Back from Barcelona and feelin’ feisty, we revisit the stupid stunts of the Governor of Kentucky in a not- so-respectful way. But don’t forget there’s other news, too… including updates on Barney Frank’s PSPA Bill which was passed a few weeks ago. Also, the status of the continuing iMEGA court case. Lastly, a brief musical look back at the CAP Convention… this show is a real “hoot”! LOL!
It feels good to run good … and because it’s important to know whom you’re up against, here are six players you may wanna congratulate/look out for at the tables live and online, as their most recent noteworthy successes suggest they are running particularly well.
Mary Joe Belcore-Zogman
Heartland Poker Tour’s “The Grand Series”
Onamia, MinnesotaBested 201 players to take down $85,723 — making her the second woman to win an HPT event, and part of the first husband-wife team to both win on the Heartland Poker Tour. Dan Zogman won $220k in Gary, IN, last year. The Zogmans hail from McHenry, IL, about 60 miles outside of Chicago.
More details about her win at HeartlandPokerTour.com
Phil Ivey
Full Tilt Million Dollar Cash Game
LondonMade a stab at his 6th bracelet in the £2,500 HORSE at WSOP-Europe (banking more than US$25k for 6th place), and while overseas was the big winner in the million-dollar cash game against his fellow Full Tilt pros and other highest-stakes players. Finished +$536,400, dominating the competition for the second time in the event’s 3-year history.
Live-blog coverage from Michael Craig (relevant posts start in the #520s)
WSOP World Standings have been updated … to reflect results from Event #1 #56 of the WSOP Europe WSOP, currently taking place in London.
Click here for Pokerati’s complete semi-official World Standings.
With a 24-year-old Jesper Hougaard’s bracelet win in £1500 NLH, Denmark steps up to a higher tier of poker dominance in the world. And Ohio (one of four American states with a 2008 WSOP-E cash thus far — the others being Washington, California, and Nevada) scooches past Georgia (the state, not the former Soviet republik) in the standings.
UPDATE: This is not just Denmark’s second ‘08 bracelet … it’s also Hougaard’s! He won one of the WSOP 1500s in Las Vegas this summer. (Hmm, maybe a little premature in naming Player of the Year?)
There’s a lot of action going on, now and into this weekend …
First off, in the online world, the WCOOP (World Championship of Online Poker) is going on on PokerStars. You can rail it live as an observer on PokerStars itself, of course, or if you’ve got an offline life you can follow it semi-live on the PokerStarsBlog in the capable hands of our own California Jen and some of your other favorite bloggers (Change100, Tuscaloosa Johnny, Otis).
Believe it or not, they’ve also got “TV” coverage of these big online tourneys — they’re about halfway through 33 of them. Check it out right here if you’ve got a half-hour to kill:
The new PokerStars TV will also be all over the EPT Barcelona, which just got underway — including some live video coverage viewable on the internet, along with more traditional blog-coverage and chip updates.
On the salty side of the pond, the Borgata Poker Open is getting heated in Atlantic City. That’s where Pauly’s at. And he’s covering all the action (along with the ever-illustrative Tropical Steve and poker-media journeyman Michael Friedman) on the official Borgata Blog. The WPT main event kicks off on Sunday. The WPT has their own blog-crew coverage, too — something called “The Muck”.
Meanwhile, I’m stuck here in Vegas, where it’s a Freerollin’ Saturday for me:
I start the day in Event #2 of the PokerListings Run Good Challenge. Supposedly we’re having some blind-structure issues with PokerStars, but regardless, it will be a chance to redeem myself from my lackluster Event #1 performance.
Then, later tomorrow evening, it’s the grand-opening tourney at the Hard Rock, where I’ll be playing against Phil Hellmuth, Anjela Brunson, Rick Fuller, Scott Fischman, Scott Ian (of Anthrax), Jeremiah Smith, Andre Agassi, Montel Williams, Randy Couture, Jermaine O’neal, Paul Pierce, and others for an important motorcycle. Will be texting in updates via CSR should you care to follow my quest against a field that should be a combination of great and terrible, with a less-than-skill-friendly blind-structure.
Click below for more detailed info on the event itself, and the motorcycle.
It really is shaping up to be a Good Poker September.
