Posts Tagged ‘ept’
Sorel Mizzi Wins 2010 Bluff Magazine Player of the Year
January 3rd, 2011
Mizzi’s success in 2010 was good enough to earn him honors from Bluff.
Pro poker player Sorel Mizzi has been named the 2010 Player of the Year by Bluff Magazine.
Mizzi’s year started off with a bang when he took third place in the Aussie Millions Main Event, good for $659,000. He followed up that performance with a preliminary event win at the Wynn Classic and two preliminary event wins at EPT Snowfest in March and a victory at the Borgata East Coast Poker Championship in Atlantic City in April. A string of big finishes in high roller tournaments followed, with the EPT Grand Final (6th place), WPT Rendez-Vous a Paris (2nd), EPT Tallinn (2nd) and EPT London (5th) big-ticket tournaments providing him more than $525,000 in winnings.
Mizzi didn’t slow down as the end of 2010 approached. He was the TV table bubble boy at the WPT World Poker Finals at Foxwoods in October, good for nearly $89,000, and he made two final tables at the LA Poker Open, including a win in a $1,585 bounty event. The Five Diamond World Poker Classic at Bellagio was the site of Mizzi’s fina impressive performances of 2010: he finished sixth in one preliminary event and then took ninth place in the WPT main event there. All told, his take in 2010 added up to nearly $1.9 million, ranking him 12th on the year’s money list even though he didn’t win a major title.
Finishing in second place in the Bluff Player of the Year race behind Sorel Mizzi was Tom Marchese, who won the 2010 Player of the Year award from Card Player magazine. Other top performers included Fernando Brito, David Peters, Vanessa Selbst, Eric Baldwin, Dwyte Pilgrim, Chris Bjorin, Bluff’s 2009 POY Jason Mercier and Chris Bell.
Tom Marchese Wins Card Player Player of the Year
December 24th, 2010
Merry Christmas, Mr. Player of the Year! (Photo: WJMedia.net)
With the last major tournament of the year now put to bed in Atlantic City, Card Player magazine has its 2010 Player of the Year: live tournament circuit rookie Tom “kingsofcards” Marchese.
Marchese’s year started off in style with his first-ever live tournament cash, a third-place finish at the Borgata Winter Open championship event. It didn’t give him any POY points, but it was good for $190,027. Then Marchese won the NAPT Venetian main event ($827,648), took fourth at the Wynn Classic ($73,356), took fourth at the EPT Grand Final High Roller event ($350,125) and finished sixth at the WSOP $10,000 Pot-Limit Hold’em World Championship ($123,364), all by the end of the summer.
From there Marchese upped the ante with final table appearances at EPT London (7th, $157,159), the WPT Foxwoods World Poker Finals (3rd, $211,759) and the NAPT Los Angeles Bounty Shootout (5th, $24,000) before closing out the year with a $45,958 win in a $1,000 rebuy tournament at Bellagio’s Five Diamond World Poker Classic. All told, his two titles and 11 final tables earned him more than $2.1 million in 2010.
The incredible year for Marchese overshadowed another impressive year from Dwyte Pilgrim, whose five titles (including the WPT Borgata Poker Open), 13 final tables and $1 million in earnings were good for second place on the Card Player POY list. The rest of the top five was made up of Borgata Spring Poker Open champ Sorel Mizzi, NAPT Mohegan Sun and Partouche Poker Tour winner Vanessa Selbst, and 2010 WSOP Main Event runner-up John Racener.
Tom Marchese joins some pretty select company as the Card Player Player of the Year. Past winners have included Michael Mizrachi, Eric Baldwin, Men “The Master” Nguyen, T.J. Cloutier, John Phan, David Pham and Daniel Negreanu.
Rumor: Poker Pros Involved in Machete Mugging at EPT Barcelona
November 25th, 2010
William Reynolds, on the business end of an 18 inch machete?
Rumors are starting to swirl that a pair of poker pros have been involved in a machete mugging at the EPT. Well, by “rumors”, I mean a couple of Facebook posts, a TwoPlusTwo post about those posts and one cryptic Tweet that may or may not have been written purely as a result of those Facebook posts. But in any case, the situation seems to be that pros Carter Phillips and William Reynolds may have been on the receiving end of some machete menacing at the Barcelona stop of the European Poker Tour.
