Scott Seiver Breaks Through On WPT; Seidel Wins Another High Rzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz
WPT Championship & Super High Roller, Bellagio, Las Vegas, Nevada

C/O WPT

There are times in the poker world in which a situation goes beyond explanation. Sometimes players, for no better reason than running bad or random chance, a player will go an extended period of time without a big score. Michael Mizrachi’s previous results at the WSOP leading up to last year’s explosion comes to mind. A player of the caliber of Scott Seiver doing no better 19th place in 5 years of WPT tournaments defies explanation. Unless the explanation was that he was saving up all his rungood for this past week’s $25,000 WPT Championship.

Seiver beat an impressive collection of players in the final six, including 2011 PCA Champion Galen Hall, Justin Young, and Farzad Bonyadi. For his breakthrough WPT performance, Seiver raked in an impressive $1,618,344.

In news that can’t possibly surprise anyone who knows anything about poker, Erik Seidel took down the inaugural WPT Super High Roller Event. 28 of the sickest gamblers of the world decided to put up $100,000 to vie for second place to Seidel. The lucky second place finisher was fellow Team Full Tilt member Erick Lindgren, but the human cybernetic organism that is Erik Seidel walked away with another score of over $1 million, bringing his total for the year to over $5.4 million. Nice life.

Freitez Wins EPT Season 7 Finale; Mercier Wins PokerStars Sponsored zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz
EPT Grand Final, Madrid, Spain

C/O PokerStars

The EPT Grand Final, a €10,000 event to conclude an interesting season for the crown jewel of the PokerStars tours featured a “live” broadcast with hole cards on a two-hour delay, sequestering players until their eliminations had “happened” on TV. It’s interesting to see the lengths that they had to go to to broadcast this table on a delay, while the WSOP was able to negotiate just a 30 minute delay between play and broadcast, with no sequestering, but that’s another story for another day.

Two members of Team PokerStars made the EPT Grand Final final table, with Brazilian Alex Gomes chasing a triple crown and Juan Maceiras trying to become the first Spanish-born EPT champion. Both players found the rail early on in Final Table play. Venezuelan player Ivan Freitez was the last man standing, claiming €1,500,000 (about $2.2 million) in the swan song for the EPT’s seventh (!) season.

The following day’s action saw winners from the EPT’s first seven seasons compete for a first place prize of €50,000 in buy-ins to the next season of the EPT. In what should come as a surprise to absolutely no one, Jason Mercier was the champion.

Chris Porter Tops Station Event With for $60K
Sunset Station Casino, Las Vegas, Nevada

C/O Station Casinos

The Station Casinos have created an interesting series of poker tournaments at their various Las Vegas properties. They’re running four separate $1,100 events at four different casinos, each with a $200,000 guarantee, and the top 25 finishers at each casino will compete in a championship event with a $200,000 guarantee of its own, to create a prizepool totaling $1 million for the five events. The most recent event, taking place at Sunset Station, brought in over 200 players, with FullTilt player representative Chris Porter taking down the top prize of $60,000, and a chance at some more in the championship event.

Matt Legard “Positions” Himself For Big Win in New Game at Bellagio
Bellagio Prelim Event, Las Vegas, Nevada

C/O Position Poker

As much as the popularity of poker continues to flourish, there are some innovative minds thinking of “the next step” in the evolution of the game. Most of the time it’s an innovation in bringing in more players or changing the pace of the game, but certain developments, including Rush Poker, have completely changed the way poker can be played. An exciting new version of live poker made its debut during the preliminary events at Bellagio a few weeks ago, and this one is called Position Poker. The key variation of the game is that the player winning a pot gets to act after the button on the following hand. There are a few other intricacies, which you can check out at their website here. The winner of the first ever event was Matt Legard, who won $18,000 for his efforts.

NOLA Wraps the WSOPC With Scramble For Points(+2 rings +Team Pokerati Update +National Championship update)
WSOPC Harrahs New Orleans, Louisiana

C/O WSOP

With the conclusion of the WPT Championship, all eyes in the poker world have turned towards New Orleans, where the last few entries to the $1 million WSOPC National Championship have been grinded out over the last week and a half. There are three methods by which players earned their seats in this event; the grinders who have followed the circuit around all year tried to accumulate enough points for one of the at large spots (including Team Pokerati member Dave Clark, who seems to have squeezed his way in with a few key points at this final stop).

Another option was to be the “Casino Champion” by accumulating the most points at this stop. That spot was snatched up by an impressive performance by Brian Walsingham, who locked up two rings inside of a week. In Event 4, a $355 No Limit Hold’em event was the first ring he won, and in Event #8 he really cashed in. The $1,085 tournament generated a prize pool of over $340,000 and Walsingham took the lion’s share of over $78,000. He also gave himself a chance at $300,000, the top prize in a field of less than 100 that will take place in Las Vegas in the coming week.

The third method? Outlasting 75 players and make the final table of the $10,000 Southern Regional Championship, ensuring yourself of one of the last nine seats in a $1 million freeroll. At the time of publication, there are 12 players left, including Allen Kessler, Allie Prescott and Shannon Shorr. Once the final nine is finalized, we’ll throw a quick update your way.

UPDATE: The Final Nine was just set. The unlucky bubble boy was Shannon Shorr, who ran pocket kings into the pocket aces of Allie Prescott to go out in tenth. Prescott punches his ticket to the National Championship, as do Harry Cullen, Allen Kessler, Jeremy Gaubert, Gary Friedlander, Kunal Patel, Matt Waxman, AJ Jejelowo and Scott Lipshutz. The overall field for the freeroll is unofficially set, but you can look here to see who has “officially” qualified and here to check out how the National leaderboard for at-large qualifiers shook out.

Von Kriegenbergh Wins Inaugural WPT in Florida, Longest Name Contest
WPT Seminole Hard Rock Showdown, Hollywood, Florida

C/O WPT

Florida has been a new frontier for poker over the last year, and the final “first” in a long series was the first ever televised $10K event, the WPT’s Seminole Hard Rock Showdown. The first event of its kind got quite the turnout, with 433 players in total generating a prize pool north of $4.1 million. With the exception of Curt Kohlberg, the final six was a young group, with notables such as Tommy Vedes and Allen Bari.

After a rollercoaster ride of a final table, where Taylor Von Kriegenbergh started with the chip lead, then lost it, he fought his way back to the top to capture the crown. For his efforts, Von Kriegenburgh won over $1.1 million.

Heinzlemann Plays Bridesmaid For Second Consecutive Week in San Remo
EPT San Remo, Italy

C/O PokerStars Blog

Almost anyone has the capability of being lucky enough to final table any single event, but some of the most memorable and impressive feats in the poker world are easily recognizable when they occur back to back. For the second time in this season of the EPT, a player has finished second in two consecutive Main Events, a feat that takes a bit of the sting out of not closing it out.

Max Heinzelmann once again got down to heads up play in a massive field, and this time it was Rupert Elder getting the best of him. Elder’s performance netted him €930,000, but Heinzelmann accumulated over €1,000,000 in less than two weeks, so it’s not all bad.

Crane Hooks Spring Borgata Championship
Borgata Spring Poker Championship, Atlantic City, New Jersey

C/O Borgata

Most of the tournament action in the United States is driven by tournament series’ that travel around the country. A few casinos have been able to harness a strong local population to run their own tournaments, with Commerce, Foxwoods and the Borgata coming to mind. The Borgata’s most recent series, the Spring Poker Open, culminated in a $2,500 event with 447 runners.

Among the notables in the field were Kathy Liebert, Maria Ho, Josh Brikis, Jason Young, Lee Childs and “Hollywood” Dave Stann. Matt Matros made the final table and finished ninth, but it was Russel Crane, a tournament grinder that travels the country, who took this tournament down. Crane’s payday was a sizable one, coming in at $276,949.

Chris Johnson Runs Away With WSOPC Las Vegas Title
Caesers, Las Vegas, Nevada

C/O WSOP

Without openly rooting, members of the poker media generally pull for the player who has the most chips, in order to facilitate the fastest trip to post-action drinks and other festivities. The $1,600 WSOPC Main Event at Caesers Las Vegas may go down in the record books as one of the fastest of all time, and you need look no further than a tweet by F-Train, who was covering the event, to see the pure joy that a short final table can bring.

The short version of the story is that nine of ten all-ins that were called led to eliminations, leading to about two and a half hours from cards in the air to trophy in the air. 24-year-old Las Vegas local Chris Johnson was the beneficiary, to the tune of $153,559 and a lucrative spot in the upcoming WSOPC Championship coming up in a few weeks.

First Pokerbot ElkY Wins EPT Madrid High Roller
EPT Madrid, Spain

C/O PokerStars Blog

When Phil Laak beat the poker playing robot up in Canada a few years back, little did the world know that they were already perfecting a personified version of the bot and training it through thousands of hours of StarCraft. Okay, perhaps that’s a bit unfair, but Bertrand “ElkY” Grospellier has done nothing but impress in the live and online poker scene for quite some time, and he hit again this past week.

The EPT Madrid €25,000 High Roller event brought together 57 of the best players in the world, and a final eight that included Vanessa Rousso, David “Doc” Sands, Peter Jetten, Juha Helppi and Galen Hall, but none were a match for ElkY. He picked up €525,000 for his win.

“Super Tuan” Wins Main Event, Keller Hits Trifecta While Idiot Finishes Seventh in PA
WSOPC Harrah’s Chester, Pennsylvania

With just a few weeks remaining in this season of the World Series of Poker Circuit, players are hopping around the country and hitting every remaining stop trying to rack up enough points to qualify for the $1 million freeroll. The stop that just wrapped up was in Chester, Pennsylvania, the next-to-last series with only New Orleans remaining. The $1,600 Main Event, with a seat on the line for the winner (as well as a six figure score) drew some big names, and the final nine included “Bodog” Ari Engel and WSOPC Choctaw Main Event winner Huy Nguyen. But another player would punch his ticket to Las Vegas, as Kenny “Super Tuan” Nguyen took home just under $95,000 and the gold ring as well.

In other news from Chester, There was a $345 Omaha 8/b ring event that was won by Pennsylvania native Brent Keller, which is his third Omaha ring on the circuit. The biggest news from that tournament certainly had to be the seventh place finisher, who oddly has the same name as the guy who is currently writing this column. It’s his first Hendon Mob entry and he’s very proud of how he played. He also can’t stop talking in the third person.