This bloke and his existentialist musings on the evil of online poker makes me laugh about as mush as Benny Hill:
Hmm, all this time I thought …
Padraig Harrington, brother not-the-brother of poker-great Dan Harrington, won the British Open yesterday at Royal Birkdale in Scotland. Congrats, distant-cousin (several times removed) to poker! That’s two-in-a-row at the British Open for Harrington — making him the first European to repeat in more than 100 years. Wow.
Meanwhile, a lot of people have finally read and are talking about the more pokery Harrington’s new(ish) back-to-back cash game books
golf tournaments these days isn’t because I’m one of the few players who hasn’t read his Iliad on tournament play yet.
Some numbers coming in over the Batpod … about deals surrounding the November Nine as they made their way to the main event final table:
According to super-duper-secret well-connected, highly reliable inside sources some guy in Colorado, Peter Eastgate, the 22-year-old from Odense, Denmark, currently sitting 4th in chips was originally a Ladbrokes qualifier. Upon his making the final 72, Ladbrokes offered him $1 million to patch up. Full Tilt then came over the top with $1.75 million, and in the end, PokerStars took it down for $2 million.
(NOTE: What I’m not sure of are any “contingencies” in these deals — whether that’s $X million up front even if you finish 71st, or $Ythousand right now, and $Z million if you make the final table.)
It’s been fun keeping track of the 2008 WSOP by city-nation-state … taught me a lot about something — what exactly, I’m not yet sure. But I did get a clearer picture of just how significant the main event really is compared to all other poker tourneys. Just a little more than a week ago, I wrote:
Unless something really funky happens in the main event, it looks like Nevada has the edge on California when it comes to home base for the best poker players in the world.
Well I guess something funky did happen, because even with the biggest prize-pool distributions TBD, California poker players absolutely dominated in the 2008 main event (93 cashes, 2 final tableists)… while the Nevadans (mostly Las Vegas-based, of course) seemed to be napping, or perhaps just resting on their laurels (49 cashes, 0 final tableists). Regardless, looking at the 55 events that comprised the 2008 WSOP, I think it’s clear that the visitors can stake their claim: California is the Poker Capitol of the World … at least for now.
GREAT DANES: Another big surprise (to me) — apparently the Scandis aren’t so overrated after all. Denmark in particular showed up at the main event ready to play, and not only did they get one of their own on the final table, but also they performed so well in the latter events that they scooched past a bunch of other supposed Europoker powerhouses in the money won. The best non-American players, according to these results, in order: Canadians, Brits, and then the Danes … who actually could move past the Brits come November … and if you add the Danish in with the rest of the Scandis, it’s clear that Scandinavia and the UK are like the California and Nevada of European poker.
Recorded a couple days ago, as we were nearing the bubble … Benjo dropped by Tao of Pokerati studios to give his opinion on poker agents (they suck the blood out of the poker economy), France’s best WSOP hopes (they’re all gonna make the money), and how bad at poker Polacks are (can’t even win their own tourneys … zee eediotes).
The Daily Show had its Stephen Colbert and Happy Days gave us Mork from Ork. At Tao of Pokerati we’ve got Benjo, the sometimes Angry, sometimes -orny Frenchman. While a little drinky at the Gold Coast, the top blogger in all of Europoker stepped up to the mike for the betterment of American and non-American listeners alike. In these episode add-ons, Benjo reports on what you learn from watching poker on a colleague’s computer; Bellagio tournament chips being used to pay (stupid) hookers; and the under-the-table pressures on a grown-up French schoolboy working the WSOP …
And Tao of Pokerati is all over it a day and a half ago! Listen live, or at least semi-live, as Pauly and Benjo (filling in) speculate on my whereabouts (and the Pokerati sex slave business empire) when their hardcore reporting and potential slander of California Jen is interrupted by Doyle Brunson’s cashing for $124k in the Big HORSE event.
After much consideration and prospective gerrymandering, upon the next update of the WSOP World Standings, we’re gonna make some switches … regardless of what they put on their official WSOP registrations, David Benyamine is soon to become fully French and Shannon Shorr will be screamin’ “Roll Tide!”
