Tuesday, February 12, 2008

Poker Stars - Ultimate Player Party for 2008 Canadian Open

Ultimate Player Party for 2008 Canadian Open

The Maxim/Coors Light "Ultimate Players Party" will be presented by HeadsUp Entertainment Inc on March 5th and will kickoff this year's COPC.

Taking place at the Snatch Rock n' Roll Lounge in Calgary, Alberta, the party will feature an intimate performance by Suzie McNeil. McNeil is most well-known for being the runner up in the popular reality television show Rock Star INXS and is nominated for the 2008 New Artist of the Year at this year's Juno Awards.

Also confirmed to be attending is actress/poker player/bombshell Jennifer Tilly. Raised in Victoria, B.C., Tilly has won numerous accolades in the acting world but has made quite the splash in the poker world and in 2005 won the $1,000 Ladies' No-Limit Texas Hold'em event. Tilly is currently dating poker pro Phil "Unabomber" Laak who will also be attending the party.

2004 LAPC winner Antonio Esfandiari will also be taking part in the festivities as well as 1996 Main Event winner Huckleberry Seed. Everybody's favorite Canadian poker pro, "Yukon" Brad Booth, will also be making an appearance.

The party will be hosted by the girls from Coors Light, Maxim Magazine and HeadsUp Entertainment so it's doubtful the night will get boring.

"This will be a night like Calgary has never seen," said HeadsUp Entertaminment's president and CEO Kelly B. Kellner. "With some of the Canada's most beautiful women, international celebrities, poker pros and phenomenal entertainment this is a must attend event and a rare opportunity to attend a Maxim party!"

The party begins at 7 p.m. with a limited number of VIP tickets going on sale to the public on Feb. 16 through Ticketmaster.

To learn more about the 2008 Canadian Open Poker Championships click here.

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Richard Lee's gambling list released

It wasn't his poker skills that kept him in the public eye, however. Just a few short weeks after cashing in at the WSOP while choosing to promote his hometown of San Antonio rather than an online poker room, Lee's home in Texas was raided by the San Antonio police.

According to the police, the home had been under investigation for months for illegal gambling. The police believed Richard Lee was running an illegal gambling ring from his home in San Antonio.

During the search, betting slips with names of players and gambling debts were found. They also found a "person of interest" looking at an illegal gambling Web site on a computer.

In October 2007, Lee was formally charged for promoting illegal gambling on his Web site. He pleaded no contest to the charges and gave up $2.2 million in a deal with the prosecutors.

Last week District Attorney Susan Reed announced that the Attorney General ruled that some, but not all, of Lee's alleged gambling list be made public. The list is that of the registered users of Lee's Web site.

The list was released today after the certain contact information was redacted and withheld because the contents of the list constituted "highly intimate or embarrassing" information such that it would be considered private under Texas law.

The list consists of names of people believed to have placed bets on Lee's Web site, and names not believed to have placed bets were withheld.

According to News 4 Trouble Shooter Brian Collister in San Antonio, there are several names that appear to be well-known businessmen in the area, but nothing else remarkable and nothing that indicates they actually placed bets through the site.

The District Attorney's Office said those who gambled with Lee committed no crime and will not be charged with anything.

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The Poker Boom Part 3: Live tourneys benefit

The first two parts of this series looked at the role television played in setting the stage for the poker boom in 2003 and the growth of the online poker industry. Today we turn to how those two catalysts fueled an unprecedented expansion of major live tournaments and their prize pools.

The WSOP booms: 2004-2005

Thanks to Chris Moneymaker's unexpected win in 2003 and ESPN's broadcasts of the event, the WSOP became one of the focal points for poker's growth throughout 2004 and 2005, forcing the event to move away from Binion's Horseshoe in downtown Las Vegas to the roomier Rio Hotel and Casino off the Strip.

The Main Event

The Main Event was the most obvious sign of the game's growing popularity throughout 2004 and 2005. In 2004, it set a new record for the largest poker tournament in history when 2,576 players turned up.

That was more than triple the previous year's total, making the first prize worth a record $5,000,000. The field was so large that for the first time, the tournament staff broke the first day up into two heats to accommodate everyone who wanted to play.

#img: greg-raymer_8546.jpg: left: Raymer becomes the second PokerStars qualifier to win the Main Event.#

Just as the year before, the winner had qualified for the event through an online satellite. Greg Raymer wasn't quite the unknown that his predecessor Moneymaker had been, but the fact that he won his WSOP seat online only encouraged more players to try to replicate the feat.

In 2005, the Main Event's growth was also record-setting as 5,619 players turned up at the Rio for a chance at the $7,500,000 first prize. The mammoth $52,818,610 prize pool was so heavy that all nine players who made the final table won at least $1,000,000.

The victory by retired chiropractor Joe Hachem was the spark that ignited poker fever in his home country of Australia.