Team Pokerati Couple Makes Strong Charge Towards WSOPC National Championship

La Sengphet and David Clark have been traveling the country the whole year following the WSOP Circuit. The official poker playing couple of Team Pokerati are down in New Orleans in an attempt to accumulate enough points to qualify for the $1 million freeroll. La currently sits in 5th place for an at large qualification, and is pretty much locked in, but DC is currently 10 points outside of the current cutline. It could, however, take just one more preliminary final table appearance to put him into the tournament. To take a look at the current standings, head over here (with thanks to Kevmath for the link).

In all seriousness, the last week and a half has been a dark one for the industry, and last week didn’t necessarily feel like the appropriate time to recognize the few people who were fortunate enough to make a few dollars in poker. We must, however, realize that no matter how bleak the situation is with online poker, the live game will continue to go on. The numbers will change, how yet we don’t know, but as long as there are people playing cards, there will be winners and losers. And some version of this column.

Mercier and Selbst Succesfully Defend Titles at Final NAPT Stop
Mohegan Sun, Uncasville, Connecticut

It was big news for all of about 14 hours, but there’s no disputing the incredibly impressive accomplishments of Vanessa Selbst and Jason Mercier at NAPT Mohegan Sun.

C/O PokerStars Blog

Selbst won the inaugural NAPT Mohegan Sun Main Event in 2010 in a dominant performance. She lead the tournament from wire-to-wire and earned $750,000, putting her on the path that would lead to her becoming a member of Team PokerStars Pro. The logo on her shirt was different, the final seven standing in her way were different, but the ending was the same. Instead of huge chip advantage, she entered heads-up play with Dan Shak in an unusual spot for her, a three-to-one deficit. Shak was no match for fate, as Selbst quickly closed the gap and captured the title for a second straight year, this time for $450,000

C/O PokerStars Blog

The next day was Jason Mercier’s opportunity to repeat history. His 2010 effort was a $25,000 event that drew 35 players, and paid him a juicy $475,000. This year’s high roller lowered the buy-in to $10,000 but drew more than twice as many players (78 to be exact), and again Mercier won his first table to put himself in contention. He reached heads-up play against fellow Team PokerStars Pro member Eugene Katchalov at a slight disadvantage, but quickly erased it. When the final river hit the felt, Mercier had completed the highly unlikely exacta with Selbst and accumulated $246,600 between bounties and his first place prize. For their sake, lets just hope they didn’t get paid out via their PokerStars accounts.

Erik Seidel is Proven to be Human, Finishes 2nd at WPT Hollywood
Hollywood Casino, Lawrenceburg, Indiana

Erik Seidel’s accomplishments thus far in 2011 can be put up against any individual year by any player in the history of the game, and the year’s less than 1/3rd of the way done. To put things in perspective, 4 of the top 5 top money accumulators are the top four finishers in the 2010 WSOP Main Event, the only anomaly on the list being Seidel. So when the final table was set at WPT Hollywood, Seidel was a prohibitive favorite, and by the time he got down to heads-up play with a part time player from Cincinnati, most of the media already had their reports typed up with their finger hovering over their mouse, ready to click send.

Perhaps we should have taken the events that took place in Indiana in to account when trying to make sense of the pokerpocalypse. Just 97 players showed up for a WPT event, the most famous ginger in poker quite literally abandoned her roots, and in the end, the stranglehold that Erik Seidel has held on poker was loosened, if only slightly. Mike Scarborough played an impressive tournament, and succeeded in overcoming a tough final table on his way to a $273,664 payday.

Everyone I Mentioned At WSOPC St. Louis Won a Lot of Money
WSOP Circuit, Harrah’s St. Louis, Missouri

In my last tournament recap, I mentioned La Sengphet had made her second final table at WSOPC St. Louis, and right after I posted she won the tournament for over $17,000, giving her her second ring of the season. I added a bit at the end to recognize it, and Dan put up a post congratulating her. In it, I mentioned Kyle Cartwright as one of only two players to win two rings at the same stop this season, both of his coming in Tunica. He won a final table that was going on concurrently to La’s, which just happened to be the Main Event in St. Louis.

449 players showed up for the $1,600 tournament, generating a sizable prize pool that would award over $142,000 to the eventual champion. On this day, Cartwright was indeed that man, adding a third ring and an automatic seat in the $1 million championship to what is likely the most impressive resume on this year’s WSOP Circuit.

Local Man Makes Good at LAPT Peru for Over $200K
Atlantic City Casino, Lima, Peru

C/O PokerStars Blog

Amidst the chaos that enveloped the poker world on Friday, a couple of the best that the American poker media has to offer (Shamus and Pauly) soldiered on with their reporting duties. As usual, their updates were top notch and captured the compelling action well, and it was some exciting play to be sure. Local Peruvian player Kemal Ferri went on a rampage when play got down to four-handed, eliminating all three of his opponents on the way to his first LAPT title and $207,400.

Michael Kanaan Makes Dozens of Media Friends After Quick Win in Sydney
ANZPT Sydney, Australia

C/O PokerStars Blog

The unofficial rule amongst the poker media is not to openly root for any one player at a final table. That rule is usurped by the fact that all media subconsciously roots for the big stacks to win during the big confrontations in order to facilitate an early exit from the casino. It is by this that we can judge Michael Kanaan the most popular player of every member of the media present for his win at ANZPT Sydney. The prohibitive chip leader entering play, Kanaan triumphed over his final eight opponents in less than four-and-a-half hours of play, sending people home at just after 5 pm after collecting his $195,714 first place prize, of course.

Luckily For the Pokerati Game, 2-Time WSOPC Omaha Ring Winner Plays Tournaments… For Now
WSOP Circuit, Caesers Las Vegas, Nevada

C/O WSOP

So much for sharing the wealth. Yet another player added his second WSOP Circuit ring of the season this past week as action moved to Caesers in Las Vegas. Army veteran Jessie Bryant’s job while he was enlisted was similar to the soldiers who were featured in “The Hurt Locker”, but these days his focus has been directed more towards the game of Omaha. Bryant won an Omaha-8/b event a few months ago in Tunica, and to show off the versatility in his skills he decided to change it up a bit in Las Vegas, adding a PLO championship to his poker resume. He is the early leader in the player of the series race in Las Vegas thanks to his score of just under $10,000.

Online Poker? Chip Jett Doesn’t Need No Stinkin’ Online Poker
Venetian Deep Stack Extravaganza, Las Vegas, Nevada

Also well underway in Las Vegas over the past couple of weeks has been the latest incarnation of the Venetian Deep Stack Extravaganza. Well-known pros have been scattered amongst the lists of those who have cashed in the events held so far, but have began to pop up more and more since the madness of Friday. The most well-known of those players is Chip Jett, who for a long time has been one of the red-named players on Full Tilt. Not content to sit and stare at a blank computer screen, Jett decided to enter Event 20, a $340 No Limit Hold’em event, and promptly won the whole thing for just under $14,000.

Could be interesting to see what the advertisements during the broadcast are. If the network’s a bit slow in reacting it might be one of the last times we ever see a FullTilt or PokerStars advertisements on American airwaves. With the exception of a few WPT episodes in production or already in the can, it will almost certainly be one of the last times we see so many patches from the companies involved in Friday’s indictments on players.

The most troubling possibility is that it would not air at all. Sound ridiculous? Consider the following: Kevmath had a retweet late Saturday night in which @buckwild33 noted that a scheduled WSOP Main Event 2007 marathon was not airing and boxing was shown in its place.

While it would certainly be a stretch to try and correlate this change in broadcast schedule on ESPN in some way with the upcoming NHUPC broadcaston NBC, it certainly should not be dismissed outright. There will be several small milestones that come up periodically in the coming days, weeks, and months, and we who are most affected might want to pay attention to their outcomes.

The information that we may be able to get from these indicators could provide a significant portion of the information that comes our way as things progress. Both the sites and the DOJ are likely headed for a process that is going to go very slowly, and information will trickle out slowly.

Again, this is just the direction that my thought process brought me in, and I don’t claim to have any information that is unavailable to everyone else. I think the NHUPC is at least an interesting talking point and the first small event in a series of events that will eventually have effects on millions of people around the world. Now is the time to keep your eyes open.

On a side note, it’s interesting to see how the title sponsor of the NHUPC, GoDaddy, could be the least toxic element at this point in time. Who would have thought two weeks ago that Godaddy’s CEO’s elephant hunting fiasco would become old news so quickly.

Canuck’s First Live Tournament Cash is a Measly €825,000
EPT Berlin, Germany

Photo C/O PokerStars

Thanks in large part to an early collision between the two chip leaders early in final table action, Ben Wilnofsky had one of the easiest roads to victory that you’ll ever see (or not) in his victory in Berlin. One of the largest stops on the European tour, the EPT Berlin drew an astounding 773 players for their €5,000 Main Event to generate a prize pool just shy of €4 million. Wilnofsky and Maximilian Heinzelmann were well ahead of the pack when the final eight began play, but a flopped set generated a pot that was larger than any of the other six remaining players and propelled Wilnofsky the rest of the way.

The other notable accomplishment at this final table has to be the performance of Martin Jacobsen. The young Swede (and member of Team PokerStars Pro) made this his third final table of the EPT season, following a pair of second place finishes. He could not end his streak of falling just short, but held on for quite some time on a short stack before ultimately falling in fourth place.

In the end, the news was all about young Ben Wilnofsky. The 22-year-old Canadian has had some online success, but leading into this €5,000 event had not so much as recorded a single lifetime live cash. That also means that his average cash stands somewhere around €825,000, the champion’s share of this massive prize pool. Not bad for a few days work.

Spencer Uniss Nets Even Less For First Cash, a Paltry $221K
HPT @ Golden Gates Casino, Black Hawk, Colorado

Photo C/O HPT

Clearly there was some sort of first-timer strategy guide released this week online that I simply could not find. In addition to the first-time cash/winning combination in Berlin, another player cashed in his “one time” in a big way.

The HPT event at Golden Gates Casino in Colorado saw the biggest field in it’s history with 491 players showing up to generate a prize pool of almost $740,000. The first place prize was set to exceed $220,000.

