), where she managed to win the Main Event, for which she received a dream sum of £1,000,000.

It didn’t really come as a surprise that Annette got signed with a giant online poker room, taking into consideration that she has recently turned 21, which means that for the first time in her life, Annette will be eligible to play at the WSOP (as the age limit at this tournament is 21 years).

Poker has undoubtedly grown in popularity in the past half decade, and Harrah’s, owner of the WSOP series, announced to hold two non-bracelet events this fall in South Africa. WSOP organizers have decided to expand their championship series to South Africa, organizing a WSOP Circuit Event with gold rings on offer instead of bracelets. The event will run from 24-31st October and will be held in the Emerald Resort & Casino, just a few miles from Johannesburg:

The EPT sponsored by PokerStars.com is one of the most popular and respected series of live poker tournaments. Held within stunning locations throughout Europe, the EPT in now set to finish its 6th season at Atlantis Casino located in Monte Carlo. The buy-in was settled at a neat 8,000 EUR. Only 8 players remained out of the 848 players who entered into the competition and generated a whopping 8,480,000 EUR in total prizes pool.

PokerStars has once again strengthened its SportStars line-up with the signing of the highly talented 23 years old tennis player Gael Monfils. PokerStars doesn’t only welcome poker pros, but also supports sport celebrities among its endorsed players, including Boris Becker, Mats Sundin and the rugby player Sébastien Chabal.

The French player is well-known for his fantastic physical abilities and has been a professional tennis player since 2004. His biggest Grand Slam success came in 2008, when he made it to the semi finals at the Roland Garros. Monfils is one of the biggest showmen of the tennis world, mainly because of his acrobatic charisma. Until now, he has slammed together over $3,605,000 over his tennis career and PokerStars will add to this collection.

Thanks to Pokertube, we now have access to an exclusive interview with Barry Greenstein at the EPT Monte Carlo, where he made some interesting comments. Barry Greenstein, a well-known high stakes player and PokerStars Pro Team member, claimed to have played against the mysterious phantom Isildur1 in his interview. He stated that Isildur1 is Viktor Blom.

It was when Greenstein was talking about last year’s WSOPE in London that he mentioned having played against Isildur1. Barry also mentions how much of a poker addict Isildur1 really is.

The American online professional poker tutor Cole 'CTS' South announced he would like to concentrate on his studies and poker in the future, which he could not really focus on while being a tutor at CardRunners.

Cole South and the CardRunners founder Taylor Caby

Cole South made official announcements of his decision to depart from the CardRunners via an online bolg entry on the 27th April.

"I have had an amazing experience as a lead instructor with Cardrunners over the past few years, but today I am announcing my departure from the company," Cole South announces in his recent blog entry, titled “Moving On and Good Luck”.

The Finnish high stakes poker player until April has lost more than 3 million dollars on Full Tilt Poker. This month, however, he is leading the profit list, making up for most of his downturn this year.

Patrik Antonius has been one of the biggest winners at Full Tilt Poker for years now. However, in 2010, this changed for the worse: Antonius’s outgoings exceeded $3,015,400 until 31st March and secured the title of the biggest loser at Full Tilt.

University students developed the latest hybrid of live and online poker, Poker Surface, which can be controlled by either a mobile phone or a touch-sensitive surface. Poker Surface is already raising eyebrows with big companies showing great interest in the product.

Although those in favoring live poker will probabrly never say goodbye to the feel of real chips, a real deck of cards and a fancy dealer lady, the combination of live and online poker has been challenging the developers for years now. The first electronic poker tables made their debut in 2008, and today they can be found in several popular casinos, including the recently finished Aria in Las Vegas.

Randy  ’nanonoko’ Lew, considered the best multi-table poker player of all time, recently started a new official blog, in which he does not only talk about his poker career, but also provides a sneak peek into his everyday life.

Randy ’nanonoko’ Lew was a student at the California Davis University (UC Davis) before he  became a well-known name in the poker world. Nanonoko was also recognized for being a well-known arcade game player before he caught on to poker. He specialized in the game Marvel vs Capcom 2 and won several international championships. He first met Hevad Khan within one of these events (Khan converted from games to cards as well). Khan managed to persuade nanonoko to try himself out in the world of online poker.

Randy ’Nanonoko’ Lew, considered the king of multi-table poker and Patrik Antonius, the best performing high stakes player of 2009, had a duel on day one of the European Poker Tour Monte Carlo. 

Randy ’Nanonoko’ Lew, a member of the PokerStars professional online team reminisced over the events of the EPT Monte Carlo, where he was set packing home during the first day. One of his opponents was the best high stakes player of last year, the Full Tilt-pro Patrik Antonius.

The American analyzes his most important hand, where he used his creative artistic skills to animate the outcome of the event.