Carter Phillips, who won this event last year, posted this on Facebook a few hours ago: “I’d like to make this announcement that I am 95% sure that I am officially done with poker. more details to come. in the process of writing out a lengthy explanation to release to the poker community shortly.”
Then fellow pro William Reynolds replied with: “for all of you that want to make bets or ridicule this post, now is not the time – none of this has anything to do with anything card related – people got robbed tonight and almost injured. I am thankful the 18in machete that was being swung at me last night didn’t kill me – the end.”
Another pro, Jonathan Aguiar, then sent out this tweet: “giving thanks that I am with my family now instead of being robbed by machete wielding maniacs at EPT Barcelona.”
And that, so far, is the extent of the news. We’ll probably look more soon, but in the meantime, hopefully everyone’s okay and nobody ended up getting hurt in the incident.
Vanessa Selbst Wins Partouche Poker Tour Grand Final
November 8th, 2010
Vanessa Selbst scored her second major victory of 2010 this weekend.
While the poker world’s eyes were fixed on Las Vegas this weekend for the conclusion of the WSOP Main Event, one of the game’s top young talents was busy laying claim to her second major tournament title of the year.
Vanessa Selbst held the chip lead in the Partouche Poker Tour Grand Final when play was suspended, November-Nine-style, back in September. This weekend she returned to the Palm Beach Casino in Cannes, France, to play out the final table, and the chip lead served her well. She was able to outlast a lineup of experienced professional poker players, including veteran French pro Fabrice Soulier, former EPT Grand Final High Roller winner Tobias Reinkemeier and former Danish Poker Championships winner Søren Kongsgaard. One player Selbst didn’t have to contend with was former WPT Spanish Championship winner Ali Tekintamgac, who was disqualified by PPT officials prior to the final table on charges that he used confederates posing as members of the media to gain an unfair advantage over his competitors.
For the win, the sixth on her four-year live tournament resume, Vanessa Selbst earned €1,300,000 (US $1,825,720) and a trophy that’s nearly as big as she is. Along with her winnings from her victory at the NAPT Mohegan Sun main event, her fourth-place finish at the EPT London High Roller event and a handful of other scores in Australia, Europe and North America, her PPT earnings mean she has now won more than $2.8 million in 2010. With total career live tournament earnings of $3.76 million she is now the third-winningest woman in poker history, trailing only tournament veterans Kathy Liebert and Annie Duke.
Tom Marchese, Live Poker Rookie of the Year
November 5th, 2010
Nobody new to live poker tournaments has had a 2010 like Tom Marchese.
There are lot of awards handed out in the poker world every year, but they tend to be scattered around different locales and are far from comprehensive. If there were a comprehensive set of awards, though, it would be hard to find a more qualified candidate for Rookie of the Year in 2010 than Tom Marchese.
Primarily an online cash game player under the screen name “kingsofcards” before 2010, Marchese decided to hit the live tournament circuit at the beginning of this year with a stop at the Borgata Winter Open in Atlantic City. He took third place in the main event there, good for $190,027 – not a bad way to get the first live tournament cash of your career. Three weeks later Marchese had one-upped himself, defeating Sam Stein in heads-up play at the NAPT Venetian main event to lay claim to the $827,648 top prize. Just two months into the calendar year, that put him well over $1 million in earnings for 2010.
Marchese didn’t stop there, though. He followed those scores up with a cash at the WPT’s Bay 101 main event ($20,500) and a fourth-place finish at the Wynn Poker Classic main event ($73,356) before moving on to Europe, where he took fourth place in the EPT Grand Final High Roller tournament ($350,125). Toss in two WSOP cashes, including a sixth-place finish in the $10,000 Pot Limit Hold’em World Championship ($123,364), and final-table finishes at the Empire State Hold’em Championships ($31,117) and the EPT London main event ($156,490), and Marchese’s take through September was better than many top-notch players’ career-best years. Then in October he added three more cashes to his resume, including a third-place finish at the recent WPT Foxwoods World Poker Finals main event good for $211,759.
