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, Minnesota

Bested 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
London

Made 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)

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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?)

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Wow, kinda in the same way that Jennifer Tilly is 50, defending WSOP-E champ Annette Obrestad sure is little.

A couple pics coming in over the transom from the Empire Casino in London:

click to enlarge

And here’s the cozy 25-table joint where it’s all shaking down:

Righteous kill indeed!

Seeking some reader feedback … not saying I’ll listen, but still …

The WSOP-Europe is underway. Should the money/metal won in these bracelet events count toward national success in Pokerati’s semi-official WSOP World Standings?

Never mind, I’ve already answered the question. Click below for Nolan’s Notes from Day 1 of Event #1, er, I mean Event #56:

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Serious question — don’t claim to have a clue — but am curious to see whether or not overcoming an American political hurdle (but still not near the finish line) moves the market needle overseas.

I wonder if we’ll see an impact on Party Gaming’s stock price. Trading in London closed today at 186.75 … down 1.19 percent, before this vote had gone down, of course.

My microbial knowledge of international securities gut says it would be a good time to buy. But does this accomplishment in Washington DC mean much more than a flop to the businesses heavily vested in HR 6870’s movement through the system?

We’ll see, I suppose.

For the 36 40 percent of our readers who happen to be non-American, we probably don’t do enough to keep you up-to-date on the goings-on of our good mates at PartyPoker. Their stock seems fine (at least better than the WPT’s) though it’s a bit of a dumb-count — the price recently skyrocketed due to a reverse split. Anyhow, our favorite site based in Gibraltar is celebrating its 7th birthday this week. Congrats! Seriously, there were at least a couple weeks in there where I wasn’t so sure you were gonna make it to 6 … but glad you guys are still around, albeit a smaller version of yourself. Miss you lots!

The annual celebration isn’t quite what it used to be, of course. Back in the day they sent thousands on a sweet cruise. This year they are splashing cash-game pots (today, with $300 every 77,777 hands), giving away PartyPoints, and inviting folks into a $7,777 freeroll. Aww … so sad/cute. It is leading up to something big, however … on Sunday Party’s having a “big” $1 million tourney — that’s a full one-third the size of the big annual tournament at WinStar this year! (Wow, think about that. Seriously. Wow.)

Anyhow … PartyPoker turns The Big 7 this week. Let’s all take a moment to reminisce and rejoice:

This bloke and his existentialist musings on the evil of online poker makes me laugh about as mush as Benny Hill:

Clearly not that closely related.

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. Supposedly they’re great — that’s what everynone’s saying. I’m starting to wonder if one of the reasons I’m doing so poorly in golf tournaments these days isn’t because I’m one of the few players who hasn’t read his Iliad on tournament play yet.

One site that didn’t even make it as a write-in contender, but I clearly have been enjoying since recently discovering it: Melted Felt.

Basically The Onion of Poker. Some recent hedlines:

Iran Introduces Hanging for Slowrollers
PPA Upbeat on Donations as HR 5767 Defeated
WSOP Chaos as Gus Hansen’s Ears Run Amok!

There’re certain truths to their fake poker news that makes the limeys behind Melted Felt, imho, worth the RSS-subscribe.

Manchester United has their own official poker chips:

Go Owen Hargreaves!

The final table of the $5k main event at the WSOP-New Orleans goes down tomorrow at 2 pm central. Semi-live video coverage at worldseriesofpoker.com.

Click below for all the official details after the jump. I’ll be paying attention to Marc Fratter, from Clonie’s hometown of Murphy, TX. (Kinda near where my folks live, too.) He seems to have his game on these days, and if so seems well-seated with a medium stack:

Fratter

SEAT 7: Marc Fratter
HOMETOWN: Murphy, TX
CHIP COUNT: 311,000
Marc Fratter is a 36-year-old attorney from Murphy, TX. He has a three-year-old daughter named Kate who loves to play poker with her dad. Fratter was the co-champion of the 2007 Caesars Indiana Poker Championship. He won $117,000 in that tournament. He also cashed in the 2007 Red River Roundup. This is his third time to cash in a major tournament.

Miles

Go Mark! I mean Marc!