Spencer Uniss made the newby mistake of promising big things if he was fortunate enough to win, telling his friends he would charter a flight to Las Vegas if he was lucky enough to win. In on an investment of just $370 after a satellite win, he felt as if he had nothing to lose, but now he has to pay up after banking the win in his first ever tournament cash for $221,594. After a bit of research, the cheapest hourly rate for a private plane is about $1,000 an hour, without factoring fuel surcharges, taxes, and other fees. At least it’s from Colorado and not the east coast.

Two Rings are Twice as Nice For Three Lucky Players
St. Louis, Missouri & Rincon, California

In the business of bigger events in the last several weeks, a few impressive feats in preliminary events have slipped through the cracks, which I’ll rectify momentarily. Two players won their second WSOPC ring of the year this week in St. Louis, and one lucky player became only the second player ever to record two wins at one stop a few weeks ago in Rincon.

Photo C/O WSOP

Kurt Jewell has the distinction of winning in the largest field in WSOPC history last October, when he won the Main Event in Hammond for a cool $242,909. He added a second piece of hardware this past week by winning an Omaha 8/b event in St. Louis, the same event that Team Pokerati member La Sengphet made in her pursuit of an at-large spot to the WSOP National Championship. In addition to the second ring, Jewell banked another $13,206 and has already locked up a seat in the $1 million freeroll by virtue of his previous win.

The appropriately named Huy (pronounced “We”) Nguyen hasn’t done so badly for himself this year on the circuit. Nguyen won another of the monsterous $1,600 Main Events, his being Choctaw where he made $232,706 for his efforts. His win in St. Louis came in a Six-Handed No Limit Hold’em event with over 200 players. A $25,241 payday for the accountant from Norman, Oklahoma is another impressive score, but he too has his eyes on the National Championship, where he too has already locked up his seat.

Photo C/O WSOP

Finally we take a look back at the WSOPC stop in Rincon, where a man with quite an interesting name won a pair of events. Mstr Lynch won a grand total of over $45,000 for his two wins in Rincon, which propelled him to the most overall points of the Rincon series and a National Championship of his own. He’s just the second player (after Kyle Cartwright did so in Tunica) to win two events at the same series of the WSOPC.

EDIT: Right after the publishing of this article, La followed up with her third cash of the series in St. Louis in the best way possible: by winning her own 2nd ring of the year, according to Dan. At the very least it almost assures her of an at-large spot, if not player of the series in St. Louis. Congrats La!

Photo C/O WSOP

Before this week, Ali Eslami’s most notable accomplishment was defeating Polaris, the poker playing computer, in tandem with Phil Laak. The LA-based cash game player proved his versatility this week by beating 8 real live human opponents on the road to the WSOPC Rincon crown. The third of four $10,000 events on the WSOP Circuit, Rincon drew an anemic 98 players, surprising mostly due to the nine WSOP Circuit National Championship seats awaiting those who made the final table.

Among those who made the final table were Circuit superstar Dwyte Pilgrim, Steve Brecher, and fresh off his win last week at the Wynn $5K, Tim West. West fell just short of the impressive back-to-back feat, finishing as the runner-up to Eslami. For his win, Eslami took home just under $175,000, the ring, and a chance at a nice chunk of change in seven weeks at the National Championship.

Mclean Carr Takes WPT Vienna High Roller; Seidel Unavailable for Comment
Vienna, Austria

Photo C/O PartyPoker

Stop the presses! There was a High Roller poker tournament held on this planet this week that Erik Seidel not only didn’t win, he didn’t even play. This worked very much to the benefit of Mclean Carr, who took great advantage of the absence of the king of the monster buy-in to dominate the WPT Vienna High Roller, by all accounts. Carr took home €185,120 by overcoming the field of 50 and taking the chip lead from the beginning of the final table to the end.

No Place Like Home for Del Prado in Winning APT Philippines
Pasay City, Philippines

On the Asia-based poker tours, specifically the APT and APPT, the field sizes and buy-ins can sometimes make the achievement of winning a Main Event look a little less impressive than it should. But the APT Philippines stop this week had the buy-in ($2,500, American) and the field size (231) to allow it to contend as one of the largest prizes awarded of the week.

Six of the ten players who made the final table were Filipino locals, along with a Canadian, an Australian, a South Korean and a player from Hong Kong. A local champion could not be denied, though, as Enrique Del Prado defeated Elton Tsang heads-up to keep the title local, and won a hair under $180,000 for his accomplishment.

Romanello 2/3rds of Way to Triple Crown Inside of 1 Year with Win
WPT Bratislava, Slovakia

Photo C/O PartyPoker

In the age of the internet, people coming out of nowhere are becoming harder and harder to find. Gone are the days where a Dirk Nowitzki, Tony Parker or Manu Ginobili could enter the NBA without great fanfare and shock the world. In the world of poker, the hype for international players is sometimes a bit slow in getting to American shores, but a smart bet for some serious WSOP success this year would be Roberto Romanello.

The former owner of a chip shop in South Wales, Romanello rubbed some of his opponents the wrong way with his final table antics, but there’s no denying his talents. Following a win at EPT Prague a few months ago, Romanello’s win at WPT Bratislava netted him another €140,685. He heads to the WSOP with a goal of being the first person in the history of poker to capture a Triple Crown (WPT, EPT, WSOP bracelet) in a single calendar year.

Foxwoods Provides Appropriate Environment for Chops
Mashantucket, Connecticut

Photo C/O WJMedia

With the amount of tournament series’ that are run at Foxwoods, I’m surprised that Jay “WhoJedi” Newnum, master scribe of Foxwoods Live, doesn’t own a second home on the reservation. No matter how many tournaments they run, though, Foxwoods consistently brings in some of the best field sizes on the East Coast every time.

The $2,500 Foxwoods Poker Classic Main Event drew 284 players, creating a prize pool of over $630,000 and a first place prize of over $150,000. All of which made it easier to chop it up once play got down to three-handed, giving each of the remaining players a hefty ROI over their initial $2,500 investment. At a final table that featured tournament regular Todd Terry, the shortest stack of the three, Michael Lavoie, guaranteed himself almost second place money, settling for $79,987. Similarly chipped Ronnie Pease ($108,295) and Phil Reed ($114,050) each cashed in big time, with Reed’s slight advantage also giving him the official win, the trophy and a snappy leather jacket.

HPT Win Allows Father To Buy the Greatest Swing Set Ever Created
Meskwaki Bingo Casino Hotel, Tama, Iowa

Photo C/O HPT

When Tom Hujda left his Illinois home for his trip to last week’s HPT stop in Iowa, his only goal was to leave with enough money to buy a swing set for his kids. Even this seemed like an ambitious goal, having never recorded so much as a cash on the Heartland Poker Tour. By the time the tournament was over, however, Hujda’s kids are probably getting a whole playground, as he won the whole thing for $77,897. He can afford to install this behemoth and still have $67,000+ to spare. Those are some lucky kids.

In Modern Day Kiev, Poker Plays You!
RPS Kiev, Ukraine

The Russian Poker Series is like the red-headed stepchild of the PokerStars tournament circuits, not even netting a mention on the PokerStars blog for the RPS’ most recent stop in Kiev. The $1,000 Grand Special built a prize pool of almost $300,000, however, with Yurij Predybajlo winning the tournament, $65,590, and the award for the least pronounceable name.

BLUFF Managing Editor Refuses to Share in the Run-Good, Strikes Again in Indiana
Hollywood Poker Open, Lawrenceburg, Indiana

File pic: Jess Welman

It’s been a little while since we had an entry in the “Year of the Media”, but we got a repeat offender this week. Jess Welman traveled to the Hollywood Poker Open in Indiana for their Ladies’ event, and in familiar fashion made her way through the field to the final table. She’s had an impressive run over the last year, cashing in the WSOP Ladies’ event, freerolling her way into an event at the Detox Series last year and final tabling, chopping another Ladies’ Event eight ways, and now this most recent performance. Welman fell just short, earning $3,770 for her second place finish. She will be back in town as part of the live updates team for the televised WPT Main event in the coming week, so if you’re headed there, be sure to congratulate her on another impressive performance.

Pesky Russian Wins Twitter War on Way to EPT Snowfest Crown
Hinterglemm, Austria

Photo C/O PokerStars

Twitter has steadily grown in popularity in the poker community over the last three years, and some have wondered when it would become a standard way to pick up information about players sitting at your table. While there hasn’t been a proliferation of Twitter tells and false Twitter tells, we got some real-time Twitter trash talking among two players at the final table of the EPT Snowfest.

Brash Russian player Vladimir Geshkenbein started it, taunting Kevin Vandersmissen by Tweeting, “Up to two mil… Valuetowned a fat Belgium guy.” Vandersmissen later countered, “Valuetowned the Russian alcoholic! 6.6 mill now.”

It was only appropriate that these two got down to heads-up play. They were relatively even and deep as the heads-up match started, but the match took less than a half hour. Geshkenbein seemed to be channeling his inner Tony G, making two pair to wrest control and throwing salt in the wound, telling Vandersmissen “Don’t be sad… second place is good as well.”

Several hands later, Geshkenbein again made two pair to make it official. His win at EPT Snowfest was worth €390,000 and a seat in the upcoming EPT Champion of Champions event.

Dmitry Gromov Crushes Record WPT Field in Vienna
Vienna, Austria

Photo C/O PartyPoker

The serious influx of poker players into Austria continued with even more players showing up in Vienna. 555, in fact, to produce a prize pool of almost €1.5 million, with a first place prize of just under €500,000. The chip leader headed into the final eight was Russian Dmitry Gromov, a lead that he would take from wire-to wire at the final table. While this tournament is not destined for American TV airwaves, the whole WPT crew was there, including Matt Savage and the Royal Flush Girls. Mike Sexton and Jesse May did a live stream of the action, with hole cards, and the presentation was top-notch. Gromov outlasted another Russian, Maksim Kolosov by winning a key coin flip on the final hand, and took home €447,840 for his efforts. On top of that he got to do a winner’s interview with Tatjana Pasalic! What a lucky guy.

