Photo: Heartland Poker Tour

Today’s Boxscore

Greg Raymer $121,973 – HPT River City Casino
Mike Watson €1,000,000 – Majestic Super High Roller
Ludovic Lacay €744,910 – EPT Sanremo Main Event
Benny Spindler €253,000 – EPT Sanremo High Roller

Ludovic Lacay has been known as one of the best European players and now has a major championship to his credit after winning the EPT Sanremo Main Event. The French professional had booked over $2,000,000 in career earnings before this series but was having an admittedly bad run in recent months. The event drew a tough field by attracting many top pros to the casino on the Mediterranean coast and Lacay picked up €744,910 ($961,807) for outlasting them all.

Side note: Is the town spelled Sanremo or San Remo or Sanrœmu. All very confusing and PokerStarsBlog.com didn’t help my muddled brain. Back to your regularly schedule blathering.

Elsewhere in poker (and the forums naturally), attention over the last week was spent calmly and reasonably discussing the crazy situation of Phil Ivey winning £7.3 million playing Punto Banco in Britain’s oldest casino, only for them to turn around and deny payment. Not many missed the chance to have a little fun at Ivey’s expense, myself included, when the poor guy was owed millions yet a gaming company refused to let him cashout.

Completely made up Phil Ivey quote: “I am deeply disappointed and embarrassed that Crockford Casino players have not been paid money they are owed. I am not playing in the World Series of Punto Banco as I do not believe it is fair that I compete when others cannot. I am doing everything I can to seek a solution to the problem as quickly as possible.”

Link Dump

Tweet of the Day – Negreanu can’t go 5 minutes without finding himself in the middle of something. This time it was a blog post from Haralabos Voulgaris (linked below) calling out “Kid” Poker for his less then enthusiastic response to Erick Lindren being a deadbeat, broke dick. Negreanu earns another Deflection Badge of Honor.

People are empathetic to drug addicts, but consider gambling addicts fools/deadbeats. Studies show gambling is a similar illness for some.

— Daniel Negreanu (@RealKidPoker) October 10, 2012

Heroes and Villains in Poker – Voulgaris lays it out on the table about Full Tilt Poker, Black Friday, Erick Lindgren, and Negreanu’s soft touch with his friend’s situation. Some more big numbers thrown around and it makes you wonder what a lot of these guys in deep are leaving off.

Full Tilt Poker Receives Isle of Man Operating License – It looks like one of the last hurdles to the new/improved/non-thieving Full Tilt Poker has been cleared with the company being granted their operating license. Plans are for a launch on November 6 and wasting no time by jumping into a new FTOPS series on December 2nd.

New Entourage-Style Show Based on Poker Circuit – Matt Salsberg, winner of the WPT Grand Prix de Paris, will be using his Hollywood skills to create a poker-related poker show. The brains behind Entourage and Weeds also spoke with our friends at PokerListing about results, movies, and Black Friday.

FeltStars Leaves Online Poker – Another poker site hits the bricks as FeltStars shutters operations on the Merge Network. For those few who still trust their money on U.S. facing poker sites, it’s another hit to their game. There were quite a few top name players signed on as FeltStar pros including Matt Brady, David “Devilfish” Ulliot, and Ylon Schwartz.

The Final Table – Episode 1 – Looks like there will be a nice series of online episodes as Russell Thomas prepares for the 2012 WSOP Main Event final table with coach Jason Somerville and a cast of characters including “Friend of Pokerati” B.J. Nemeth.

If you missed it last week, one of our more astute hirsute co-panelists on The Poker Beat was break-dancing the fine line between news and conspiracy theory in analyzing the changing legal landscape of poker and what it means to the business we all dabble in.

The arrest of Daniel Tzvetkoff had something to do with that.

Also BJ and Gary look at actual numbers in comparing/contrasting the WPT to the EPT. All while assessing whether or not PokerStars is taking over the world. Plus Liv Boeree kicking arse as Huff celebrates the glorious life of Gang Starr.

The Poker Beat
4/22/10

[audio:http://www.pokerroad.com/download/the-poker-beat:60]
UPDATE: New audio file click here

For the third time in seven weeks, a woman has won a major poker tournament. Today, it was UB sponsored pro Liv Boeree the winner of the PokerStars.it EPT San Remo event, officially winning 1,250,000 Euros (about $1.7m US), defeating Jakob Carlsson in heads-up play. Below is a clip of the winning hand:

Meanwhile at the WPT World Championship, Heather Sue Mercer started Day 4 second in chips (1,364,000) with 35 players remaining. The only woman to win a non-ladies WPT event was Van Nguyen’s win at the sorta-open 2008 WPT Invitational. Among other notables remaining when play resumes at noon PT: Shawn Buchanan (1,841,000), Billy Baxter (887,500), Faraz Jaka (856,000), Phil Hellmuth (806,500), David Benyamine (731,000) Carlos Mortensen (586,000) and JJ Liu (495,000). Follow the live updates over at the the World Poker Tour site.

UPDATE: Mercer out in 20th

The PokerStars.it EPT San Remo reached their final table earlier and the most notable player remaining in the field when play resumes Wednesday afternoon (6am ET for those in the US) will be Liv Boeree. Following the wins of Annie Duke at the NBC Heads-Up and Vanessa Selbst at the PokerStars NAPT Mohegan Sun event so far this year, could Boeree follow in their footsteps tomorrow? The final table will be seated as follows:

Seat 1: Claudio Piceci – 4,460,000
Seat 2: Alexey Rybin – 1,890,000
Seat 3: Atanas Gueorguiev – 2,520,000
Seat 4: Jakob Carlsson – 13,525,000
Seat 5: Giuseppe Diep – 1,830,000
Seat 6: Liv Boeree – 3,440,000
Seat 7: Toni Pettersson – 5,035,000
Seat 8: Michael Piper – 4,600,000

Updates will be available over at PokerNews, along with live streaming video of the final table over at www.PokerStars.tv at 6am ET.