He’s going up against Timothy “TK” Miles, who won a $1,000 WSOP-Circuit event in New Orleans this past winter and has the chip lead.

Drogba

The WSOP-Circuit final table, however, is in a tough time slot tomorrow — going up against the UEFA Cup finals, being broadcast live from Moscow. (Bluff Media video honcho and former Fox Football Fone-in host Nick Geber is presumably ocnflicted.) Honestly, the soccer game will probably get most of my attention even though I’m not sure whom to root for — Chelsea vs. Manchester Utd. — since I usually just root against those two teams. (Go Liverpool/Wigan/Blackburn Rovers!)

Rooney

Chelsea, of course, is are the bad-ass team from the yuppity side of London, loaded with great players, most notably Drogba from the Ivory Coast. Man-U are the working-class faves from Britain’s Second City, with bratty high-paid hotshot Wayne Rooney … who likes to gamble (badly) and used to play Texas Hold’em in a rough-and-tumble Man-U home game.

Again, click below for details on the poker event going up against what is essentially, worldwide, the Super Bowl:
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I think this Reuters news vid is a couple years old, but it’s the first time I’ve ever seen it, so thought you might want to, too. An April Fool’s promotional gimmick for PaddyPower Poker gone awry … resulting in a Guinness Record-setting game of strip poker, with nearly 200 players competing in London for a 10,000 first prize:

Apparently Safe for Work in Europe, full frontal nudity notwithstanding

Sorry for the lack of personal postage last week and presumably this one … I have gotten caught up in the housing crisis and am moving again over the next couple days … even though I don’t know where yet. Seriously, housing crisis is very real here — our friends at The Poker Atlas were forced to relocate due to the house they were renting going into foreclosure; Rounder Club West got evicted from their digs a couple weeks ago because their landlord decided to desperately sell. When this sorta thing happens to three homes in an isolated niche, it can’t just be coincidental.

Anyhow, so yes, content … sorry for the lack thereof and sorry for the blog-cliche post about being sorry. There’s still plenty going on out there that the poker-minded populace shouldmaybe care about, regardless of my personal battle against homelessness.

As we know, the US is currently trying to figure out how to enforce the UIGEA — the AMERICAN BANKS say they can’t really do it — so now, instead of rewriting our own bad laws, we are pressuring the UK to change theirs.

And here’s an article about EL PASO’S rich gambling history - underground or not — over the past 100+ years, starting with a mayor in 1895 known as “Poker Bob” Campbell.

A NEW BLOG (to me) I am now following semi-regularly: David Matthews’ Gambling in Space.

Through him, I learned about FRANK GAGLIARDI, a California Lottery winner who also likes to gamble and recently won his very relevant (to me and you) court case vs. the IRS:

If this case stands, then it could effectively rewrite tax law and make it easier for gamblers to report losses and more difficult for the IRS to go after gamblers.

BALLY TECHNOLOGY also won a pretty big case in court — against SHUFFLE MASTER, which up to this point has maintained an expensive stranglehold on the automatic shufflers you see in poker tables.

And CALIFORNIA JEN may have loved the poker mockumentary THE GRAND, but not everybody did.

Crap, that’s hardly everything, but I have to run …

Joe in New York writes in with some clarification about Kwari – the online shooting game played for money with full awareness of the relevance of the UIGEA, despite its not-so-pokery nature.

Hey Dan,

Hope all is well. I just checked out your column where you mentioned Kwari had launched services and want to provide a little more information so your readers do not get a bad experience. Currently, Kwari is only available in the U.K. The US version has not launched yet. While you could download the game and play for money in the US, Kwari does not encourage this. If you log in the United States, there will be some serious lag issues as the games are based in the UK. Kwari is expected to launch in the United States towards the end of the summer. Thank you for your interest in Kwari and if you have any questions, please let me know.

Best,

Joe

Thank you, Joe. Will be interesting to watch how the concept of professional online gaming develops. Hey, I noticed that Kwari is based in Gibraltar … Be sure to tell our good friends and your presumable neighbors at PartyPoker we say hi before you shoot them for fun and duckets!

Mark your calendars before the dollar goes even lower against European currencies … WSOP-Europe 2008 is set for September 19-October 1. Click below for further details and the full press release:

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