West Wins Wynn Classic Main Event
Las Vegas, Nevada

The biggest tournament action in the US this week was at the Wynn, as the conclusion to another successful Wynn Poker Classic did not disappoint. 212 players put up $5,000, and there were not many weak spots in the field, and the final table featured a collection of online superstars including Annette Obrestad, Tim West, Eric Froelich, and Carter King. West and Obrestad would match up at the end, with the man known as Tmay coming out on top to the tune of over $300,000, his biggest career score.

Non-Russian Grant Levy Adds ANZPT title to previous APPT Win
Perth, Australia

Photo C/O PokerStars

While tournaments outside of the continental United States were dominated by and large by a Russian contingent, the ANZPT Perth stop was an exception to the rule. After going 0 for his last 12 attempts on the ANZPT, Sydney native Grant Levy finally unleashed all of his stored up run-good at once to take down the Perth event. To make the feat even more impressive, Levy satellited into the tournament, making the $131,000 payday at the end of it all that much sweeter. Levy is just the second player ever to capture both an ANZPT and an APPT title.

Ernie Holthusen’s First Cash in 5 years is $100K Win in Tulalip
Tulalip Poker Pro Challenge, Tulalip, Washington

Everybody goes on a cold streak in poker from time to time, sometimes reaching several months of bad luck before turning things around. But going four-and-a-half years without recording a tournament cash is something out of a terrible nightmare, as Ernie Holthusen might be able to tell you. Whatever the reason for Holthusen’s long cashless stretch, he made quite a statement in ending that streak, taking home $100,000 at the Tulalip Poker Challenge. Holthusen defeated Scott Clements heads-up, an impressive feat on top of making it that far in the field of 361.

Photo c/o WPT/Bay 101

There were a ton of storylines on display at the final table of the WPT’s Bay 101 Shooting Star event this week. It was the second consecutive final table for Vivek Rajkumar, who finished second at the LAPC and put on quite a display during this California swing of the World Poker Tour. Mike Matusow made his way to his fifth WPT final table, still seeking a win that has thus far eluded him in his career. But the biggest story of them all was that, for the first time in the history of the WPT, Mike Sexton would not fill the seat in the broadcast booth next to Vince Van Patten. It wasn’t a coup by Tony Dunst, though it wouldn’t be out of the realm of possibilities for Dunst to try something like that, but rather for the first time ever, Sexton made the final table of a WPT event and was unable to fulfill his broadcasting duties.

The story would not have a happy ending, however, as Matusow took cards that were not quite live and turned them into monsters, eliminating Sexton by catching a jack as a 3-1 dog and knocking him out in 6th, collecting his $5k Shooting Star bounty and leaving himself as the only player with that target on his back. Rajkumar would bow out in fourth place to conclude his impressive run, while Matusow would find himself short-stacked before going out in 3rd place. Allen Sternberg would claim the final $5,000 bounty for knocking Matusow out, and that win would propel him to the chip lead. Sternberg outlasted Steven Kelly with a timely two-outer on the river, winning the Bay 101 Shooting Star and the $1 million first place prize.

Photo c/o PokerStars

Kanit Be? Moustapha Wins at IPT Nova Gorica

Nova Gorica, Slovenia

The second biggest prize of the week comes from a somewhat unlikely source. The Italian Poker Tour is one of PokerStars’ regional poker tours, but it’s latest stop, technically not in Italy but on their border with Slovenia, generated a prize pool of almost €800,000. 395 players put up €2,000, and the first place purse ballooned to over €200,000. It remains to be seen whether Mustapha Kanit can be considered a “local” champion, considering the event didn’t happen on Italian soil, but the Italian player bested Marco Mancini to claim the IPT Nova Gorica title.

Photo c/o HPT

Jeremy Dresch Is First to 3 HPT Titles, Sore Loser Makes it Best Out of 7
Shooting Star Casino, Mahnomen, Minnesota

2009 Heartland Poker Tour Player of the Year Jeremy Dresch made history by being the first player to capture two HPT titles. It was made all the more impressive by the fact that he captured those titles in consecutive weeks. Dresch now holds the distinction of being the first to three titles, winning the HPT stop at the Shooting Star Casino in Minnesota. He takes home almost $50,000 after besting the field of 170.

Photo c/o PokerStars

First Brazilian LAPT Champ Crowned in Chile, Hopes for Less Messy Crown Next Time
Viña del Mar, Chile

Last month on the LAPT, the hearts of thousands of Brazilians were broken when they failed to crown their first Brazilian LAPT title in Sao Paolo, Brazil, despite the volume of Brazilian players in the field. The champion was, in fact, a Chilean, and the Brazilians returned the favor this week when Murilo Figueiredo took home the win in Viña del Mar, Chile. Figueiredo defeated 620 other players in the largest LAPT field ever to win $146,000.

Aaron Alanen PWNS 1st Zynga IRL MTT for $15K
Zynga PokerCon, The Palms, Las Vegas, Nevada

There’s not much to be said about this tournament that wasn’t said by Dan. So I’ll just let this tournament recap, as well as these other articles he wrote explain what happened this past weekend at ZyngaCon.

Pros Living Locally in Las Vegas Were “Wynning” This Week
Wynn Poker Classic, The Wynn, Las Vegas, Nevada

The Wynn has pretty quietly been running a successful poker series the last couple of weeks, and more recently with buy-ins in the $2k-$5k range they’ve drawn in quite a few poker pros living locally. The best story has to be the victory of Chad Brown; after undergoing surgery recently to remove a large tumor, Brown showed up at their most recent $2,000 event and won the whole thing, banking almost $75,000. Also winning this week was Bryan Micon, who took down the $500 HORSE event.

It was a slightly less crazy week on the tournament trail, but there was still plenty of poker played throughout the world. Two different $1,500 events attracted strong crowds in Atlantic City, while a couple of prominent tournaments that were in no way whatsoever affiliated with PokerStars went down in LA, and that wasn’t all.

Victor Ramdin Does Not Pass Sugar, Does Collect $500k at The Big Event
The Bicycle Casino, Bell Gardens, California
The Not-NAPT tournament at the Bike last week still managed to mysteriously draw in numerous amounts of qualifiers and Team PokerStars players, with over 400 players ponying up $5,000 for a $2 million prize pool and a half-million dollar first prize. N-NAPT LA was nearly canceled by state gaming officials over its ties to the online poker site, who withdrew its sponsorship and left the tournament to simply be called “The Big Event”.

While a number of Team PokerStars pros populated the field, only two of them made the final table. To the delight of poker fans, Victor Ramdin and Joe Hachem were also the last two players left standing. On the final hand, Ramdin got it in as a big dog with ace-jack to Hachem’s ace-king, but a jack sealed the title for Ramdin, who went over $3 million in lifetime earnings with the $500K win.

Later in the week, the Bike hosted a $10,000 Bounty Shootout that will air later this year on ESPN. Once again Victor Ramdin found himself at the final table, winning one of nine first-round tables. He was joined by Main Event champion Jonathan Duhamel, 2010 NAPT LA champion Joe Tehan, new Team PokerStars Online addition Shane Schleger and Michael J. Fox Alex P. Keating, amongst others. Pat Walsh triumphed over them all, and took home $241,700 for his efforts.

Ali Triumphs in “Thrilla on the Riva” Over Frazier (and others)
Caesers, Atlantic City, NJ
In a sport where names like Moneymaker and Fish seem more apropos, the WSOPC stop at Caesers Atlantic City had names that fit better with boxing’s golden age. Jeff Frazier stood in the way of Brian Ali, as did defending WSOPC champion Rolan Israelashvili. But Ali was a bad, bad man on this day, utilizing his poker skills and a few chance cards to thoroughly dominate the final table. It took less than four hours for Ali to be crowned “the greatest” and his purse was $139,284, a golden ring, and a valuable seat in the million dollar final.

Every Tom, Mateusz, and Harry Won a Tournament This Week
Casino at Portomaso, Malta & UKIPT Manchester, England

293 players put up €1,650 to play poker on the tiny Mediterranean island of Malta. The Unibet Open stop there drew players from all over Europe, but for the second consecutive time dating back to its London stop, a Dutchman took home the crown. Mateusz Moolhuizen of Holland was crowned the champion of this event, taking home €117,000.

Another Mateusz, Mateusz Warowiec of Poland, is the chip leader heads-up at the UKIPT Manchester stop. He currently holds a nearly 2.5-1 chip lead at dinner break, and stands to be both the second Mateusz to win a title in a week and the second person I’ve ever heard of by the name of Mateusz.

DeepStacks U Instructor Wade Wins DeepStacks Challenge; No Money Back Guarantee
Grand Sierra Resort, Reno, NV
Training site DeepStacks University sponsored a series of tournaments in Reno, including a $2,500 Main Event in which several of its instructors, including Michael Mizrachi, Mike Matusow and Tristan “cre8ive” Wade took part. Instead of teaching them proper strategy, Wade took advantage of a field filled mostly with his students and won the tournament outright for $57,288. I am, of course, kidding, but I do imagine a funny pre-tournament training session in which he suggests giving off specific “fake” tells and riding that onto the easy victory, but that’s just me.

Borgata $500,000 Guaranteed Deep Stack
Borgata, Atlantic City, NJ
The WSOPC was not the only show in town this week in Atlantic City, as the Borgata hosted a $1,500 event with a $500K guaranteed prize pool. Vegas native and worldwide tournament grinder Chris Tryba was the big winner in that one, taking home $131,257 for the win. Other interesting notes on this field include Will “the thrill” Failla cashing and WSOPC champion Brian Ali cashing just days before his own win.

Erik Seidel Declares, “All Buy-In’s Over $25K Belong To Me”
2nd in the 2010 NBC Heads-Up Championship. 4th in the 2011 PCA $25,000 High Roller event. 3rd in the $100,000 High Roller and a win in the $250,000 Super High Roller at the 2011 Aussie Millions. And in the last week, a win in the $25,000 High Roller event at the LAPC and redemption with a win in the 2011 NBC Heads-Up Championship.

That’s a whole lot of words without a complete sentence, but it needs to stand alone due to the sheer impressiveness of one man accomplishing all of that in a calendar year. For a long time, Erik Seidel was known only as the man on the other end of Johnny Chan’s WSOP win, courtesy of the famous clip in the movie Rounders. Since his most infamous moment, Seidel has won 8 WSOP bracelets, but the last year has to be his crowning achievement. The total cash haul for all of this success? Over $4.5 million.

