Remi Castaignon
Photo: PokerStarsBlog.com

Today’s Boxscore

Remi Castaignon €770,000 – EPT Deauville
Michael Mizrachi $101,267 – WSOP Circuit South Africa
Tyler Patterson $19,080 – 2013 LAPC NLHE Escalator

Big tournaments finished this weekend all over the planet, from Europe to South Africa and across the US. Michael “The Grinder” Mizrachi was already having pretty nice results over the last 12 months including a nearly $1.5 million victory in the 2012 WSOP Poker Players Championship. Now he can add WSOP Circuit ring winner to his resume after winning the 116-player Main Event at the Emerald Casino in South Africa.

Remi Castaignon is the latest EPT Champion for what is apparently his first tournament cash ever with a victory in the EPT Deauville Main Event. €770,000 is a fine way to get his first entry on HendonMob and it looks like he cruised to the win after entering the final table with 40% of the chips in play.

The 2013 LAPC continues to chug along with their preliminary events pulling in good numbers for the Savage structured grind. Plenty of big names are making their way to final tables including McLean Karr, Bryan Devonshire, Matt Affleck, and Tyler Patterson who managed a win along with the traditional ugly, 500 pound trophy. Elsewhere in the world, the WPT Seminole Hard Rock will play down to their champion in a few days with Matt Salsberg once again in the running with 36 players remaining.

Link Dump

Tweet of the Day – Mizrachi wins and Andrew Felman reminded to remind himself that everyone forgets The Grinder. Perhaps people could start giving the man his props now?

I won the Main Event @emeraldpoker@wsoptd @wsopLove you South Africa.Ty every 1.Every 1 Here is Great.Thanks again !!

— Michael Mizrachi (@TheGrinder44) February 10, 2013

In the latest NUTS, I wrote: “@thegrinder44‘s pattern continues. Win huge event, get forgotten in these rankings, win another huge event.”

— Andrew Feldman (@AFeldmanESPN) February 11, 2013

Bally Technologies and Amaya Gaming sign poker content agreement – More reports of Vegas iGaming additions. The race is on and will be interesting to see who comes out ahead.

MGM Resorts Looks To Re-Enter New Jersey In Possible Internet Gaming Move – Gov. Christie takes positive steps towards online poker in NJ and all of a sudden MGM is again interested in Atlantic City.

Poker / By Alex Outhred – Hey, look who has a poker strategy article in the world renown Buffalo News! Good friend, and one of the good guys, Alex Outhred. (Part congrats, part needle, all complimentary)

Zynga’s Shares Rise As Legal US Online Gambling Is Mooted – Any time Forbes or a legitimate publication talks about online gambling, it’s noteworthy. This one is chock full of snark.

$100k in 7 Days! Let’s do this! – Daniel Negreanu is using his platform for a very worthy cause. A refreshing change for him.

With the biggest gambling holiday of the year just days away, it seems appropriate that the world has gone poker crazy. We have reached a crescendo to the post-PCA madness, as big events wrapped up in Australia, France, and down in Mississippi. We also have a report from India, as well as some action in Los Angeles, Atlantic City and Hollywood (Florida, that is).

Aussie Millions (Melbourne, Australia)

What was originally planned as an 8-man, winner-take-all $250,000 sit-n-go ballooned into a 20-player turbo with a $5 million prize pool. The top three players would get paid, with $AUD 2.5 million for the biggest degenerate winner. Tom Dwan, Roland de Wolfe, John Juanda, Annette “annette_15” Obrestad, Chris Ferguson and some guy named Phil Ivey were amongst those to lose a quarter of a million dollars in one day. While Dwan and Ivey are probably used to that on any given Tuesday, it was probably enough to ruin a few peoples’ weeks.

It seems like a wealth of riches was reserved to quite an exclusive group. David Benyamine cashed for $AUD 1 million for his third place finish, leaving a heads-up battle between two players who had very good January’s. Erik Seidel finished fourth in the $10K High Roller at PCA, while Sam Trickett won the “regular” $AUD 100K Super High Roller event less than a week before this tournament. Trickett entered the heads-up match with the chip lead, but failed to finish the impressive back-to-back performance, as Erik Seidel was victorious, taking home $AUD 2.5 million for his efforts.[PokerNews]

Then there’s the matter of the Aussie Millions Main Event, which somehow managed to take a back seat to this event, despite the $AUD 7 million prize pool. Among the final eight, the biggest name by far was Patrik Antonius. His stay at the final table was not a long one, as he had his pocket kings cracked early on in the day to go out in eighth. The last man standing was local tournament pro David Gorr, who took home $AUD 2 million for the win. This was Gorr’s biggest score, having toured the greater-Australia tournament scene since 1998. [Poker News]

WPT Southern Poker Championship (Biloxi, Mississippi)

An interesting collection of six made up this WPT final table at the Beau Rivage. Former champion Allen Carter was trying to become the first person in the history of the World Poker Tour to win the same event twice. Also among the six was Alabama native Shannon Shorr, with over $3.4 million in lifetime cashes, and Leif Force, whose deep run in the 2006 WSOP Main Event was one of the more memorable stories of that year.

