There’s nothing left to do except start handing out bracelets. Attention now turns to the Rio as the WPT finished up at the Bellagio and today kicks off the first WSOP event. There will be plenty of people hitting up the Venetian DeepStack Event as well as the other smaller series trying to pick up some overflow but most player are ready to descend upon the (for now) pristine hallways of the Rio convention center.

There was still a little business to handle before the caravan moved west off the strip. Marvin Rettenmaier, fresh off his new signing at Party Poker, won the $25,000 WPT Championship against a tough final table which included Philippe Ktorza, Michael “The Grinder” Mizrachi, Nick Schulman, Steve O’Dwyer, and Trevor Pope. Rettenmaier now has an extra $1.2m to play with at the WSOP.

That wasn’t the toughest final table of the weekend, that honor belonged to the $100,000 WPT Super High Roller. The tournament drew 27 players with 7 of them choosing to re-enter after busting for another $100k. With only 5 spots paying, Justin Bonomo busted on the $263,160 money bubble. Tom Marchese won the nosebleed tournament for $1,308,405 after beating Andrew Robl heads up for the title.

Next stop, the WSOP $500 Casino Employees event.

Photo: PartyPoker.com

Today’s Boxscore

Marvin Rettenmaier $1,196,858 WPT Championship
Tom Marchese $1,308,405 WPT Super High Roller

Link Dump

Live WSOP Chip Counts (Google Doc via Kevmath) – The World Series of Poker will attempt to have regularly updated (aka damn near live) chip counts and player tracking for every bracelet event this summer. The document was sent to WSOP dealers from Seth Palansky detailing the added steps they need to perform for the new system to work. My initial reaction was bull$#!$t but quickly changed my mind. This has the potential to be a huge development and I’m cautiously optimistic. If nothing else, it will stop Negreanu from whining every 15 minutes about his count being 100 chips off.

Bellagio Attempted Robbery – Another week, another Bellagio robbery. This time it was two members of Mensa grabbing a bunch of $5k chips from a blackjack table. They were quickly caught and no truth to the rumor it was a high-stakes poker player pissed off at playing a $25,000 tournament in the middle of noisy slot machines while Ma and Pa Kettle smoked it up.

ESPN Fantasy Poker Draft – Andrew Feldman has pulled a few people together each year, a good combination of players and media-type folks, for a WSOP Fantasy Poker draft. It usually a pretty good barometer of those running hot coming into the WSOP and who people think will have a great summer. As an unapologetic stats geek, I looked at the teams from every angle. Even with his laughable pick of Erick Lindgren, I think Chops has the best all around collection (Doc Sands, Buchanan, Bonomo, Haxton, JP Kelly, Dempsey) with Bluff’s Lance Bradley not far behind. I’d almost be willing to put down a wager.

The Micros – Thank god this wasn’t one of their webisodes or I would have Richard Marx stuck in my head. Speaking of their webisodes, I think it’s about time someone with deep pockets stepped up to fund these guys getting back to what they do best. Imagine the goodwill you would generate by returning the animated Tatjana Pasalic to the world.

Click to enlarge

Be sure to check out our new sponsors at Face Up Gaming. Legal, subscription-based online poker with plenty of great prizes including cash, WSOP seats, and poker trips. Sign up with Bonus Code pokerati.

On this episode of the Jess and BJ Show, Jessica Welman and BJ Nemeth try to wrap things up in time to catch Game 7 of the World Series, bet the Bookie’s Over/Under on how many former Foxwoods winners will remain at the end of the day, recap Day 2 of the World Poker Finals, and answer the question, “What is your favorite game-winning performance?”

Josh E (right) went from Southern circuit grinder to playing heads-up “live minus five” in Las Vegas for more than $600k and a magic bracelet on my iPhone.

The WSOP-Circuit has been good to many a Pokeratier and Pokeratizen alike. It’s a place where minor-league heroes are born … and some build the bankroll to live life as a real pro. With the Global poker year coming to a close this week, for so many serious players it’s time to think about starting all over and hitting the grind again.