The path that Seidel took to the Head’s Up Championship was an impressive one. His first three victories were over fellow founding members of Team FullTilt, defeating Allen Cunningham in the first round, Jennifer Harman in the second round and Phil Gordon in the third. Seidel’s next two matches were against very different kinds of players, specifically of the online variety. One of the few people who’s been as hot as Seidel on the tournament trail is Vanessa Selbst, who has captured a few titles of her own in the last year. But she too fell to Seidel in the round of eight, setting up a match with Andrew Robl in the semifinals. Robl was no match for Seidel, who advanced to the finals and, wouldn’t you know it, a WSOP Main Event champion was waiting for him there. In a reversal of fortune it was Erik Seidel standing tall, claiming the $750,000 first place prize by beating what many would classify as a surprise finalist in Chris Moneymaker. Should make for some pretty good TV.

John Riordan Can’t Buy Booze, But He Can Rock a WSOP Circuit Ring
WSOP Circuit, West Palm Beach, Florida
The bad news for John Riordan is that because he can’t gamble in the state of Nevada, he misses out on the huge opportunity of the WSOP Championship, with $1 million in the prize pool. The good news is that he’s already got quite a few reasons not to be upset. About 210,810 reasons, to be specific, as he won the Main Event of the WSOP Circuit stop at the West Palm Beach Kennel Club last week.

Riordan took advantage of the fact that Florida is one of the few places in the United States in which you’re allowed to gamble at 18, so while he technically qualifies for the million dollar freeroll, he can’t legally play in Las Vegas, and thus forfeits this right to play. His spot will be occupied by an additional at-large qualifier, determined by overall point standings for the entirety of the 2010-2011 WSOPC season.

Gregory Brooks Owes Neighbor Free Drinks For Life After Convincing Him to Play LAPC Main Event
LA Poker Classic, Commerce, California
I don’t personally know what it’s like to be able to play or not play a $10k event on a whim, but for those who can, it can be a decision that can change their life. In the case of Gregory Brooks, that’s exactly what happened. After some disappointing results online, Brooks was ready to take a break from poker, but thanks to the advice of that sagely neighbor, he decided to squeeze in a trip to the Commerce Casino that would change his life.

After several grueling days, Brooks found himself in the final six of the LAPC Main Event with online legends Vivek Rajkumar and Steve Gross, as well as former WSOP Main Event champion and poker superstar Carlos Mortensen. But when the dust finally settled, it was Brooks that was the last man standing. Most people end up with a headache or a mysterious rash after doing something on a whim. Greg Brooks won $1.6 million and a seat to the $25,000 WPT Championship. Tough life.

In other action at the seemingly endless LAPC, David Kitai won the WPT Celebrity invitational. The final table of this event was delayed by a week to accommodate the WPT filming crew, which was already set up to film the Main Event. Kitai took home a $100,000 package, with $75,000 in cash and the other $25,000 wrapped up in a seat in the WPT Championship.

WSOPC in Atlantic City Becomes a 3-Ring Circus
WSOP Circuit – Caeser’s, Atlantic City
The WSOPC has been in Atlantic City for less than a week, and there’s already madness brewing. At the final table of Event #5, a bevy of borderline poker ettiquette issues were raised, from calling for cards in hands players weren’t involved in to high-fiving spectators, to running around the rather large tournament area causing a major scene. The instigator of this madness was Matthew Piccolo, who Nolan Dalla, in his recap of the event, called “an unshaven Chris Farley wearing an Oakland Raiders cap.” The hysterics overshadowed the victory of Jaeik Cho, who quietly collected the WSOPC ring and nearly $30,000.

Luke Vrabel Takes Home $670K and a Lambo In 5th Anniversary of PokerStars’ Sunday Million
Its rare to see a tournament eclipse 10,000 players online. It’s nearly impossible to imagine almost 60,000 players in an event, and it hits that mark when the buy-in is $215. But that’s just what happened this past weekend in the PokerStars Sunday Million, where they guaranteed a $5 million prize pool for their 5th anniversary and reached more than double that mark. As play reached the final table, the structure became a bit too fast for the remaining players, who each agreed to chop out part of the prize pool and guarantee themselves almost $300,000. The biggest winner of them all was Luke “Bdbeatslayer” Vrabel, who took home $670,000 as well as a brand new Lamborghini Gallardo. Not bad for 16 hours of work.

The LA Poker Classic is finally winding down, but the last few days should be quite a cap to what has already been a very exciting series. 681 players turned out for the $10,000 LAPC Main Event, which is down from last year but that can be attributed directly to Full Tilt not running direct satellites to the tournament. The winner will probably not be complaining though, as the top prize in this event is over $1.6 million. At last check, there were 34 players left, with James Carroll leading and David “Bakes” Baker not far behind. Other notables still in the field include Allen Cunningham, Joe Hachem, Jason Senti, Kathy Liebert and Lauren Kling. If you’ve got a second, be sure to check out the live video stream from the Commerce Casino. 5 players are left at the $25K high roller event final table, with Elky leading the pack.

There’s some debate as to whether or not Greg Pohler is the brother of Parks and Recreation star and SNL alum Amy Poehler, but thanks to a Google search, movies.yahoo.com says that she has a brother named Gregory, so I’m gonna run with that (despite the fact that they’re spelled differently). Pohler won almost $30,000 in Event #46 at the LAPC, but the most interesting result from that tournament may be the 17th place finisher. I haven’t heard the phrase “Parts Unknown” since I watched WWF back in the early 1990s.

One of the more impressive final tables has to be the $5,100 No Limit Hold’em event that took place last week. Randy Dorfman topped an impressive final table that included Shannon Shorr, Nick Binger, Jon Turner and French Pro Nicholas Levi. Dorfman took home $163,270 for this win, one of the biggest prizes awarded at this year’s LAPC.

The last of the unique events that Matt Savage runs at the LAPC was the double-elimination format Heads-Up tournament. The $5K tournament got 48 players, and the six making the money were an impressive group. John Racener, Erik Seidel, Justin Young and Fabrice Soulier all found their way to the money. The final match was between Nicholas Rampone and Scott Seiver, with Rampone coming out of the Loser’s Bracket against Seiver, who had not lost a match on the way to the finals. Rampone had to beat Seiver twice to capture the title, which is exactly what he did. He got $81,480 and a $10,000 seat to the Main Event, which was added to this tournament as well as a handful of others during the LAPC.

A Pair of Swedes Invade To Denmark, One Captures (EPT) Crown
EPT Copenhagen – Copenhagen, Denmark

Another week, another €500K first prize on the EPT. After playing down from a final eight that included Juha Helppi and American online wiz Kevin Iacofano, two Swedish pros battled it out for the EPT Copenhagen title. Michael Tureniec and Per Linde battled for more than three-and-a-half hours heads-up, with Tureniec vindicating himself following a previous second place finish on the EPT by capturing this title. Tureniec won €496,271 for this effort, but no word on how Scandinavian relations are following this brash invasion.

Former Corrections Officer Lays Down the Law, Becomes First Female Poker Champion in Florida History
WSOP Circuit, Palm Beach Kennel Club – West Palm Beach, Florida

The young history of tournament poker means that we’ll be seeing a lot of first-time events in the coming years. This past week at Florida saw the first woman crowned as champion of a major event. June Amer, a retired corrections officer in Dade County, won the biggest prize of this circuit stop to date, banking over $65,000 in a $550 event with 664 entries. After cashing in Event #2, Amer overcame what looked to be an insurmountable chip lead in this tournament to lock up the Circuit ring, as well as put herself in position to contend for player of the series.

Quite a few familiar faces showed up to play at this WSOP circuit stop, including Team Pokerati member Tom “DonkeyBomber” Schneider. He found his way to the final table of an Omaha 8/b event, but with less than one small bet when the final table began, Schneider could not improve his position and finished 9th. Also at this final table was “Captain Tom” Franklin, but he too fell short of this title, finishing in 5th place. The winner of the event was Timothy Burt, a veteran who served for three years in Iraq, who knotches his second WSOP circuit ring, the first coming in a HORSE event in Biloxi last November.

Mark Benasa Wins Record Red Dragon in Macau; Hannibal Lector Unavailable for Comment
Macau Poker Cup, Grand Casino Lisboa – Lisboa, Macau

509 players turned out over two days of the Macau Poker Cup Main Event. Known as the “Red Dragon”, this tournament shattered the previous record of 321 players, and created a prize pool of over HKD $5,090,000. Mark Benasa won the title, becoming the first Filipino player in the tournament’s history to do so. Benasa took home a first place prize of HKD $1,100,000 ($140,000) and now leads the APOY race, with a one-year sponsorship from PokerStars Macau on the line.

Swim Instructor Sinks Competition To Win HPT Title
HPT, Downstream Casino Resort, Quapaw, Oklahoma

27-year-old Michael Jensen is a part-time poker pro, but definitely someone who has his priorities in order. In an interview before the final table at Downstream Casino, Jensen said, “Whether I finish sixth or first, I’m teaching swimming lessons to little kids tomorrow afternoon.” If I were Jensen, I would be pulling a Scrooge McDuck following those lessons, as his $100K payday for first place could definitely fill a pool full of coins to swim in.

Largest Field in Florida History Fails To Prolong “Year of the Media”
Palm Beach Kennel Club – West Palm Beach, Florida

It’s become increasingly clear that all of the media’s run-good has been usued up for the foreseeable future, as my own personal attempts to cash in on the year of the media have once again failed. I was one of 877 entries over two starting days at the inaugural event of the World Series of Poker event at the Palm Beach Kennel club this week. The $345 event brought together the largest field for a poker tournament in the history of the state of Florida, generating a prize pool of over $250,000 and awarding almost $50,000 to the winner. The biggest names to go deep in this event were former WSOP ME final tablist John Spadavecchia, and Ronnie Bardah, who bubbled the final table in 10th place.

