Posts Tagged ‘foxwoods’
2010 November Nine Reuniting at Foxwoods
January 10th, 2011
Foxwoods is getting the band back together – and you’re invited to come along.
Normally it takes a stroke of luck to get more than one former WSOP Main Event finalist at the same poker table. Next month, though, all nine of last year’s finalists will reunite at the Foxwoods Resort Casino.
Last year’s November Nine – Jonathan Duhamel, John Racener, Joseph Cheong, Filippi Candio, Michael Mizrachi, John Dolan, Jason Senti, Matt Jarvis and Soi Nguyen – are being reassembled as part of Foxwoods’ Mega Stack Challenge XIX, which runs from February 4th to the 13th. They will all serve as hosts for the tournament series, but more interestingly, they will all play in a three-table reunion tournament against winners of a series of satellite tournaments to be held at the casino from January 11th to February 3rd. The reunion tournament is scheduled for February 8th in the newly opened Foxwoods tournament room.
“We are thrilled to host these poker superstars at Foxwoods and are proud to be a part of such a historic event,” said Terry Chiaradio, director of Poker Operations at Foxwoods. “We are pleased to be able to share this reunion of the 2010 November Nine with not only the Foxwoods players, but also the entire poker community.”
This isn’t the first time Foxwoods has welcomed members of the November Nine to its property for one of its signature tournament series. Duhamel, the reigning world champion, hosted the Mega Stack Challenge last fall, and 2009 WSOP Main Event runner-up Darvin Moon has also played host at the Connecticut casino’s tournament series in the past.
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.
Darvin Moon Hosting Foxwoods Poker Tournaments
December 2nd, 2010
Don’t piss off Darvin Moon. He has a chainsaw and he knows how to use it!
Ah, Darvin Moon. Going into the 2009 November Nine as the overwhelming chip leader, the fiercely independent logger from Maryland turned his nose up at the gold mine of online poker sponsorships because he didn’t want anyone telling him where to go and what to do. Now that he has the longest Wikipedia entry of any self-employed logger in America Moon is apparently perfectly okay with taking orders, because he’s the host of the upcoming Mega Stack Challenge poker tournaments at Foxwoods.
The six-tournament schedule at the Mega Stack Challenge XVIII (that’s “18” if you’re not into Roman numerals) is all no-limit hold’em, all the time. Buy-ins range from $200 for the bounty tournament to $1,100 for the Main Event, and each tournament also has a guaranteed prize pool. The biggest guarantee is $100,000 for the Main Event, with another $275,000 guaranteed across the other five events.
Darvin Moon isn’t the first November Nine star to host the Foxwoods Mega Stack Challenge – 2010 world champ Jonathan Duhamel hosted the last installment earlier this year while he was waiting for the final table to resume. Moon’s tour as host begins this Saturday, December 4, when the $560 event gets started at 11:00 a.m. at Foxwoods, and continues through next weekend when the Main Event will play out. If you want to keep up how poker’s version of the Tea Party handles his hosting duties you can check out Foxwoods Live.
Erik Seidel, Dan Harrington Enter Poker Hall of Fame
November 9th, 2010
The two newest members of the Poker Hall of Fame surround WSOP tournament director Jack Effel. (Photo: WSOP)
Before the final heads-up match of the 2010 WSOP Main Event could get started last night, WSOP officials attended to the matter of this year’s Hall of Fame induction ceremony.
The first inductee was Dan Harrington. The 64-year-old Harrington first came to prominence in poker when he won two bracelets at the 1995 WSOP, including the Main Event championship. He then pulled off the incredible feat of making back-to-back Main Event final tables at the 2003 and 2004 WSOPs, finishing third and fourth, respectively. Shortly afterward he penned the seminal poker strategy guides, the three-volume series Harrington on Hold’em, securing his place in poker history by teaching an entire generation of poker players how to run over big tournaments. Then, in 2007, he added the WPT Legends of Poker title to his resume. All told, Harrington has won more than $6.6 million in live poker tournaments during his 25-year career.
This year’s other Hall of Fame inductee was Erik Seidel. The 51-year-old Seidel has been one of the most consistent performers in poker since he finished in second place behind Johnny Chan at his first major poker tournament, the 1988 WSOP Main Event. Though he has more high-profile runner-up finishes on his resume than arguably any other major poker player, he has also won eight gold bracelets over the years in six different forms of poker, placing him behind only fellow Hall of Famers Phil Hellmuth, Doyle Brunson, Johnny Chan and Johnny Moss for the most events won in WSOP history. He also has a WPT title to his credit from the 2008 Foxwoods Poker Classic. Seidel’s total career earnings since 1988 total more than $10.35 million.
With the additions of Harrington and Seidel – both former regulars at New York City’s legendary Mayfair Club – the Poker Hall of Fame now has 40 members.
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.
Small Turnout at WPT Foxwoods World Poker Finals
October 29th, 2010
Foxwoods Casino will be the WPT’s home for the next few days.
The World Poker Finals is one of the oldest continuously running tournament series in the United States. Poker players have turned up at the Foxwoods tournament series every year since it started in 1992, but the event’s inclusion on the inaugural World Poker Tour schedule in 2002 really got things going. Attendance has generally been strong at the Foxwoods event since then, though there has been a declining trend in recent years that has mirrored the larger trend across the WPT.