(Only this go-round will be completely without Sunday Millions or Rush Poker bankroll supplements.)

Players get a month-and-a-half break … and then it’s off to Bossier City — “Shreveport,” we used to call it  – for the beginning of the 8th incarnation of the WSOP-Circuit season. (Texas politicians take note: the Dallas market alone is so juicy that the WSOP added a second stop to serve it.)

Below the jump for the details on what’s different this year. New point system, adios $10ks, “12 rings in 12 days.” New stop, obv. It’s Rounders & Road Gamblers — hey, that sounds like “social gaming” — brought to you by the World Series of Poker!

[Beow-neow-neow beow-neow neow ... ]

The WPT has its own version of a lower-stakes Circuit tour, of course — in similar locations — and now Epic/Heartland seems to be stepping in to make something more of the recreational-to-semi-pro players who swarm from up to 250 miles away to compete in mini-poker festivals wrapped around a $1,500-ish main event.

It’s arguably the most competitive part of the live poker landscape in the US these days. Wonder if all WSOP Circuit events will offer free Wi-Fi.

More…

Though I’m not expert enough to confirm or deny any validity, this video did give me pause. To the untrained eye, it sure does look like possible (if not certain) cheating software in play on ClubWPT, the World Poker Tour’s subscription-based non-gambling site — you know, the one Mike Sexton is heavily pimping on Poker After Dark (in commercial spots previously occupied by Full Tilt) as the safest American online poker alternative out there.

Interesting to see the code explained, visually, for a clearer understanding of how God-mode in the UB Scandal probably worked … then extra-curious to realize Jim Ryan, CEO of WPT-parent Party Gaming, was CEO of Excapsa Software, Ultimate Bet partner, during the heyday of cheating on their site.

And while some may think little of it, because hey, it’s just pretend money … we all know free-play online poker isn’t just about the joys of truly amateur poker … it’s about preparation for real-money online gambling. The WSOP is pushing their free Facebook-app game throughout the Amazon Room, after all, and Zynga takes a rake in their “cash games”. Do a Google search for “Zynga poker rigged” or “Facebook poker scam” … The screams of cheating and scandal are more outrageous than AP/UB/Cereus ever coulda had to cover up.

Whether the apparent security flaws at Club WPT are a matter of coincidence, ignorance, incompetence, or shenanigans, it does make you wonder who will be ready for American players when real-money online poker comes into play.

Ahhh … though Vegas is crawling with poker-related license-plate culture on any given day, the World Series is when the finest work from the Nevada Department of Corrections really comes out.

Seen outside the Rio today, this high-performance Mustang either being offered up as a gift by someone trying to recruit WSOP exec Ty Stewart over to the WPT or it’s probably the ride of an appreciative WPT champion at the WSOP going after a different brand of bracelet.

The signs of Rapture are all around us. No, I’m not talking about the idiot who spent his life savings putting up billboards around the country to tell everyone the world was going to end on May 21st. I’m talking about the world in which I exist, the poker world, where we’re clearly in a time loop, as the same things happen over and over again and nobody seems to notice. Déjà vu was certainly the theme for this week’s winners in poker.

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.

If you count a Club WPT patch as a part of our patch watch then patch watch was once again revived today at the World Poker Tour Seminole Hard Rock Showdown Final table today. Allen Bari and Abbey Daniels showed up to battle for the $1,122,340 first place money wearing Club WPT patches, a company that offers subscriptions based play where you can play satellites to win a seat into future WPT events.

Once again wearing a patch would not bring the players good luck with Allen Bari being eliminated fifth place for $211,997. He was followed shortly by Abbey Daniels who took home $286,819.

The final three players would battle it out into the early hours of the morning before Justin Zaki, the last player from Florida, was eliminated. From there it only took Taylor Von Kriegenbergh 8 hands to finish off Curt Kohlberg for his first live win since hitting the circuit earlier this year.