24-year-old Reed Zhao was crowned the champion, the first winner of a circuit ring in the state of Florida. The Lexington, Kentucky native is a high-stakes online cash game grinder, but he’ll likely be playing some more tournaments in the coming weeks to challenge for player of the series and a spot in the Million Dollar Freeroll. Zhao is currently joined atop this list by James Giraldo, who won a $545 event for $43,000 in his first major live tournament, and “Tampa Bay” Ray Del Cueto, who won $28,800 in Ring Event #3.

A Pair of Ladies Hold WPT Invitational in Check
Los Angeles, California
As the longest tournament series outside of the World Series of Poker inches toward its ending, two of the more unique events that the LA Poker Classic has to offer took place. The WPT Celebrity Invitational tournament got underway this week, with boatloads of LA celebrities and poker players rubbing shoulders and doing their thing the red carpet. After playing down to the final six, the two biggest pros remaining are Dan Heimiller and David Kitai, but the story of this table is a pair of chess masters that also happen to be women. Almira Skripchenko and Dinara Khaziyeva are each vying for a top prize of $100,000, which includes a seat to the $25,500 WPT Championship. The final table will be played out on March 2nd, so it can be filmed back-to-back with the $10,000 WPT event.

The other unique event at the LAPC this week was the annual Ironman event, where no breaks are given and the tournament is played straight from beginning to end. 68 players signed up for this twisted idea from the mind of Matt Savage, and pro Nikolay Evdakov emerged victorious (and tired). He won $60,630 and a seat in the main event for his victory, which was his second LAPC victory of the week after winning the six-handed Pot Limit Omaha following a three-way chop for almost $35,000. Evdakov is one of four people to own two or more titles at this year’s LAPC and he has thrust himself into the player of the series race there.

Another notable player found victory this week as Owen “owcrowe” Crowe, who won a $1,065 event for over $37,000 in an event that saw Matt Savage’s personal punching bag for the LAPC, Matt Affleck, cash. On several occasions during this series Savage, who is an infamous needler and may or may not have sent yours truly a text message during the AFC Championship game when the Jets were down three touchdowns, has brought up the monster pot that Affleck lost at this year’s WSOP Main Event, once playing it on a giant projector screen for the entire tournament field.

Power Outages Can’t Stop First Chilean LAPT Champion
LAPT Brazil – Sao Paolo, Brazil
Brazilians comprised 60% of the 536 players in this record-breaking LAPT event, and the hometown crowd was hungry to crown the first Brazilian champion in the history of the Latin American Poker Tour on their own turf. They had quite an edge heading into the final table as well, with 5 of the 8 players at the final table coming from Brazil. In fact, all 8 players were from Latin America, and a Latin American nation crowned their first champion, but it was Chilean Alex Manzano emerging as the champion. Manzano satellited in online and turned that small investment into R$ 615,840, roughly $370,000.

Vinnie Vinh Makes Day 2, Shows Up, Wins
LAPC – Los Angeles, California
Vinny Vinh is an enigma in the poker world over the last several years, and rumored debts and drug issues have caused some well-publicized incidents at the World Series of Poker. On two separate occasions, Vinh made Day 2 of a WSOP event, only to no-show under mysterious circumstances. This year’s LAPC is a different story, though, as Vinh decided playing a tournament to completion might be a novel idea, and it worked out pretty well for him. Vinh took down Event 29 last week for a cool $12,000. If you still don’t believe that Vinnie Vinh is anything beyond a figment of your imagination, here he is taking with the great Matt Savage.

In other LAPC news, Tony Ma took down the Tag Team Championship with Restituto Bagaygay, defeating the Road Warriors with a double powerbomb 82 other teams in the process. Jamie Shaevel is on fire, winning three different events at LAPC to lead the Player of the Series race, overtaking Brian Brubaker and David Levi, who won a PLO8 event this week, at two wins each.

Pokerati Player Gets a Ring, too … Circuit Ring, That Is
WSOP Circuit – Tunica, Mississippi
Team Pokerati juggernaut La Sengphet got matching rings this Valentine’s Day weekend, but La earned it on the felt. After her boyfriend David Clark won a WSOP Circuit event in Choctaw a few weeks ago, La won Ring Event #8 in Tunica, pocketing more than $30,000 and becoming the first woman in nine months to win an open WSOPC ring event. La also ran deep in the Tunica main event, finishing 10th — just a bad beat away (A10 < K10) from another final table and a chance to lock up her seat in the WSOPC million-dollar freeroll.

Fossilman Beats DC Politicos
Washington, D.C.
Most of the attention that Greg Raymer has received in the last few weeks has been about his departure from PokerStars, but it hasn’t stopped him from continuing the cause for the legalization of online poker. At last week’s CPAC conference, the PPA ran a charity event to help raise awareness and preach limited government to conservatives. It remains to be seen how effective this message was, but Raymer, as per usual, just seems to keep on winning, no matter what he plays.

Gareth Walker Steals From Rich, Gives to Self in Nottingham
UKIPT – Nottingham, England
This UKIPT £500 Main Event set a record with 1,058 players, the biggest field ever for a tournament on British shores. There were no Robin Hood sightings, but there was quite a bounty for Gareth Walker, who walked away with £109,000, the biggest prize in the history of the UKIPT.

Venetian Deep Stack Extravaganza Draws Big Names
Las Vegas, Nevada
At the moment, the Venetian Deep Stack Extravaganza is the biggest game in town when it comes to tournaments, and some big names have made some deep runs in these events. James Van Alstyne finished second in a $1,000 event for just under $20,000, with Dennis Phillips finishing in the money in 13th place in the same event. Joanne “JJ” Liu seems to cash wherever she goes, finishing third in an Omaha 8//b event for over $4,000.

They’re playing a $15,000 freeroll, and its been rumored that there might be quite a bit more on the line for the November Niners. In order to keep things interesting and competitive, there are last longer bets and a few other interesting props that I’ll try to keep track of.

The tournament just got underway, and with 30 minute levels and a 10k starting stack, this freeroll looks like it will take quite some time.

Stay tuned for a couple of updates throughout the day here, as well as a comprehensive post of the Tuesday’s events coming up. To keep up to date with the action, as well as watch a live stream featuring Joseph Cheong, Michael Mizrachi, Matt Jarvis and Lon McEachern, head on over to Foxwoods Live.

The Borgata Winter Poker Open and the Caesers Classic each held their Main Event,  and the year of the media continued to roll on strong.

Borgata Winter Poker Classic (Atlantic City, New Jersey)

After almost a full month’s worth of tournaments, the Borgata Winter Poker Open culminated in a $3,500 Main Event that drew 718 players and generated a prize pool of over $2.6 million. The top six players each locked down a six-figure score, but Ukranian Vadim Shlez was the last man standing, claiming a first place prize of $533,210. [Borgata Blog]

Caesars Winter Poker Classic (Las Vegas, Nevada)

This $550 Main Event drew over 450 players, which made for a first place prize of over $44,000. The biggest name to make this final table was Bryan Micon, who would have to settle for eight place and $6,500. The big winner on this day was Christopher Johnson, no relation to the Tennessee Titans Pro Bowl running back, but he undoubtedly got paid, straight cash homey. [CardPlayer]

Elsewhere…

Remko Rinkema became just the latest member of the poker media to score big on the other side of the tournament ropes. Remko finished 4th in an Estrellas Poker Tour event in Madrid to the tune of over €26,000… Liv Boeree made her first big splash since joining Team PokerStars by defeating James “mig.com” Mackey to win the PokerStars Sunday Warm-Up and $75,000.

It appears to be by a rapper who calls himself Emcee White Noise, who first posted it about a week ago here. The beat sounds like something straight out of GarageBand, but the simple backing tends to complement a pretty serious flow that’s seriously funny. Emcee White Noise drops names like crazy, but the line that got me was “all my skinny girls are astounding with brain, but I date fat chicks just to balance my range.”

Thanks go out to the entities over at WickedChops for the heads-up.

Aussie Millions (Melbourne, Australia)

What was originally planned as an 8-man, winner-take-all $250,000 sit-n-go ballooned into a 20-player turbo with a $5 million prize pool. The top three players would get paid, with $AUD 2.5 million for the biggest degenerate winner. Tom Dwan, Roland de Wolfe, John Juanda, Annette “annette_15″ Obrestad, Chris Ferguson and some guy named Phil Ivey were amongst those to lose a quarter of a million dollars in one day. While Dwan and Ivey are probably used to that on any given Tuesday, it was probably enough to ruin a few peoples’ weeks.

It seems like a wealth of riches was reserved to quite an exclusive group. David Benyamine cashed for $AUD 1 million for his third place finish, leaving a heads-up battle between two players who had very good January’s. Erik Seidel finished fourth in the $10K High Roller at PCA, while Sam Trickett won the “regular” $AUD 100K Super High Roller event less than a week before this tournament. Trickett entered the heads-up match with the chip lead, but failed to finish the impressive back-to-back performance, as Erik Seidel was victorious, taking home $AUD 2.5 million for his efforts.[PokerNews]

Then there’s the matter of the Aussie Millions Main Event, which somehow managed to take a back seat to this event, despite the $AUD 7 million prize pool. Among the final eight, the biggest name by far was Patrik Antonius. His stay at the final table was not a long one, as he had his pocket kings cracked early on in the day to go out in eighth. The last man standing was local tournament pro David Gorr, who took home $AUD 2 million for the win. This was Gorr’s biggest score, having toured the greater-Australia tournament scene since 1998. [Poker News]

WPT Southern Poker Championship (Biloxi, Mississippi)

An interesting collection of six made up this WPT final table at the Beau Rivage. Former champion Allen Carter was trying to become the first person in the history of the World Poker Tour to win the same event twice. Also among the six was Alabama native Shannon Shorr, with over $3.4 million in lifetime cashes, and Leif Force, whose deep run in the 2006 WSOP Main Event was one of the more memorable stories of that year.