The house that Moneymaker built

PokerStars - the "house that Moneymaker built" - has kept track of its players since it first sent them to Las Vegas in 2002. Based on the information at their Web site, here's a look at how much of the WSOP Main Event field was made of PokerStars players from 2002 (before the boom) to 2005 (in the middle of it).

#img: pokerstars-graph_17049.jpg: right#

  • 2002: 631 entries - 2 qualifiers from PokerStars, 0 at final table
  • 2003: 839 entries - 37 qualifiers from PokerStars, 1 at final table
  • 2004: 2,576 entries - 316 qualifiers from PokerStars, 4 at final table
  • 2005: 5,619 entries - 1,116 qualifiers from PokerStars, 2 at final table

Preliminary events

Throughout 2004 and 2005, the preliminary events saw a marked increase in attendance as well, due in part to ESPN's expanded coverage that included final tables from other bracelet events.

For at least the last five years, the first No-Limit Hold'em event at the WSOP has been the cheapest - generally a $1,500 or $2,000 buy-in event with a large field - making it one where players who want an economical shot at a WSOP bracelet get the most bang for their buck.

In 2003, professional player "Minneapolis" Jim Meehan took down the first NLHE tournament against a field of 407 players. The next year saw relative neophyte James Vogl outlast 834 entrants in the first $1,500 NLHE of the WSOP, while pro player Allen Cunningham topped 2,305 runners for the first 2005 $1,500 NLHE bracelet.

The event proved so popular in 2004 and 2005 that the first prize rivaled that of the average WPT event, despite having a buy-in less than one-sixth the size.

No-Limit Hold'em wasn't the only game that grew in popularity. Among the highest buy-in events in other variants of Hold'em, Stud, and Omaha, attendance rose by 26.5% from 2003 to 2004, and by 51.8% from 2004 to 2005. Events with smaller buy-ins saw similar growth throughout the two largest WSOPs poker had ever seen.

Europe joins the game

#img: john-duthie_10347.jpg: left: John Duthie capitalizes on the poker boom in Europen.#

John Duthie, a British television producer, became the first man to win over $1,000,000 on a televised poker tournament in Europe when he topped the 2000 Poker Million. In the fall of 2004, Duthie cashed in on the boom in another way with the creation of the European Poker Tour.

The EPT began modestly in September 2004 with the €1,000 Barcelona Open, which awarded €80,000 to Alexander Stevic when he outlasted a field of 229 players. The rest of the season, which ran to early spring 2005, would be characterized by relatively affordable events with healthy starting fields.

Cheap satellites on PokerStars, the EPT's sponsor, helped bolster the tour's fields and even produced a champion. American Brandon Schaefer, who won a PokerStars satellite with frequent player points to get his seat, won the French Open in February 2005.

When Schaefer finished second in the Grand Final at Monte Carlo the next month, the EPT's reputation as an online-satellite-friendly tour was born.

The second season of the EPT saw bigger buy-ins and playing fields. The average buy-in rose from about €2,000 to about €4,000 and the average field size nearly doubled.

The season ended with 19-year-old Jeff Williams, an American online qualifier unable to legally play tournaments in his home country, taking home a Grand Final first prize of €900,000. Only two years into its existence, the EPT had arrived.

The boom repays the WPT

The WPT was a huge success with its first season on the Travel Channel. Together with readily available online poker rooms, the WPT had made poker a cultural force. Now it was time for the game's new devotees to take the WPT even higher.

The threefold growth of the WPT in its second year was simply without precedent in 2004. The average field for Season 1 was 126 players and the average prize pool was $967,720. In Season 2, the average field grew to 319 and the average prize pool tripled to $2,721,037.

Much of the growth was thanks to the booming popularity of online poker. In March 2004 Business Wire quoted Steven Lipscomb on the role PartyPoker played in the second-season growth of the WPT.

"The fact that last year there were 177 players in this tournament is a testament to PartyPoker.com and its dedication to growing the event," Lipscomb said of the 546-strong field of entries. "We at the WPT can't believe the increase in players for the PartyPoker Million."

It wasn't just PartyPoker's cruise that was growing. Nine of the tour's 13 stops during Season 2 drew more than 300 players, including the season-ending WPT Championship. With a $25,000 buy-in - the highest in the world at the time - the tourney still drew 343 players to create an $8,342,000 prize pool.

The WPT's third season was even more of a success. A second Bellagio tournament and the Mirage Poker Showdown were added to the schedule and drew strong participation. The average prize pool went up to $4,552,979, and the average field size grew to 464 players.

The growth was most reflected in the fact that the WPT's first season only had 1 of 12 tournaments pay out at least $1,000,000 for first place, but only three of 15 events in Season 3 did not award at least $1,000,000 to the winner.

Conclusion

The two year period from 2004 to 2005 saw poker grow to such heights that the future appeared limitless. It seemed that only one thing - government interference - could get in the way of the game's continued expansion. Up to that point, opponents of online gambling in America had been shouting into the void. Soon they would become a major influence on poker, which we will examine in Part 4 of the series.