With that said, is there anyone else we should be considering for statistical reclassification? For the most part, we’re gonna defer to the Hendon Mob db … but I can think of three that are close calls:
Gus Hansen — Denmark or Vegas?
Hoyt Corkins — Alabama or Vegas?
Patrik Antonius — Finland or Monaco?
WCP boycrush Dario Minieri gets the goods that show he can compete in a brick-and-mortar world — winning a bracelet that doesn’t fit his dainty little wrists in the $2,500 6-Handed NLH event.
[photo: Flipchip / LasVegasVegas]
In this installment:
Dan pursues diplomatic ties with the nation of Hungary, why Pauly is the David Hasselhoff of poker blogging, and how it’s so nice to see the French and Germans working the poker beat in Euroharmony.
Leftover example of a prop-bet loss — PokerStars EPT annoncetrix Kara Scott getting her bunny on in San Remo, Italy:
Perhaps as a reminder of where poker pros really stand when it comes to the celebrity biz (yet also a reminder of just how fun/popular poker fundraisers still are) there was a big-wig charity poker tourney at the Cannes Film Festival that Phil Hellmuth did not host and not a single Full Tilt player competed in. Shocking, I know … especially considering that the event was semi-televised: The Partouche Charity Poker Festival aired live on TV screens throughout the Palm Beach Casino. (Interesting concept, no?) seems like it was turned into a 90-minute souvenir that may or may not be for sale. Very confusing, the televised part.
The occasion was Dennis Hopper’s big 7-2. Woody Harrelson, star of the latest poker-movie flop, The Grand, ended up chopping the $1 million prize pool with French actress Alice Taglioni.
Because no poker media was there, I can’t really tell you much about the set-up or structure or even how the 50 (?!) cameras were working, but I can tell you that Hopper had a 100kg strawberry sponge cake, and in defiance of French anti-smoking laws, lit up a cigar. Tim Robbins ordered a triple-vodka after what presumably was a bad beat/play … ex-Hollywood flames Salma Hayek and Ed Norton were civil to each other at the table, even though Hayek left without saying goodbye. Adrian Brody and Goldie Hawn rounded out the field, both wearing sunglasses.
Fascinating, I know. Dig/click in a little deeper and you’ll learn that Goldie’s daughter Kate Hudson is done with Owen Wilson and now hittin’ it with Lance Armstrong, who is done with Sheryl Crow who long ago was done with Owen Wilson.
Go Poker Celebrities!
In this episode:
Jon Kyl is Facing Reality!
It’s Lonely at the top of Morality Mountain…
There are still no regulations for UIGEA… Banks don’t want to police UIGEA… and others in Congress want to overturn UIGEA… I guess it’s time to face facts, Jon.
Chuck E Cheese is Facing Prison?
Pizza Selling Rat also promotes illegal gambling…
The great legal minds of South Carolina have concluded that the Skee ball and Whac-a-Mole games at Chuck E Cheese are a slippery slop to illegal gambling… and they must go!
News from both sides of the Atlantic
Lottery to Tennis… Texas to France…
In Texas, lottery officials are warning consumers about buying tickets online… and with good reason! And out of France, a judge has returned a ruling in the French Open vs Online Gambling case.
Found this vid, shot at the EPT Championship last month in Monte Carlo … where Daniel Negreanu pwns a Scandi reporter (new word for me!), or maybe it’s the other way around:
There’s question whether or not it was staged. In Las Vegas I am pretty sure his shove would be considered assault, but maybe not so in Monaco? Either way, my experience at the tables tells me that 2 in 12 to 14 Scandis are slowrollers … so that suggests it’s statistically possible it was an authentic provocation.
Check it out — Cali Jen’s article on PokerWorks about the WSOP final table that may or may not be delayed, complete with documented references.
In this week’s episode:
Congressional Hearings on UIGEA…
Barney Frank Heads to the Hill…
We all know our friend Barney Frank isn’t shy about speaking his mind, calling UIGEA the “stupidest”law ever passed. Now, he’s taking his straight talk about the law before Congressional Committees on the issue. See what was said!
Coverage of the Amsterdam Conference…
Reporting from Amsterdam!
We’re hear and we’re causing trouble! See our exclusive report from the Casino Affiliate Convention, and where J. Todd has been having to spend the night!
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