Here is a look at how the final six finished with payouts:

1st: Taylor Von Kriegenbergh – $1,122,340
2nd: Curt Kohlberg – $586,109
3rd: Justin Zaki – $415,680
4th: Abbey Daniels – $286,819
5th: Allen Bari – $211,997
6th: Tommy Vedes – $166,272

Stop me if you have heard this before; Patch watch is over. After the elimination of Mike Sexton in Day Four it was assumed that the rest of the tournament would play out without a single player with a patch.

That was until James Mackey showed up with his fifth place stack wearing a Hero Poker Pro patch. It seems that wearing a patch may not be a good thing for these players as Mackey became the TV bubble boy when he was eliminated in 7th place by Taylor Von Kriegenbergh.

Von Kriegenbergh goes into Day Six with a 2.187 Million chip lead over Justin Zaki in second place. Von Kriegenbergh and Zaki will be joined by the four other final table members on Monday to battle it out for the $1,122,340 first place money. Here is a look at the remaining six with chip counts according to seat position.

Seat 1: Abbey Daniels – 2,192,000
Seat 2: Tommy Vedes – 1,570,000
Seat 3: Allen Bari – 1,984,000
Seat 4: Taylor Von Kriegenbergh – 4,384,000
Seat 5: Curt Kohlberg – 655,000
Seat 6: Justin Zaki – 2,197,000

With only six players left in the field and no Full Tilt representative on site to patch up players this possibly could be a final table without a patch. Check back with us for the final table report to see if the the plug was indeed pulled on patch watch after Day Five.

Coming into Day Four the patch watch almost dead, after Day Four it IS dead. With only two patches to keep track of Day Four’s patch watch was made even easier with Mike Sexton (Party Poker) and Zach Clark (Doyles Room) sitting on the same table.

Although both players started out the day in the lower half of the leader board they only needed to outlast 6 players to make it to the money which they both managed. Clark would eventually be eliminated in 33rd place while his table mate Sexton managed a 27th place finish.

We caught up with Clark before he was eliminated to discuss Black Friday and how it is affecting his sponsorship deal. He declined to comment on anything exactly what he is being told but did tell us that he inquired about wearing his patch for the tournament and they told him to operate as normal when it came to that.

Coming back for Day Five is Blair Hinkle, who became the first player to win seven figures in a single tournament on Full Tilt back in March in the FTOPS Main event when he chopped three handed to receive $1,162,949.74, sits atop the leader board with 1,783,000. Catching up with Hinkle during a break he discussed his FTOPs score and told us that he had not moved the majority of his funds off Full Tilt before Black Friday. He did not seem overly concerned that he would have trouble getting the funds off site, but did state that it would be nice to just win this event for his second 7 figure score of 2011.

Day Six will start at noon today with 18 players playing down to the final 6 in the High Roller room of the Seminole Hard Rock Poker Room. With no patches left and no one left to patch up players when the final six are determined this will be the first WPT final table in some time without a single player wearing a patch. Maybe that is a sign to come for future events in this post Black Friday era.

The United States Government. Check back next week to see if anything changes.

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.

Eslami Proves ‘If You Can Beat a Robot, You Can Beat a Man’ at Rincon
WSOPC Western Regional Championship, Rincon, California

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.

The problem with the WSOP creeping up on us is that sometimes we tend to ignore the run up to the biggest tournament series of the year. March is a big month for poker tournaments, and it shows in the people that came out on top in this month’s winners. From Erik Seidel proving he needs to be in a $20k+ buy-in to win anything to a couple pros making back-to-back final tables, this was a big month for the tournament pro. And its not even June yet. As for the losers, well, I’ll admit I had to nit-pick this month for a couple of them, but others were just too easy. Lets see who was noteworthy this month.

