With this year\’s WSOP Champion just a few hours from being crowned, most of the eyes in the poker world are affixed squarely on Las Vegas. But there is quite a bit of other action going on around the world, including a slightly less publicized delayed final table that dealt with a cheating scandal, as well as a couple of WPT events.
World Series of Poker Main Event (Las Vegas, Nevada): Well, unless you\’ve been living underneath a rock for the last four months, you know that the final table of the 2010 WSOP Main Event finally got back underway Saturday night, and did not disappoint as far as excitement goes. If you weren\’t checking out Pokerati for some strange reason for your Main Event coverage you should definitely check out the work Michael Reed and Mark Gahagan were doing, as well as Dan and Pauly rattling off quite a few episodes of Tao of Pokerati.
Heads-up play between Jonathan Duhamel and John Racener will take place tonight (Monday) at 8 pm PT. Duhamel holds a substantial 6-1 chip lead over Racener, thanks to a hand with Joseph Cheong that will be discussed for a very long time amongst poker fans. The winner will receive $8.9 million, the third largest prize for a WSOP champion, trailing just Jamie Gold and Peter Eastgate. [WSOP]
Partouche Poker Tour Main Event (Cannes, France): The other table that came back from a months-long hiatus was the Main Event of the Partouche Poker Tour in Cannes. It should have been a \”November Nine\” for them as well, but when play resumed they were one player short.
German player Ali Tekintamgac was disqualified when tournament staff reviewed tapes from earlier in the tournament and discovered he was being tipped off to other players\’ hands. He was working with people who obtained media credentials for the sole purpose of signaling Tekintamgac. This is not the first report of him allegedly cheating, as a post from several months ago on Two Plus Two apparently refers to a similar incident.
When they actually got underway, it was Vanessa Selbst beating out a fairly impressive final table that included Fabrice Soulier. Selbst took $1.8 million for her win, bringing her lifetime cashes to almost $4 million, and capping an impressive year that also saw her win the NAPT Mohegan Sun main event. [PokerStars Blog]
WPT Foxwoods (Mashantucket, Connecticut): It was almost a week ago now, but Jeffrey Forrest came out on top of a final table of impressive young players that included Tom Marchese, Nikolai Yakovenko, and Kevin Stammen. Forrest won $550,00 for his efforts, besting David Inselberg heads-up. [Foxwoods Live, WPT]
WPT Amneville (Amneville, France): Forrest wasn\’t the only one to capture a WPT title this week. Sam El Sayed won the first ever WPT Amneville for just under $600,000. He also won a $25,000 seat to the WPT Championship at Bellagio, while second place finisher Franck Pepe settled for $320,000 and a $10,000 WPT Paris seat. [PartyPoker Blog]
MPCC Main Event (Lisboa, Macau): The PokerStars-affiliated Macau Poker Cup Championship held their main event this week as well, drawing 254 players. The final table featured players from seven different countries on four different continents, with Jilian Hasse of Germany winning the title and HK$1,064,000. [PokerStars Blog]
Caeser\’s Classic (Las Vegas, Nevada): The Main Event of the month-long tournament series brought out quite a few of the local pros, as 290 players came out to play in this one. Among those making it into the money were Bryan Devonshire and Sorel Mizzi. Phillippe Boucher was the winner, beating a final table that included Blake Kelso and Justin Young for a first place payday just short of $60,000. [Cardplayer]
Elsewhere… Kurt Fraser of Schaumburg, IL won the HPT Tama in Tama Iowa for $75,000… Karina Jett already has one big buy-in out of the way as she won her seat in a charity event hosted at the Rio during the day off between nine-handed and heads-up play at the WSOP Main Event.
Online: \”NickDandalos\” channeled the Greek, beating Jason \”strassa2\” Strasser on his way to winning the PokerStars Sunday Million and $195,000, while \”salue\” took down the $750K on FullTilt. Annette_15 finished second in FullTilt\’s Sunday Mulligan.