Shorr would end up in fourth, while Carter’s run at history would fall short in third place. Alexander Kuzmin, who made a final table at this past WSOP, went head-to-head with Force, and it was the pesky Russian Kuzmin taking the crown, along with the $601,469 prize and a seat in the WPT Championship later on this year. [WPT]

EPT Deauville (Deauville, France)

The EPT got back underway with its first post-PCA event in Deauville. 891 players ponied up €5,000, with the winner taking home €880,000. The final table saw players from six different countries, but the biggest story was about a local Frenchman by the name of Lucien Cohen. The Paris native runs a pest control company and used a small rubber rat as a card protector. Lucien Cohen was “The Exterminator” on this evening, taking home the EPT Deauville Main Event and nearly €900K. [PokerStars Blog]

Making some noise for the first time since his WSOP win in November, Jonathan Duhamel won the €10,000 High Roller event in Deauville. [PokerStars Blog]

India Poker Series (Goa, India

A few weeks ago, the fourth in a series of poker tournaments was held at Casino Royale Goa in India. Three events were held; a 5,000 rupee rebuy event, a 10,000 rupee freezeout and a 5,000 rupee freeeout. Players from around the world, including the USA, UK and Sweden, participated in the tournaments, which each got at least 90 players. Congratulations to Anand Patil, Lawrence Sanjay and Pulkit Kalia for their victories at IPS Chapter 4. [India Poker Series]

LA Poker Classic (Commerce, California)

Action continued this week with more than a dozen tournaments. The biggest news of the week, however, might have been an appearance from a wild and crazy guy. No, not Matt Savage, but the OG wild and crazy guy, Steve Martin! For updates on everything going on at LAPC, head elsewhere on that blog and check out the amazing work that veeRob is doing over there. That guy never sleeps.

Borgata Winter Poker Open (Atlantic City, New Jersey)

At last check, there were just over 100 players left in the $3k main event. First place in this tournament is over $500,000, and you can check out updates as they happen here.

Photos courtesy of PokerStarsBlog.com & WPT.com

The biggest revelation may be the extended late registration times. Players will be able to late register for tournaments for up to four hours after the start of an event, and the big question at hand will have to be, “How will this affect playing in multiple events for bracelet bets?” Right?

Main Event Begins July 7th, 2011; 58 WSOP Gold Bracelets Up For Grabs;

$25K Heads-Up No Limit Hold’em Kicks-Off Tourney

LAS VEGAS (Jan. 24, 2011) – The 42nd annual World Series of Poker® (WSOP®) Presented by Jack Link’s Beef Jerky — a set of poker tournaments open to anyone 21 years of age or older – officially puts cards in the air on Tuesday, May 31, 2011.

The annual poker extravaganza, which dates back to 1970, is televised exclusively on ESPN from the Rio All-Suite Hotel & Casino in Las Vegas. The tournament series consists of a comprehensive slate of the game’s most popular poker variations running from May 31 – July 19.

A total of 58 coveted gold bracelets will be up for grabs in 2011 – one more than last year.

On Tuesday, May 31 at 5:00 PM, the first open bracelet tournament will be a new event – a $25,000 Heads-Up No Limit Hold’em Championship. It will be open to a maximum of 256 players.

The opening weekend (June 4-5), features a $1,000 buy-in No-Limit Hold’em tournament, which in the past has drawn more than 6,000 entrants. The event includes two starting flights – one each on Saturday and Sunday at 12 noon. Day 2 for all surviving players will be Monday, June 6.

Throughout June the weekends will remain focused on the “weekend warriors” with affordable buy-in No Limit Hold’em tournaments for WSOP gold bracelets at $1,500 on Saturdays and $1,000 on Sundays. July 2 and 3 will feature our only other multi-day start $1,000 tournament and we will conclude with one last No Limit Hold’em extravaganza on Tuesday, July 5 at 12 noon.

The 42nd annual WSOP will conclude with the grandest spectacle in all of gaming – the $10,000 No-Limit Hold’em Championship (aka “The Main Event”), which begins play Thursday, July 7 and will reach its final table (nine players) on Tuesday, July 19, at which time play will be halted.

The WSOP Main Event will feature four starting flights — one each day at 12 noon on July 7, July 8, July 9 and July 10. The only way to guarantee your starting day is to pre-register for the event prior to the WSOP commencing.

The famed tournament’s culmination will be held with the play of the “November Nine®” from November 5-7, before a live audience with special primetime coverage from ESPN on Tuesday, November 8, 2011.

“Something for everyone is the best way to describe the 2011 World Series of Poker schedule,” said WSOP Tournament Director Jack Effel, who will oversee the event for the sixth consecutive year. “It’s staggering to think that last year alone the WSOP hosted nine of the 17 largest tournaments in poker history. We had 44 events produce more than a $1 million prize pool, so we can’t wait to get at it again and offer players at all levels the best poker action on the planet.”

The entire convention center of the Rio All-Suite Hotel and Casino once again will be exclusively dedicated to the 2011 World Series of Poker, with tournament tables in the 58,000 square foot Pavilion and the 38,000 square-foot Amazon Room. The final number of tables in play is subject to regulatory approval, given just prior to the tournament commencing, but is expected to be similar to the 370 which were utilized in 2010.

Player comfort is also being addressed by new rules regulating the duration of daily play. Excluding the Main Event, gold bracelet tournaments will begin at 12 noon and 5 PM Pacific Time each day, with a maximum of 10-one hour levels being played for the noon starts; the 5 PM events will be comprised of a maximum of eight one-hour levels on Day 1. Day 1 play is expected to conclude at 12:45 AM for noon starts and 2:00 AM for the 5 PM starts. For those advancing past the first day, re-starts for noon bracelet events will be at 2:30 PM, and 5 PM tournaments will restart at 3 PM, with a maximum of 10 levels being played each day until a champion is crowned. The Main Event features two-hour levels, with play beginning at 12 noon each day.

Registration for all bracelet events will remain open through four levels of play – or until all available seats have been sold. This is twice as long as previous years. The only exception to this is the Main Event, which will remain open for it’s customary two levels (or four hours of play).

Pre-registration for the 2011 WSOP will be available on-site at the Main Cage of the Rio in Las Vegas and online through www.WSOP.com beginning February 7, 2011.

All Caesars Entertainment properties in Las Vegas offer special reduced hotel room rates for entrants of WSOP bracelet events. Rates start as low as $69 for players staying at the host property, the Rio. Imperial Palace offers rates as low as $35, and Bally’s, Flamingo, Harrah’s, Paris and Caesars Palace provide WSOP player rates as low as $45-$110 a night. Click here for the special WSOP player hotel rates.

The 2011 WSOP marks the 42nd running of the game’s most prestigious annual tournament. In 2010, the WSOP generated the most entries ever (72,966) from 117 different countries. Players competed for more than $187 million as a total of 57 championship gold bracelets, globally recognized as the game’s top prize, were awarded. Attendance in 2010 was up 20 percent year-over-year.

To view the entire schedule, visit WSOP.com/2011, where you will be able to download event structures, pre-registration forms or save the schedule to your calendar and even link it to your Facebook, Twitter or other social network sites.

Among the highlights of the 2011 schedule:

* 58 gold bracelet events over 50 days.

* Sensational Structures & Starting Chips – All gold bracelet events in 2011 will feature triple the buy-in in starting chips and deep structures, providing plenty of play.

* Hard Stop Times – The maximum a playing day will last is 10 levels each day, regardless of the number of players remaining. This includes re-starts and final table days. If we have not reached a winner or a final table after 10 levels of play, all remaining players left in the tournament will return at 3:00 PM to resume the tournament. This will ensure tournament play each day concludes at approximately 3:00 AM for re-starts and allow a 12-hour break before play resumes. Important: This may cause some tournaments to exceed their scheduled three-day structure; however it will only affect the remaining players at that stage of the tournament.

* New Event — $25,000 buy-in, No Limit Hold’em Heads-Up Championship – Are you the best one-on-one player in the world? The winner of this event will be able to claim that title. Up to 256 players will compete in this first-time event which will be the first open bracelet awarded at the 2011 WSOP. This is Event #2 on the schedule, and begins on Tuesday, May 31 at 5:00 PM in the famed Amazon Room.

* New Event — $2,500 buy-in 10-Game Mix/Six-Handed (Event #29) – On Thursday, June 16 at 5:00 PM, the WSOP introduces a new short-handed event – with a mix of 10 different poker games, including Badugi. The 10 games that will be played are: No Limit Hold’em; Seven Card Razz; Limit Hold’em; Badugi (Limit); Seven Card Stud; 2-7 Draw Lowball (No Limit); Omaha Hi-Low Split 8 or Better; Pot Limit Omaha; 2-7 Triple Draw Lowball (Limit) and Seven Card Stud Hi-Low Split 8 or Better.

* New Event — $5,000 Pot Limit Omaha/Six-Handed (Event #35) – Continuing with the popular trend of short-handed events, a new $5,000 six-handed Pot Limit Omaha tournament has been scheduled for Monday, June 20 at 12 noon.

* Back by Popular Demand – The $2,500 Omaha/Seven Card Stud Hi-Low 8 or Better tournament is back on the schedule this year. Event #47 will begin on Monday, June 27 at 5:00 PM.

* $50K Poker Players Championship – The Chip Reese Memorial Trophy is up for grabs at the $50,000 buy-in eight-game mixed event, also dubbed the “Poker Players Championship.” This eight-game format will serve as the true test of the game’s greatest all-around player. Event #55 starts on Saturday, July 2 at 5:00 PM.

* The Seniors-Only No-Limit Hold’em Championship – On Friday, June 17 at 12 noon, featuring a $1,000 buy-in for all poker enthusiasts 50 years of age or older. In 2010, this event set a record when 3,142 players entered and the winner walked away with just under $500,000 for his $1,000 investment.

* The Ladies Only No-Limit Hold’em Championship – On Friday, July 1 at 12 noon, featuring a $1,000 buy-in.

* Triple Chance Tournaments – With the popularity of our Triple Chance tournaments, we have added an event this year, to offer this format twice. Event #12, on Tuesday, June 7 at 12 noon offers a $1,500 Triple Chance No Limit Hold’em event and on Wednesday, June 29 at 12 noon, Event #50 features a $5,000 buy-in version.

* Daily Deepstack No-Limit Hold’em Tournaments – The Rio will host three different daily No-Limit Hold’em tournaments from May 30 to July 16. At 2:00 PM daily, $235 buy-in events begin. At 6:00 PM, players can play the daily $185 buy-in tournament and at 10:00 PM, a daily $135 tournament will be offered. These are one-day structured tournaments, and not bracelet events.

* Satellites Every Day! — A complete array of satellites, from single-table to mega, will be offered from May 30 – July 10. Mega satellites with buy-ins at $330 for the daily 4 PM and $550 buy-in for the daily 8 PM start.

