Huff, Dan, Jess, BJ, and even Stapleton (with the return of the Tight Laydown?):

The Poker Beat: October 24, 2010

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• Poker Hall of Fame inductees Harrington and Seidel, age-minimum debates, and comparisons to Rock & Roll Hall of Fame
• Anonymous tables at Ladbrokes
• Crespo’s Illinois online poker lawsuit — significant or frivolous?
• More on WSOP-C’s new power and purpose?
• WPT-Festa al Lago FT, Randall Flowers, and the Jess & BJ Show
• Phil Ivey is gay? Craps + multi-phallus fellatio promises at the Wynn

Good morning, ladies and gentleman, and welcome to the beginning of… something. You may know me better as Timtern, of Bluff and PokerRoad (non) fame, and I am the newest contributor to Pokerati. I’m definitely stepping into some giant shoes, so I hope you’ll bare with me as I get settled in. Anyway, here’s what happened this week in tournaments:

• The biggest money of the week was on the line at the Festa al Lago, the latest stop of Season 9 of the World Poker Tour. There were some heavy-hitting young guns that reached this final table, including Andy Frankenberger, who was coming off of a victory at the Legends of Poker. Randall Flowers managed to add “youngest two-time WPT winner” to an already impressive resume at the tender age of 22. Flowers, who banked $831,500 for his win, was also the youngest to win a WPT title, which he did in Barcelona before he even turned 21. [World Poker Tour]

• The $1,500 World Series of Poker Circuit at Horseshoe Hammond Main Event wrapped up early Monday morning, with the appropriately named Kurt Jewell snagging the circuit ring and $242,909. Amongst the notables at this final table were William Reynolds, who took third, and Bryan Devonshire taking seventh. The $10,000 Regional Championship, which will air on Versus, will get underway Monday. [WSOP]

• There are many different options for the members of the November Nine as they prepare for the WSOP final table. They could follow the major poker tours and play other big buy-in events, take a trip to clear their minds, or hire a coach to fine-tune their skills. Or, as in the case of Filippo Candio, they could get in amongst the grinders and play a $230 prelim event, in this case Event #1 at the Caesars Classic. Candio brought his A-Game in this one, reaching the final table in the 232 player field before falling just short in 3rd place, banking a cool$4,726. (The attached story is in Italian, so if you don’t have a knowledge of the language it might be time to crack out the Google translator, or maybe go old school and try Babelfish). [Tuttosport]

• Maybe Candio started a trend, as he wasn’t the only November Niner doing well in prelims. With the World Poker Finals Main Event (the next stop on the WPT) fast approaching, John Dolan made a deep run in a $1,500 event, eventually making a three-way deal and taking second place for $45,000. In a twist that might be more appropriate for Soccerati, ESPN Soccer commentator Adrian Healey took third place for $40,000. [Foxwoods Live]

• In the online world, Sorel Mizzi started things off early with a win in the PokerStars Sunday Warm-Up for $149,737.10. The biggest money of the day online was to be had in the $1.5 million guarantee, with “Bodog Ari” Engel making the final table and finishing seventh for $32,856; “ramondemon” won $246,424 for taking that one down. On the FullTilt side of things, “EatMyBluff8″ was the big winner in their $750,000 guarantee, winning $135,939.

• And just in time for Halloween, we have a tale from beyond the grave. The late, great Dean Martin made the final table in a recent Borgata $1,000 event. Although I always thought Atlantic City was more a Sinatra town. Oh well. [Cardplayer]

PokerStars EPT London :: David Vamplew of Scotland defeated John Juanda after over 4 hours of heads-up play to win the £5,000 Main Event, earning £900,000 (over $1.4m US) making him the most successful tournament player in Scotland. Juanda earned £545,000 (over $860,000 US) for the runner-up finish, moving past Peter Eastgate, Joe Hachem (finishing 15th in this event) and Scotty Nguyen into 5th place on the all-time tournament poker earnings list with over $11.3m in live tournament earnings. A full report is available at the PokerStars blog.

The winner of the £20,000 High Roller event was Team PokerStars pro Jose “Nacho” Barbero of Argentina, defeating Finland’s Jani Sointula heads-up, earning £556,000. This is the fourth PokerStars-sponsored tournament Barbero has won this year, after back-to-back LAPT Main Event wins and a France Poker Series win in May. The report for this event is also available at the PokerStars blog.

Elsewhere …

WSOP Circuit Southern Indiana, – Elizabeth, IN :: Samuel Serdard bested a field of 570 players in the $350 NL Holdem event, winning $47,171. The final table report is available at WSOP.com, with the full list of players who cashed listed here.