Only three players (November Niner Michael Mizrachi, EPT Grand Final champ Nicolas Chouity and PCA Main Event champ Harrison Gimbel) have earned more at the live tournament tables than Marchese in 2010. All of them had resume entries from before 2010, while Tom Marchese has $2,036,033 in live tournament cashes all dating back to this January. That’s enough to make him our official nominee for the nonexistent award of 2010′s Live Poker Rookie of the Year.
Daniel Negreanu Falls Short at EPT Vienna
November 1st, 2010
“Almost” turned into “not quite” for Daniel Negreanu in Vienna.
Daniel Negreanu entered the final table of the EPT Vienna Main Event yesterday holding more than a quarter of the chips in play. He’d held the chip lead for most of the three previous days and looked like a good bet to not only take down the tournament, but also to make poker history at the same time.
A win for Negreanu would have been big news. It would have been Negreanu’s first significant tournament win since taking down the British Columbia Poker Championships in November 2008. (He won a side event at EPT Vilamoura in September, but the win was worth just more than $10,000.) A win would also have made him the third player to capture poker’s Triple Crown – a WSOP bracelet, a WPT title, and an EPT title – putting him in company with Gavin Griffin and Roland de Wolfe. But biggest of all, a Negreanu win would have catapulted him past Phil Ivey to the top of poker’s all-time tournament earnings list.
With all that riding on him, Negreanu appeared focused and ready to seal the deal – at least until a three-way pot developed between him, Luca Cainelli and Martin Hruby. Cainelli opened preflop for a raise and Negreanu and Hruby came along to see a K-8-5 flop. Cainelli continued his action with a big bet, and both of his opponents called. Holding A-A, Cainelli then shoved all-in when the nine of spades hit the turn, and Negreanu immediately did the same with his K-9 for two pair. Hruby paused and then called with 7-6, which had both men beaten with a straight. Another five hit the river, Cainelli was eliminated in fifth place, Negreanu was crippled, and Hruby seized the chip lead.
From there the short-stacked Negreanu managed to double up once, but soon afterward he found himself on the rail in fourth place, collecting his fourth place prize of €175,000 (US $243,915) giving an exit interview where he complained about Hruby slowrolling him. Hruby went on to finish in second place behind Germany’s Michael Eiler, who rode a short stack all the way to his first EPT title.
With his fourth-place finish at EPT Vienna, Daniel Negreanu remains in second place on the all-time money list, his $13,080,190 in lifetime earnings ranking him behind only the $13,642,275 earned by Phil Ivey.
Daniel Negreanu Cruising at EPT Vienna
October 29th, 2010
Daniel Negreanu: please, please, please, let me get what I want.
It hasn’t been the greatest of years for Daniel Negreanu at the poker tables. With $403,644 in winnings and no single score worth more than $80,000, he has earned less money in 2010 than he has in any year since 2001. But a strong performance at EPT Vienna so far has him close to turning this year around in a big, big way.
Negreanu ended Day 2 of the tournament as the chip leader, and he cruised again on Day 3 to end up in second place as the chip bags were distributed at the end of play. With 1,954,000 in chips, Kid Poker trails only Konstantinos Nanos (2,007,000) with just 24 players remaining from the original starting field of 587. Much of his progress over the last two days has come thanks to finding himself in dominating positions against all-in opponents – from holdings aces against kings to aces against queens to A-J against A-5, Negreanu has often been the recipient of some fantastic pre-flop pairings at the Vienna event. And even when he starts with the worst hand he still finds a way to win, as he did with pocket tens against one opponent’s pocket kings and with 6-4 against another opponent’s K-6.
Of course, anything can happen in a big-bet poker game, and with 24 players remaining the EPT Vienna main event is still anyone’s to win. But with a chance to reverse this year’s fortunes – not to mention the opportunity to pass Phil Ivey for tops on the all-time money list with a first-place finish – Daniel Negreanu will have plenty of motivation to keep up the good work when play resumes tomorrow.
EPT Vienna Main Event Draws 587 Players
October 27th, 2010
Pascal Perrault finally gets to defend his 2005 EPT Vienna title today.
Despite security concerns on the part of some local officials, poker players from all over Europe – and abroad – turned out in droves for the European Poker Tour’s first visit to Vienna in five years. The tour’s last stop in the Austrian capital was way back in 2005, when the EPT was wrapping up its first full season and the tournament’s buy-in was a mere €2,000. French poker pro Pascal Perrault beat the field of 297 players that year and claimed the €184,500 (US $244,296) top prize.