Shorr would end up in fourth, while Carter’s run at history would fall short in third place. Alexander Kuzmin, who made a final table at this past WSOP, went head-to-head with Force, and it was the pesky Russian Kuzmin taking the crown, along with the $601,469 prize and a seat in the WPT Championship later on this year. [WPT]

EPT Deauville (Deauville, France)

The EPT got back underway with its first post-PCA event in Deauville. 891 players ponied up €5,000, with the winner taking home €880,000. The final table saw players from six different countries, but the biggest story was about a local Frenchman by the name of Lucien Cohen. The Paris native runs a pest control company and used a small rubber rat as a card protector. Lucien Cohen was “The Exterminator” on this evening, taking home the EPT Deauville Main Event and nearly €900K. [PokerStars Blog]

Making some noise for the first time since his WSOP win in November, Jonathan Duhamel won the €10,000 High Roller event in Deauville. [PokerStars Blog]

India Poker Series (Goa, India

A few weeks ago, the fourth in a series of poker tournaments was held at Casino Royale Goa in India. Three events were held; a 5,000 rupee rebuy event, a 10,000 rupee freezeout and a 5,000 rupee freeeout. Players from around the world, including the USA, UK and Sweden, participated in the tournaments, which each got at least 90 players. Congratulations to Anand Patil, Lawrence Sanjay and Pulkit Kalia for their victories at IPS Chapter 4. [India Poker Series]

LA Poker Classic (Commerce, California)

Action continued this week with more than a dozen tournaments. The biggest news of the week, however, might have been an appearance from a wild and crazy guy. No, not Matt Savage, but the OG wild and crazy guy, Steve Martin! For updates on everything going on at LAPC, head elsewhere on that blog and check out the amazing work that veeRob is doing over there. That guy never sleeps.

Borgata Winter Poker Open (Atlantic City, New Jersey)

At last check, there were just over 100 players left in the $3k main event. First place in this tournament is over $500,000, and you can check out updates as they happen here.

Photos courtesy of PokerStarsBlog.com & WPT.com

Who says tournament poker is dying/hurting? It’s hard to go anywhere on the planet these days without finding a major soccer poker tournament. Lots of kids with disposable bankrolls, it seems … and lots of older folks trying to grab it.

At the EPT Deauville, which just wrapped up, all eyes were on Elky and Peter Eastgate to take down the biggest tournament ever in France. But out of 768 runners, they went out in 9th and 8th, respectively, with 21-year-old Brit Jake Cody winning the €847,000 top prize and presumably earning himself a spot on the PokerStars Kids Team.

Elky, meanwhile went pimptastic/not-gay in his homeland, sponsoring Team ElkyLady:

The LAPC is just getting into the thick of its WSOP-duration run. Click here to follow the winners as the events unfold. Of all these events going on worldwide, this one is still probably the biggest.

Across the continent, in Atlantic City. the World Poker Open at the Borgata is rolling along, with their $3,500 main event starting Sunday. They’re still drawing fields in the multi-hundreds, making Borgata the East Coast place to be.

But let’s not forget Mississippi — which used to be the preferred place for poker players to kick off the new year. They only got 208 entries into the $10k WPT main event at Beau Rivage. The final table for the Southern Poker Championship is set:

Name Chips

Hoyt Corkins 2,069,000
Tyler Smith 1,169,000
Jerry Vanstrydonck 1,044,000
Jonathan Kantor 894,000
Jared Jaffee 762,000
James Reed 377,000

Follow the good-ole-boy action here.

Halfway around the world, the Aussie Millions is into Day 2 of their main event. After a festive Australia Day celebration, things got underway for the big-daddy of this Southern Hemisphere main event:

Some other cool tourneys at the Crown Casino still going … It’s very 2 Months $2 Milliony In the Australian heads-up championship, they’re duking it out to see which four will advance to the money matches against Andrew Lichtenberger, Barry Woods, Vanessa Selbst, and Martin Gudvangen.

And action is just getting underway for the Team Event. Here’s how they play team poker down under:

How Does Team Poker Work
The game is No Limit Hold’em. Teams of two, only one member from each team is on the felt at a time.

The partner’s rotate whose turn it is to play the team’s stack each level. The first players in the game get half of the team’s start bank, if they bust in the first level the team mate comes in immediately and plays with the other half of the team’s starting bank.

That person will play the remainder of the first level, and the second, before the original partner resumes play in the third level.

From the second level onwards team will have their full stacks in play, and once it’s gone the team is eliminated.

And our new-good friends at the Heartland Poker Tour are in Quapah, Oklahoma — at the Downstream Casino in the far northeast end of the state, running qualifiers for their next televised main event, which gets underway this weekend. This one is good clean All-American fun for the kids, too, as you only need to be 18 to play.

The Venetian Deep Stacks is also getting ready to start — with Event #1 kicking off Friday, so it’s not like nothing’s going on here in Las Vegas these days. .