World Poker Tour :: Professional poker player Tony Dunst named “Raw Deal” host – WPT Press release

PokerStars EPT London final tables for their £5,000 Main Event and £20,000 High Roller are both set for Monday afternoon at 12pm London time (7am ET). Live streaming of the 5k final table will be available at www.eptlive.com and www.pokerstars.tv. First, here’s the lineup for the 5k final table with the winner earning £900,000 with updates available at PokerNews and PokerStarsblog.com:

Seat 1: David Vamplew – 3,670,000
Seat 2: Tom Marchese – 1,480,000
Seat 3: Fernando Brito – 1,100,000
Seat 4: Per Ummer – 1,245,000
Seat 5: Artur Wasek – 2,250,000
Seat 6: Kayvan Payman – 1,295,000
Seat 7: Kyle Bowker – 7,165,000
Seat 8: John Juanda – 7,075,000

Here’s the final table for the High Roller event with £556,000 going to the winner (updates available at PokerStarsblog.com)

Seat 1: Matt Marafioti – 96.000
Seat 2: Pierre Neuville – 110,000
Seat 3: William Molson – 126,000
Seat 4: Andrew Robl – 835,000
Seat 5: Fabian Quoss – 605,000
Seat 6: Jani Sointula – 320,000
Seat 7: Jose Ignacio “Nacho” Barbero – 464,000
Seat 8: Vanessa Selbst – 1,262,000

Elsewhere …

WSOP Circuit – Southern Indiana, Elizabeth, IN :: Action got away Saturday for a month of WSOP-C action in Indiana with 570 players taking part in the first ring event, $350 NL holdem. Check out WSOP.com for results on Monday.

If this is true, it would mark the second WSOP-Circuit addition not at a Harrah’s property. That’s the unofficial word from a Harrah’s suit, with firm-sounding dates attached. According to venerable Circuit TD Jimmy Sommerfeld on 2+2 …

I think that … a Tournament at Palm Beach Kennel Club on February 17 – March 1 would be a great Idea. Maybe its not a rumor?!! I would gamble and book a room.

Ah yes, it all makes so much sense now, doesn’t it? (That is, of course, assuming Sommerfeld doesn’t get canned before WSOP-Choctaw, in January 2011, for running his yap ahead of any official press release.

Not only would a WSOP-Florida series further support America’s favorite citrus-bearing peninsula as the juiciest destination in poker since France, but also, it would confirm Harrah’s willingness to take unprecedented steps in an effort to keep up with the new-and-improved WPT/Party/Bwin.

The above dates, if true, would run it right up against the WPT-LAPC, btw.

More…

There’s a lot going on going into this (American) Labor Day Weekend. Some happenings in poker you may want to follow, or follow up on:

On the tournament trail …

WSOP Circuit Council Bluffs, Iowa Blair Hinkle wins $1,500 Main Event, Robert Georato “Casino Champion”, qualifying for $1m National Championship at Caesars Palace in May. WSOP.com

PokerStars.net EPT Vilamoura, Portugal :: Toby Lewis takes down the title, football legend/MBE Terry Sherringham finishes 5th. PokerStars Blog.

WPT London :: Final table set, Party qualifier eligible for $500,000 bonus with win, £15k High Rollers starts this afternoon PartyPoker Blog

Partouche Poker Tour, Cannes :: Over 750 players, prize pool nearly €6 million, live streaming w/ hole cards starting Monday at Partouchepokertour.com. Follow along en Francais w/ Benjo at Winamax.fr

The River – Winstar, OK :: Raymer, J. Mercier, Chainsaw, G. Smith, Flack among hundreds of North Texas locals fighting in the $2.5m guaranteed main event this weekend

Commerce Holdem Series :: – Encouraging numbers halfway through 500k guarantee opening event despite rumblings of a boycott. Commerce Tournaments

UPDATE:

Gulf Coast Poker Championship – Biloxi, Mississippi :: $5,000 Main Event starts Saturday. BeauRivage.com

Elsewhere & Also …

PokerStars’ WCOOP gets underway Sunday.

WSOP Circuit Horseshoe Hammond tournaments to add more than 40 $10k Regional Championship seats to their tournaments – WSOP.com

Jennifer Harman, Kathy Liebert and Billie Brown get inducted into the Women in Poker Hall of Fame tonight. US Ladies Championship Saturday at the Golden Nugget. Women in Poker Hall of Fame

And Tatjana Pasalic spends three minutes with Phil Ivey

With the main event of The River at Winstar underway like right now … (and no real coverage going to follow) … WSOP officials released word of their latest stop on the WSOP Circuit — the Choctaw Casino in Durant, Oklahoma. Nifty-cool. And it was especially kind of them to schedule it in January, making it very convenient for my personal holiday travel plans — especially while visiting my folks or Gma, who live way more conveniently located near Choctaw than WinStar.