All winners will be required to provide a valid picture ID. Tax forms will be completed for those with winnings in excess of $5,000 net of event buy-in. Players without a Tax Identification Number and foreign players from non-tax treaty countries are subject to up to 30 percent tax withholding. WSOP reserves the right to cancel, change or modify the tournament or any tournament event, in part or in whole, without notice.

ABOUT THE WSOP
The World Series of Poker (WSOP) is the largest, richest and most prestigious gaming event in the world awarding millions of dollars in prize money and the prestigious gold bracelet, globally recognized as the sport’s top prize. Featuring a comprehensive slate of tournaments in every major poker variation, the WSOP is poker’s longest running tournament in the world, dating back to 1970. In 2010, the event attracted 72,966 entrants from 117 different countries to the Rio All-Suite Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas and awarded over $187 million in prize money. The WSOP in December, 2008 was named the 7th most admired sports brand in North America by the Turnkey Sports Survey, trailing only the older and more established NFL, MLB, NBA, NHL, NASCAR and PGA Tour among sports properties. In addition, the WSOP has experienced groundbreaking alliances in broadcasting, digital media and corporate sponsorships, while successfully expanding the brand internationally with the advent in 2007 of the World Series of Poker EuropeSM. For more information on the World Series of Poker, please visit our website at www.WSOP.com.

Robert Frost once wrote about two roads diverging in a wood, but poker players had a much tougher choice, as the paths from the PCA branched out all over the world. Los Angeles, Mississippi, Oklahoma, and even Australia are the hosts to this week’s tournament schedule.

Aussie Millions (Melbourne, Australia)

It’s become an annual tradition for all of the Full Tilt sponsored players (and a few other big names as well) to head down under following the PCA. There’s another $100,000 event, the $10K Aussie Millions, and, new to this year’s event, a $250,000 single table tournament, with a winner-take-all first prize of $2 million.

The Main Event is just getting underway, but there’s already been plenty of action at the Aussie Millions. Their $100K event drew 38 players, and likely would have drawn a bigger crowd had members of Team PokerStars participated, but they made it a point to boycott this event in retaliation after no FullTilt players participated in the PCA $100k. This isn’t really the space for this discussion, but between the $100K boycotting and the head-to-head late night poker shows, it will be interesting to see how far this issue may go.

Getting back to the event at hand, the final table of six featured David Benyamine and Erik Seidel, amongst others. When the dust had settled, Sam Trickett had captured the title and the $AUD 1.525 million first place prize, beating out Englishman (and Brighton & Hove Albion football club chairman) Tony Bloom heads-up. [PokerNews]

WSOP Circuit – Choctaw (Durant, Oklahoma)

One of the stops that was added to the initial WSOP Circuit schedule was this one, in Durant, Oklahoma. It’s about an hour outside of the greater-Dallas area, so it was going to be very interesting to see just how many players would make the trip up for their $1,600 Main Event, and they certainly did not disappoint. 808 players generated a prize pool of almost $1.2 million, with a first place prize of $232,706.

Among the 81 players who cashed in this event were a Main Event winner (Berry Johnston), a runner-up (TJ Cloutier), and perhaps in the most interesting story, one other former Main Event final tablist in Richard Lee. Lee, who is from San Antonio, Texas, largely dropped out of the public eye after his Main Event finish in 2006, but had a very public incident in which he was charged with running an illegal gambling ring back in 2007. He did not spend any time in jail but gave up $2.2 million in a plea deal.

With a spot in the National Championship Freeroll on the line for just the winner in this event, there was even more value to be had for the winner. That lucky man was Huy (pronounced Wee) Nguyen, who defeated Traci Brown heads-up for the ring and the freeroll entry (and the cash, of course). In an interesting twist, the heads-up match was a real live Red River shootout, as Brown (who finished 12th in this year’s WSOP Ladies’ event) is from Austin, Texas while Nguyen hails from Norman, Oklahoma. No word on whether the crowd had more red or burnt orange. [WSOP]

LA Poker Classic (Commerce, California)

Likely the longest continuous poker series outside of the World Series of Poker, the month-and-a-half spectacle that is the LAPC is one of the most popular stops of the year. Because of its proximity to Los Angeles and Las Vegas, two of the most poker player populated places in the world, they draw quite a crowd for most of their events. As someone who has spent some time playing these events, you’ll inevitably find yourself at a table with JC Tran or Thor Hansen if you’re there long enough.

The initial event this year, the brainchild of Matt Savage, was a $300 tournament with $1 million guaranteed in the prize pool and $250,000 guaranteed to the winner. This was accomplished in large part to the 4 starting days and the opportunity to re-enter each day if you did not survive through the previous one.

California native Cory Nistler was the last man standing, taking home the quarter of a million dollar first prize as well as one of the craziest looking trophies you’ll ever see. [LAPC]

Elsewhere…

Action is underway at the WPT’s latest stop, the Southern Poker Championship in Biloxi, Mississippi, while the Borgata in Atlantic City is hosting the Winter Poker Open… After the performance of the brothers’ Mizrachi in this past year’s WSOP Main Event, we knew poker talent had to run in the family. Now we know which side, as Susan “MommaGrinder” Mizrachi Laufer took down over $4,000 for winning a tournament on Full Tilt Poker this past week.

PokerStars Caribbean Adventure (Nassau Paradise Island, Bahamas)

Main Event
One of the biggest experiments, at least in the United States, in the history of televised poker, the broadcast of the final table of the PCA did anything but disappoint. A collection of young talent was looking up at Chris Oliver, a 21-year-old Florida native who held 42% of the chips in play, more than twice that of second place Galen Hall entering the final day of play. Phillipe Plouffe and Max Weinberg (no relation to the former Conan O’Brien and E-Street band drummer) hit the rail early, and they were followed by Bolivar Palacios. Each player earned more than $200,000, with Palacios earning a nice haul of $450K.

The two players who entered this final table with the biggest previous results were Sam Stein and Mike Sowers. Stein’s biggest cash entering this final table was a 2nd place finish at the NAPT Venetian last year for over $500,000, and he also has a WPT final table under his belt. Sowers finished 3rd at the LAPC in 2009 for $650,000 and added a WSOP final table later that same year. Both fell victim to the Oliver buzz saw, as Sowers exited in 5th place and Stein right behind him in 4th.

The quietest player at the table by far was Romanian Anton Ionel. By far the oldest player at the table, Ionel made quite a parlay, riding his $33 satellite win to the final three of the tournament. He played very few hands throughout and the blinds eventually caught up to him, but not before Ionel was able to turn $33 into $1.35 million.

When heads-up play began, Oliver held a chip lead of 4-1, but Hall methodically picked his spots and avoided disaster. The pivotal hand was actually one that Hall folded, and is likely to be a hand that will be discussed for a long time to come. On a board reading [5d][3d][2c][2h][As], Hall bet out 2 million with [8c][4h], leaving himself about 8 million behind at 100,000-200,000. It was a disaster card for Hall, as Oliver had hit a runner-runner full house with [Ad][2s]. Oliver eventually moved all-in, and in shockingly little time Hall was able to fold his wheel, preserve his stack, and keep the match going.

Oliver once again extended his lead to 4-1, but Hall went on a rush, and within an hour had turned the deficit around into a significant advantage. At the end of a heads-up battle that lasted over 200 hands, it was Galen Hall taking the 2011 PCA Main Event crown and the $2.3 million first prize. Chris Oliver settled for second, but he has $1.8 million to wipe his tears away. [PokerStars Blog]

$25,000 High Roller
I’ll preface this by saying there are billions of people who are truly unlucky in the world and have to deal with real world issues. It’s hard to argue against the fact that William Molson’s PCA High Roller record is one of the unluckiest out there. While he was comforted by the second place money each time, in both 2009 and 2010, Molson finished as the runner-up in this event.

This year’s table would not be much easier, featuring Jason Mercier, David Baker and Erik Seidel, amongst others. But this time William Molson sealed the deal, topping off an incredibly impressive three year run by taking down the $25,000 High Roller event and a first place prize of over $1 million. [PokerStars Blog]

Ladies’ Event
The Twitter stream was going crazy this past weekend as people back in the states (or elsewhere in the Bahamas) cheered on Kristin “change100” Bihr as she vied for the Ladies’ Event title. A veteran poker writer and reporter, Bihr had satellited into the tournament and was working on a pretty nice parlay of her own. She was up against a pretty impressive collection of players that included Team PokerStars Pro Vicky Coren and Lauren Kling, as well as ’90s talk show host Ricki Lake.

Most of the updates during the tournament came via @taopauly Tweets, and by the end of the night, @change100 had become a local trending topic in Las Vegas. Mostly thanks in part to the fact that change100 defeated Kling heads-up to take the crown and a cash of just under $30,000. Congratulations to her on her monster cash. [PokerStars Blog]

Heartland Poker Tour – Red Rock (Las Vegas, Nevada)

Anyone who has been around the poker scene over the last few years has almost certainly run into Rob “veeRob” Perelman. One of the hardest working guys in the game, you can be sure that he’s behind the scenes on some of your favorite poker television programs, and if you’ve ever tried to keep track of a Matt Savage tournament, you likely have veeRob to thank for excellent coverage as well as comprehensive live streaming.

Perelman found himself at the final table of the HPT event at Red Rocks Sunday night, entering as the chip leader. He faced some stiff competition that included Joanne “JJ” Liu. It was really no big deal for veeRob, though, as he found a way to take the title (and likely the remainder of the media rungood for the year, thanks a lot) and an astounding first place prize of $158,000. A big congrats to Rob as well, though I’m sure he’s setting up a live stream for an LAPC prelim as we speak. [HPT]

Coming Up…

This week will see the Main Event at the WSOPC Choctaw in Oklahoma, just outside of Dallas, and a Main Event will take place at the India Poker Series as well. Action will continue at the Aussie Millions in Australia, the Southern Poker Championship in Biloxi, MS, and tournaments will be starting at the LAPC in LA as well as in Atlantic City for their Winter Poker Championships. One of the busiest times of the poker year, to be sure.

PCA photos courtesy of PokerStarsBlog.com. HPT photos courtesy of heartlandpokertour.com.