Winners

• Erik Seidel (4): Seriously Erik, only play the Players’ Championship and the HU High Roller in this year’s WSOP. You’ll lock up two bracelets and you can sit out the main event knowing you may very well still win Player of the Year because you are winning damn near everything else. Erik impressed again in March by winning the NBC Heads-up Championship, a gimmicky made-for-TV tournament sure but its still against some of the best in the business. It’s funny that he is having this kind of sick run just a couple months removed from being inducted into the Poker Hall of Fame. It is almost as if he felt like he needed to prove he earned it. (Writers Note: Which admittedly in my head he did. In my series on the Hall of Fame voting, he made the cut but got the least number of votes from me.)

• Vivek Rajkumar (1): A LAPC 2nd place finish and a Bay 101 4th place finish makes for back-to-back final tables in WPT events. Pretty impressive considering these two tournaments are probably amongst the toughest the WPT can provide. Also, the fact the guy has a Computer Engineering degree on top of his millions of tournament earning is just icing on the cake for why he’s a winner this month. Yea, I’m bias, so what?

• Tim West (1): Not to be outdone, Tim West actually won the Wynn Poker Classic main event and then came runner-up in the WSOP-C Regional Championship in Rincon (aka San Diego). Now, he’s not huge on the radar (unless he’s an internet player and I don’t know it….paging @jesswelman) but that might change at the pace he is running.

• The Pokerstars (1)/Wynn Partnership: What Pokerstars put into Steve Wynn’s drink to get him to agree to this we will never know. But this is a complete 180 from his prior stance on the issue of online gambling, and the fact that Pokerstars “landed” this partnership could be nothing short of amazing. Will this mean anything in the short term? Don’t know, there is a Nevada bill out that legalizes online gambling, but it has about as much of a chance as New Jersey’s in this writer’s opinion. Still, Stars is probably looking for a way to get into the US market by getting all buddy-buddy with the brick-and-mortars, and this was one hell of a way to show it.

Losers

• The Full Tilt (-1) /Station Casino Owner Partnership: Conversely, however, Full Tilt’s partnership with Fertitta Interactive looks like a “oh crap that site we pretend doesn’t exist signed a deal…SCRAMBLE!” Yea, deals like this are usually talked about way in advance, but having the second announcement with a less flashy alternative is not impressive. In fact, I’d say it looks a little sloppy. Its worth mentioning that Fertitta and Station Casinos are completely separate, and while the UFC brand might help Full Tilt get new customers, it just doesn’t feel as good as the Stars/Wynn deal.

• Daniel Negreanu (-1): I am sorry Daniel, but you lost the Superstar Showdown, you did not tie no matter what the official tally may say. My co-host on my podcast “Rabbit Hunt” beat me to the punch but I can say it in far fewer words. Even if 5000 roughly 4000 hands is not enough to determine who is better and he ran woefully under EV, its still a pretty good indication he was outclassed…at least this time. I’ll give Daniel credit for his comeback in the second week, but this was in no way a “Clash of the Titans”. Daniel was not in the same realm as isildur1 and he might have wanted to have some more practice before trying to take him on.

• Joe Sebok (-2)/Prahlad Friedman (-2)/Jon Aguiar (-1): Yea this wasnt going to miss my crosshairs in a million years. This whole saga was a mess from top to bottom, and I’m lumping the three of them together because all three of them failed miserably. Prahlad should have never played the John Racener card (“oh no I lost a lot of money against a known cheater time to call bullshit!”). Joe shouldn’t have sent a thinly veiled statement saying he had shit on Aguiar’s girl, then pseudo-apologize only to definitely suggest he has some real dirt on her. And finally, Jon shouldn’t have flown off the handle, posted the DM attempting to crowdsource some sympathy and justice, and then constantly bring up his girlfriend almost as if to call a bluff. The whole thing was a mess, and nobody looked particularly good at the end of the day.

• Mason Malmuth (-1): I’m totally content with getting personally blackballed from 2+2 for saying this: there is not a chance in hell that 2+2 is the poker community. Its like the people that aren’t members of 2+2 are suddenly alienated from existence. If that forum is the only poker community, then I’m glad to be an outsider…because the wise helpful 2+2 poster seems to be the exception rather than the rule. All Mason did was prove how big of an ego he has, and given the backlash regarding his statements…its unlikely too many people outside of “the poker community” approve of him being the mayor.