Click below for the official deets according to the WSOPress Release. And check out this video of the fancy-cool new Choctaw poker room (represented by WSOP-Ebay legend TJ Cloutier, btw) as seen by the architects before it opened up:

More…

After a quiet period in the poker community, the tournament circuit has come back to life with a variety of tournaments spanning the world. Some highlights:

WPT Legends of Poker

Andrew Frankenberger defeated Kyle Wilson to take down the title at the Bike in LA, collecting $750,000 for the win. Notables who finished in the money: Former WPT Player of the Year Jonathan Little (12th), Allen Kessler (20th), Erica Schoenberg (30th), Joe Sebok (32nd), November Niner Soi Nguyen (34th) and Joe Hachem (43rd). Click here for results.

WPT London Poker Classic

Monday is day 1a of the first WPT event in the UK, with the £5,000 + £300 buy-in London Poker Classic at the Palm Beach Casino. Jack McLelland from the Bellagio is helping run the tournament, with registration remaining open until 1:30pm on Wednesday. Live updates available over at PartyPoker’s blog here.

EPT Villamoura

Day 2 of the PokerStars.net European Poker Tour stop in Portugal starting with 384 players, creating a prize pool of €1,862,400, with the winner collecting €467,835. Currently, less than 130 players remain, with the current chip leader is Grzegorz Cichocki of Poland with 312,000 in chips. Other notables still in the field: 2008 EPT Grand Final winner Pieter de Korver, Brandon Cantu, Liv Boeree, Sorel Mizzi, Lex Veldhuis, David Williams among many others. Follow the live updates and pictures of players enjoying the sun (as photography is banned inside the casino) at PokerStarsblog.com

WSOP Circuit – Council Bluffs

The first $1,500 Main Event of the WSOP Circuit started on Sunday with a field of 251 entries, creating a prize pool of $361,440, with the winner cashing in for $88,555 and entry into the $1,000,000 National Championship in May. Day 2 resumes today with 75 players playing down to the final table. Another way to earn a seat is to be the “Casino Champion” at each tour stop, to the player who earns the most points in the 10 WSOP-C ring events. To view the “unofficial” leaderboard after 8 events, check it out here. WSOP Circuit legend Dwyte Pilgrim won one of the many non-ring events that support the WSOP-C for a mid-four figure sum. For results so far check out the WSOP site and PokerPages for the non-ring results.

The River @ Winstar Casino

As noted in an earlier post, the Winstar Casino in Thackerville, OK is in the midst of their River $3,000,000 Guaranteed tournament series. What passes as results for Winstar is to show the points earned for those that make the final table, without stating how much each player received.

Gulf Coast Poker Championship – Beau Rivage

Another major series that got underway over the weekend is the Gulf Coast Poker Championship at Beau Rivage in Biloxi, Mississippi. Their main event takes place Sept. 4th with a $5,000 NL Holdem Main Event. Their schedule can be found on the beaurivage.com website here.

Commerce Holdem Series

Matt Savage returns Sept. 1st to the Commerce Casino in Los Angeles for the Commerce Holdem Series, featuring several guaranteed prize pools events as well as the $1,100 Ironman tournament. More details available here.

Partouche Poker Tour – Cannes

One major tournament that starts later in the week when the French Partouche Group of casinos have their Main Event in Cannes Sept. 2nd. The 8,500 Euro buy-in event has a 3,000,000 Euro guaranteed prize pool with 1,000,000 Euros guaranteed for first. Like the WSOP Main Event, their final table will be delayed, taking place in late October and aired live across Europe on the EuroSport network. I believe there’s also live streaming available (in French) during the tournament. Further details available on the PPT site.

The WSOP Circuit has had its share of ups and downs (mostly downs) in recent years as its relevance has waned a bit in the past few years with small fields in their $5,000 main events at various Harrah’s properties across the US.

The announcement of the 2010-11 WSOP Circuit schedule today brings about several major changes done to push the tournament series back into relevance. Changes include a drop in the buy-ins of the Circuit Main Events to $1,500, four $10,000 buy-in “regional championships” that will air on national television (ESPN?), and a $1,000,000 freeroll tournament at Caesars’ Palace in May 2011.

More information found in their press release on below:

More…

Day 3 of the Main Event gets underway at 12pm Monday, with over 2,500 players scheduled to play four levels as they get ever closer to the money bubble at 747 players. For those looking for the table draw, click here. Follow the action over at wsop.com. Also at wsop.com later today, expect the official announcement of the revamped WSOP Circuit, AP reporter Oskar Garcia has a preview of the changes.

The annual media tournament took place yesterday with Josh Zerkle of With Leather taking down the title. Other notables included Shamus at the Hard Boiled Poker blog in 3rd, defending champion of the WSOP Dream Team Poker event Lana from CardRunners finishing 6th, and Full Tilt Poker blogger AlCantHang in 9th.