Fast-forward five years and EPT Vienna is big enough to have two starting flights. Day 1A saw 234 show up to begin their respective runs toward EPT glory, while Day 1B drew 353 players to boost the total attendance to 587. That’s not an EPT record, but it is a bigger attendance figure than the tour has seen for any of its stops this season, with the lone exception of EPT London. That kind of success seems likely to encourage EPT organizers to return to Vienna next season instead of waiting another five years to return.
The field that showed up was packed with pros, too. From former EPT champions like Pieter de Korver, Kevin MacPhee and Nicolas Chouity, to LAPT two-time champ Nacho Barbero, to American pros John Juanda and Jim Collopy, there was no lack of quality in the starting field. The EPT accounting department will have a bit of work to do before releasing the official prize pool numbers, but given the payouts earlier this year the top prize at EPT Vienna should work out to a figure north of the €500,000 mark.
No Armed Gangs Have Robbed EPT Vienna… Yet
October 26th, 2010
Daniel Negreanu sporting his military-style black sweater, just in case.
Action at the Vienna stop on the European Poker Tour got underway today and, so far, no armed gangs have pulled off any dramatic heists at the tournament. The event will host a number of high-profile tournaments, including a £5,000 Main Event, a $10,000 No Limit Hold’Em high-roller event and a £1,100 HORSE tournament. The first half of the field in the Main Event got their start today, with the remainder setting off tomorrow.
Despite the seeming calm today, tournament organizers aren’t taking any chances. In the last year, two large poker events in Europe have been the target of attacks by large groups of armed men. The first was another EPT stop, in Berlin, which was attacked early last March. Just a few weeks later, as many as 10 armed men stole hundreds of thousands of dollars from a casino near Basel, Switzerland.
Security at the Kursalon Hubner Palace is tight, and security levels in the city are high, like they’d be on an official state visit. Vienna’s special police WEGA unit is said to be at the ready, and police and security guards are on hand to escort tournament winners to the nearest bank. Some reports suggest that various Viennese law enforcement officials tried to persuade the government to cancel the tournament due to security concerns. Assuming the actual poker action continues to take center stage, celebs like Boris Becker will be battling some big name pros, including Daniel Negreanu.
Annette Obrestad Leads WPT Festa al Lago With 13 Left
October 18th, 2010
Can Annette put together her first WPT title run at Bellagio?
Another day of poker at Bellagio is in the books, this time taking the field at the WPT Festa al Lago from 41 players down to just 13. The overnight chip leader is none other than online poker legend and former WSOP Europe Main Event winner Annette Obrestad. Fresh off a heads-up tourney win at EPT London, the diminutive Norwegian bagged up 2,009,000 in chips at the end of the night to put her name in everyone’s overnight headlines.
Right behind Obrestad is Andy Frankenberger, the equity derivatives trader who won the WPT Legends of Poker main event in Los Angeles back in August. He finished the day with 1,820,000 chips. Close behind are Jeff Madsen (1,500,000), Allen Kessler (1,275,000), and John Monnette (1,271,000), with November Nine bubble boy Brandon Steven (977,000) a little further back. Other notables among the 13 remaining players include Florida poker pro Noah Schwartz, former WPT Southern Championship runner-up Bobby Suer and WPT Spanish Championship winner Randal Flowers.
Steve O’Dwyer came into the day with the chip lead, but after finding himself short-stacked he busted in 25th place when his queens fell to Brandon Steven’s 4-4. Also among the fallen on the day were Barry Greenstein (38th place), Tom Marchese (35th), Daniel Alaei (31st), Erik Cajelais (26th), Matt Affleck (22nd), Matt Stout (18th), McLean Karr (17th), Chad Batista (16th), Mark Newhouse (15th) and Lauren Kling (14th).
The plan for Day 5 is to play down to the TV table, which theoretically shouldn’t take long since the field only has to drop from 13 players to six and the uberaggressive Annette Obrestad is the chip leader. But this is tournament poker we’re talking about, and with a guaranteed $80,000 pay jump over 13th place money for everyone who makes the final table there could be plenty of incentive to slow things down, depending on who makes it close to that bubble. Action gets going at noon PT and as usual the WPT is covering the whole enchilada.