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The Other Side of the Felt, Vol. 1: Road to the WSOP
I have always said that I have the best job in the world. Being a tournament director has given me the opportunity to see the world, meet my beautiful wife, Maryann (which resulted in the birth of my son in 2006), and meet thousands...

FTOPS VII: Edler's event goes to gautchos

The $1,000+$60 No-Limit Hold'em six-max event saw 1,649 players show up to boost the prize pool to $1,649,000. Getting the best of it was gautchos, from Norway, who added $329,800 to his bankroll for the win.

The final-table results were as follows:

Place
Name
Prize
1st
gautchos
$329,800
2nd
fish_lovr
$211,896.50
3rd
muchaka
$148,410
4th
BWgot_milf
$110,483
5th
Drewkamm
$79,152
6th
TK420 US
$53,592.50

The event, the tenth in the Full Tilt Poker series, paid out to the top 204 players. Among those were some familiar names as Stefan Rapp placed 60th as the highest placing Full Tilt pro and Brad Booth wasn't too far behind him in 65th place.

Scott Fischman also squeaked into the money in 198th place.

Today's event will be hosted by two-time World Series of Poker bracelet winner and two-time World Poker Tour winner Howard Lederer.

His event will be the $200+$16 Limit Omaha Hi/Lo with a $200,000 guaranteed prize pool kicking off at 9 p.m. (EST).

Players will also get a shot at another guaranteed $1 million prize pool Wednesday with Event 12 hosted by Scott Clements. It will be a $300+$22 No-Limit Hold'em six-max re-buy event.

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PartyPoker Premier League, Day 2: Tony G Wins Another Heat
Day 2 of the 2008 edition of the PartyPoker Premier League saw reversals of fortune for some players and a solo overall lead for Tony G, who started the day tied with Roland de Wolfe for first place after they each took down a Day 1...

tomgus456 wins PokerStars Sunday Million

This Sunday nearly 7,800 players logged on and gave the tournament their best shot with hundreds of thousands of dollars being awarded.

tomgus456 was the big winner of the day and managed to take down the Sunday Million for $189,487. It's not tomgus456 first major online victory as he won a Bodog $100,000 event in January. tomgus456 beat Eric "Rizen" Lynch in heads-up play in the Bodog event.

This week's PokerStars Sunday Million was a repeat of the 2006 Olympic Hockey final with Finland vs. Sweden, tomgus456 representing Finland while haxxorie hails from Sweden.

Because of a deal the top three players three finishers each received over $100,000 each. Not bad for a day's work.

The Sunday Million wasn't the only special event running on PokerStars, however. Ryan "Daut44" Daut finished one place above Bertrand "ElkY" Grospellier in the PokerStars $5,200 Freezeout. Daut won $72,019 for his efforts while ElkY had to settle for $27,981. Ironically Ryan Daut is perhaps best known for winning the 2007 PokerStars Caribbean Adventure, an event that Grospellier managed to win this year.

Because of a three-way deal in the PokerStars Sunday Warm-Up InterTony managed to win the event and cash for $70,321 but guyguy12 actually won the most money, $75,027, for coming in second. chuckchuk finished third for $60,259.

Here's a look at the complete results:

PokerStars Sunday Warm-Up Final Table Results
Based on finishing order and three-way deal

1. InterTony (United States) $70,321.90
2. guyguy12 (Israel) $75,027.19
3. chuckchuk (Canada) $60,259.95
4. INW85 (Sweden) $31,720.00
5. Zauron111 (Denmark) $24,868.48
6. StoneCold17 (Canada) $18,397.60
7. TiltHappens (United States) $13,322.40
8. bdubs3737 (United States) $8,374.08
9. AMausi08 (Switzerland) $4,948.32


PokerStars $5,200 Freezeout Results
Based on finishing order and two-way deal

1. Daut44 (United States) $72,019.00
2. ElkY (France) $27,981.00


PokerStars Sunday Million Final Table Results
Based on finishing order and three-way deal

1. tomgus456 (Finland) $189,487.25
2. haxxories (Sweden) $115,654.19
3. 4JesseJames4 (United States) $102,844.96
4. mbouh (Canada) $62,288.00
5. SitAndStack (United States) $46,716.00
6. Wibez (Sweden) $34,258.40
7. UNLEASHED66 (United States) $24,136.60
8. david_a (Sweden) $14,014.80
9. scoots_mc (United States) $9,187.48

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CD Poker Set to Host Five Fantastic €1,500 PokerNews Cup Austria Freerolls!
CD Poker is delighted to announce five fantastic €1,500 PokerNews Cup Austria Freerolls, exclusively for PokerNews players. The first freeroll begins Saturday February 16 at 13:00 EST and qualification is easy!

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