Might not be fair to our pals at Heartland Poker Tour — or even the people we don’t know running low buy-in events across multiple US states — to allow WSOP schedules to determine when the sun does not rise on the Gregorian poker calendar as if all players were Chinese Hebrews … but hey, that’s how it works in poker. As much as the nation of Pokerstarzistan might want to go to war to establish their EPT/UKIPT-APPT/ANZPT-NAPT/LAPT(?) clock as the new global standard … the World Series of Poker still sets the international norm for how poker people are supposed to plan/keep track of our lives.

With that said, there are two more events at WSOP-NOLA this week … the ladies event and a seniors event … but leading up to those, WSOP clerics have released official “semi-final” statistics for the 2009-2010 WSOP-Circuit season … which awarded more than $20 million in prize money and 150 gold rings across 11 stops held in Hammond, Indiana (Chicago), Southern Indiana, Lake Tahoe, Atlantic City, Tunica, Council Bluffs, Caesars Atlantic City, San Diego (Rincon), St. Louis, Las Vegas, and New Orleans.

For those interested, that accounts for about 1/10 of overall WSOP prize money and more than 2/3 of annual WSOP hardware awarded. Seems Mark “Pegasus” from Georgetown, KY, took down the lion’s share for an unofficial title as Minor League Player of the Year.

Click below for rankings for the 2009-2010 season that came from all that:

More…

It’s not often a WSOP Circuit event catches our eye, particularly when the final table is fighting for the lion’s share of a $20k prizepool. But Event #10 in New Orleans, the last Circuit stop of the 09/10 poker year, was special, as Daphne “Tweety” Turner beat Allen Kessler to win the $300+40 Mixed Games event.

It was a $6,700 score. But more notably about her NOLA victory:

1. She becomes the first woman to win two circuit rings. (Watch out Dwyte Pilgrim.)

2. She’s from Texas; Richmond to be exact, a big town in the sticks just outside of Houston. (Go Texas!)

3. She beat @AllenKessler heads-up; with all due respect to the Chainsaw, seeing
our favorite Vegas nit finish second makes “Tweety’s” victory even better. (Wonder if she got that nickname before or after the creation of Twitter.)

4. The event she won was a 7-game mix, or as I like to think of it as of today, HORSE+Pokerati … or the Pokerati Game+HORSE. (No-Limit Hold’em and PLO are the two added games.)

Here’s Turner’s interview after her win … the first woman to win two circuit events … and someone you might wanna be a little careful of should you see her at your table:

The other Michalski in poker.

Consider him my new favorite cousin I never knew I had and the newest member of Team Pokerati even though he hasn’t yet picked up his patch. Big props to William Michalski (I think he goes by Bill) from Syracuse, New York.

Michalski is the official winner of Event #15 in the WSOP-Circuit festival going on currently at Caesar’s Palace. In reality there was a 7-way chop. But Michalski did get credit for 1st place and $15k of tournament winnings — making Bill the top Michalski in poker. (The Hendon Mob really needs to include Dream Team in their standings.)

UPDATE: Turns out instead of living in Syracuse he now lives in Las Vegas, having moved here and turned pro just a couple months ago. Am I supposed to have him over for dinner?

More details on the event (and chop) itself in Nolan’s report from Caesars below.

More…

Start off your poker news-week by catching up with what the main topics of convo were last week. We all talk a little LAPT-Lima, the predictable plug-pulling on Bellagio’s Rebuypalooza, Bryan Devonshire’s recent score … and whether or not he matches up with the likes POWER of Dwyte Pilgrim. Bluff magazine’s Jess Welman steps up to fill in (nicely) for BJ … She, Gary, and PokerRoad’s new low-stakes columnist Ben Conoley talk about the sudden re-resurgence of poker on TV, and then I rejoin the crew to discuss the “retirement” of Mike “Timex” McDonald … apparently at age 20 he already can hear the clock ticking on his prospects for a fulfilling career.

Also … in an April 1st treat (ha ha listeners), BJ steps outside his usual fact-stat box to sub for Joe Stapleton and deliver the Tight Laydown. What-the … manager mixing it up in preparation for the World Cup. Tune in next week as Gary pretends to be Huff by wearing a tie on the air and I reveal myself to be Isildur1 and/or The Insider outs himself as @AsianSpa!

The Poker Beat
4/1/10

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Dwyte Pilgrim just won his third WSOP-Circuit gold ring — an unprecedented impressive feat. I sensed he was doing something special back in May, when ESPN was conducting its fantasy WSOP draft. Thought I nabbed a real gem for the 71st pick.

WSOP Fantasy Draft – May 22, 2009

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LOL, Go ESPN scouting team!

Here’s an interview after his most recent win in a $300+40 NLH at WSOP-Rincon (in San Diego).

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