Coinflips

• Norm MacDonald (0): This has been a point of contention for some. Gabe Kaplan losing AJ Benza as someone to bounce his jokes off of made season 6′s commentary fall a little flat. Gabe’s replacement is either making people happy or disgusted, with very little room in between. Personally I don’t mind Norm taking Gabe’s place on the show, but I still think it would be a lot better if there was someone else in the book, and High Stakes Poker hasn’t seemed to figure that out yet.

• Anyone that played an April Fool’s Poker Media Gag (0): You wanna know why this didn’t come out on the 1st? Because I was going to originally write a WLC where UB was the Entity of the Month, isildur1 was the “Eff You” winner for beating down Daniel so hard, and whatever else I could have come up with. But instead I looked at the gags that were played rather than get creative and write my own. We were Fricke-rolled by The Micros (awesome), Pokerstars had its weird-as-fuck tournaments (not as fresh but still good), WSOP had “Strip Poker” introduced as an event (lame, plus my eyes will be glad that’s not true), and Pokernews tried telling us they were hiring a chip counter for every table (didn’t you read the media rules? gonna need 6 per table).

• 2+2 Posters (0): Nothing showed the signal-to-noise ratio more on 2+2 then the whole Sebok-Prahlad-Aguiar affair. While some people kept things civil, you know damn well people like Kevmath were working overtime to make sure the site didnt collapse under the weight of some of their poster’s shittiness. So props to the moderators and the intelligent posters, but not so much to the trolls.

The “Eff You, Sir/Madam” Award

• Mason Malmuth (-3): You thought I was going to go for the low-hanging fruit huh? Thought Sebok was an easy target for this months award for being an abject failure in the community? Well, here’s the thing, Sebok at least tried to come on and be reasonable. It wasn’t successful, although I don’t think anyone could have reasonably expected Joe to have any impact, but at least he tried. Mason, if he tried anything, it was to be a dick. In a very short time span, he proclaimed 2+2 as “the poker community”, which we’ve already touched on a little bit before. I get it, its Mason being Mason, but being a dick just because you happen to have a popular forum within the poker community does not make you God. Openly stating to Sebok that short of getting Paul on a moderated thread he’s got no reason to even be in the forum is…well…idiotic at best. At worst, well, it earns you the Fuck You award for March. Your forum isn’t the entire poker community Mason, because otherwise this post wouldn’t have passed moderation.

Entity of the Month

I don’t think anyone should be surprised by this but…

• Erik Seidel (2-time champ: 7): Yep, giving this one to Erik again because he’s really starting to show how much he can’t lose. He won the NBC heads up and for the most part won the Number 1 spot in ESPN’s Nuts segment, because Ivey was, is, and always will be a permanent fixture in the top spot for better or for worse. The guy is just playing absolutely amazing poker and his sense of humor (and guest appearances on shows like The Micros) keep him high on other people’s lists. If he can keep this up…well…there is no telling where he’ll end up. That said, he’s won “Entity of the Month” for two months out of the three…so there is a good chance we have a runaway winner for any potential “1st Annual WLC Awards”.

There was a Russian invasion on Austria this week, as a pair of high-profile tournament stops in the land of Schwarzenneger were each taken by Russian players. On US soil we saw the end of the Wynn Poker Classic, as well as am interesting event in Tulalip, Washington. And don’t forget about the ANZPT.

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.

Mike Sexton Gives Up Announcing Career in Pursuit of Long-shot Poker Dream
WPT Bay 101 Shooting Star, San Jose, California

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.

Due to your heroic author’s insistence that he can actually play poker as well as write about it, he decided to take a quick trip to Atlantic City to play a couple of Circuit events. That failed miserably, and also delayed the publishing of this article by more than a day. But here it is, a recap of what turned out to be a very busy week.

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.