by AlCantHang, Sep 25, 2012 | 10:56 am

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Today’s Boxscore

Ben Mahmoud €147,099 – WSOPE €2,700 6-handed NLHE
Antonio Esfandiari €126,207 – WSOPE €1,100 NLH Re-entry
Ben Hamnett $818,847 – World Poker Tour Borgata Open
Jeff Gibralter $133,648 – WSOPC Bossier City Main Event
Michael Harris $245,078 – HPT Golden Gates Casino

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The World Series of Poker Europe is finally underway in Cannes and it didn’t take long for the excitement to ramp up. Antonio Esfandiari had a pretty decent summer with his Big One for One Drop win for $18 Million (minus paying off backers), seven WSOP cashes including the Main Event, and one other final table. After Event #2 at the WSOPE he can now be called a 3-time WSOP bracelet winner. There were 626 registered for the 2-day No Limit Hold’em Re-entry event and The Magician was the last player standing. He picked up €126,207 for his win and now leads the WSOP Player of the Year race.

Still a week of events remaining but now Greg Merson will need to finish 4th or better at November Nine to grab 2012 Player of the Year award.

The rest of the poker world is still talking about the Lederer Interview on PokerNews (except when the degenerates are complaining of lousy NFL replacement refs) and everybody with a website has posted their opinion, reaction, and theories. Some are insightful and some are drivel and some are humorous. You can find a few of the better ones listed below.

Link Dump

Tweet of the Day – Haralabos Voulgaris is usually commenting on the NBA or NFL but this time points out the recent WCOOP Main Event winner freerolled into the tournament after his usually game is $1.50 tournaments. Now the player has nearly $1 million to move up in stakes.

The kid who won Pokerstars WCOOP “Maratik” got in on a freeroll, his normal game was $1.50c tourneys He won 995,707 bit.ly/PVVltm

— Haralabos Voulgaris (@haralabob) September 25, 2012

Barry Greenstein responds to Howard Lederer Interview – Greenstein is one of those on the list of players who were loaned money that wasn’t theirs, and now he pseudo-defends Phil Ivey while also hedging his comments with this beaut: “…I think that anyone who received disbursements after the company was insolvent, which was probably 18 months before Black Friday, got money that wasn’t theirs.”

PokerStars Details Plans for Full Tilt Poker Re-launch and Payment of $184 Million to Players – The title says it all, PokerStars released a statement about the FTP relaunch, who can play, and most of the real world players will have their money available at that time. The light grows at the end of the tunnel.

The Mis-Lederer Files – Shamus is a Pokerati favorite (as well as my non-Pokerati self) and he has a great take on the Lederer interview released by PokerNews, not so much the information revealed but how it was told.

Howard Lederer Confesses EVERYTHING – by @SrslySirius – It didn’t take long for a bunch of Lederer mashups to make the rounds and the latest is from SryslySiruis.

The Lederer Files Parts 5, 6, and 7 – Rini was there in the early days of FTP and has a good look at the Lederer interview. Some interesting inside information but I’m still unhappy with the glossing over of how the Phil Ivey lawsuit changed the how things played out. Plus Negreanu agrees with him so I’m required to automatically find issues with it.