For the most part that trend has been reversed at WPT events this year, but Foxwoods will need to see a sizeable crowd turn up at the beginning of Day 2 if it wants to match last year’s attendance. Just 238 players showed up yesterday to play Day 1, meaning that another 115 players will have to register before today’s first level is complete to equal the 353 who showed up last year. The final registration numbers and prize pool information won’t be available until later today, but it looks as if this tournament is likely to be the smallest WPT event Foxwoods has hosted since 2003, when Hoyt Corkins abused Phil Hellmuth en route to his first WPT title.
Among those who did show up yesterday, 177 survived to get themselves a Day 2 seating assignment. Returning to the largest stack will be Lance Steinberg, who ended the day with 144,000 chips. He is trailed by Mohsin Charania (134,900), NAPT Mohegan Sun runner-up Mike Beasley (115,000), Erik Cajelais (110,925) and Ehsan Ghods (98,675). Also technically still in the hunt is the defending champion, Cornel Cimpan, though with just 6,700 in chips he’ll have his work cut out for him.
Day 2 gets going at noon ET today. The WPT will have live updates all day from its excellent team of BJ Nemeth and Jess Welman.
Dan Harrington, Erik Seidel Named to Poker Hall of Fame
October 19th, 2010
Erik Seidel was drawing dead to this pot, but drawing live to a storied career.
One of this year’s new Poker Hall of Fame members has won the biggest tournament of them all – and the other came close in one of the most famous clip in WSOP history.
Dan Harrington was the 1995 WSOP Main Event champion, though his poker career since then has perhaps been more memorable. He made back-to-back final tables at the Main Event in 2003 and 2004, then the two largest fields that high-stakes tournament poker had ever seen, finishing third and fourth, respectively. He then went on to finish second at the 2005 WPT Doyle Brunson North American Poker Championship at Bellagio before winning his first WPT title at the 2007 Legends of Poker in Los Angeles. In between those feats, he wrote one of the most influential books in the history of poker, Harrington on Hold’em. Harrington has won $6.6 million in his poker career, ranking him 31st on the all-time money list.
Erik Seidel came close to victory in the 1988 WSOP Main Event, but his fall to Johnny Chan in heads-up play became the most famous second-place finish in the game’s history once it was immortalized in the movie Rounders. Never one to dwell on a missed opportunity, Seidel has since made the most of his time at the tables by winning eight gold WSOP bracelets in five different poker games. He also added a WPT title to his resume in 2008 at the Foxwoods Poker Classic. All told, Seidel ranks 10th on the all-time money list with $10.35 million in lifetime earnings.
“I’m very honored to be elected to the Poker Hall of Fame this year and it’s an extra bonus for me to be going in with Dan Harrington,” said Erik Seidel. “We have played together and have been great friends for my entire poker career. Both of us refined our games at the Mayfair Club in New York. I have such a high regard for the many members of the Poker Hall of Fame that I have played with over the years and it’s a real privilege to be able to join them.”
The two men will be inducted into the Poker Hall of Fame during a special ceremony at the Rio in Las Vegas held during the November Nine weekend next month.
Foxwoods World Poker Finals Event Ends With 23-Way Chop
October 18th, 2010
John Agelakis got an extra $11 for first place. (Photo: WJMedia.net)
Chops aren’t rare in live poker tournaments, but anyone who’s ever tried to make one knows why they’re often limited to just a handful of players at the final table. It’s usually pretty hard to get the necessary unanimous consent when there are too many people left in the field because there will always be one jerk in the field making life hard for everybody else.
That was the case at the recent Foxwoods World Poker Finals $400 No-Limit Hold’em Deepstack event when there were 30 players left and talk of a deal came up – 29 players agreed and one player said “no.” Things changed when another seven players had been eliminated, though. With the blinds encroaching on every player’s stack, all 23 remaining competitors agreed to forgo the opportunity to play for the predetermined $68,158 top payout and instead split up the prize pool. Fifth place through 23rd received $10,091, while second through fourth each took $12,000.
In the end John Agelakis was the last man standing, giving him an extra $11 on top of the second-place prize as well as a few nifty extras – the championship trophy, a commemorative jacket, and the chance to be immortalized in a winner’s photo. Something tells me it’ll be quite some time before we see another 23-way chop, if only because there’s always one contrarian who wants to keep everyone from having a happy day.
You can follow all the action at this year’s World Poker Finals at the Foxwoods Live blog.
Poker Pro Nick Schulman Featured on MTV’s World of Jenks
October 12th, 2010
Nick Schulman held nothing back on MTV’s World of Jenks.
World of Jenks is a new show on MTV where Andrew Jenks, a 24-year-old documentary filmmaker, follows people from different walks of life for an entire episode. Other installments of the show have featured a homeless woman, a man with autism, a rapper, an MMA fighter, an NFL cheerleader, and female-fronted band – but the latest episode featured poker pro Nick Schulman.
World of Jenks followed Schulman to Las Vegas for the World Series of Poker, not only capturing the tournament experience but also offering a glimpse into the world of high-stakes gambling among top poker pros. John “World” Hennigan wins several thousand from Schulman when the young pro can’t throw enough cards into an ice bucket from across his hotel room, and Daniel Alaei loses $1,500 to Schulman playing Roshambo.
Schulman has been a fixture in tournament poker since winning the WPT World Poker Finals at Foxwoods Casino in 2005 at the age of 21. He told Jenks that despite winning $2.1 million, he managed to go broke and, worse, take on debt. “I was a maniac,” he told Jenks of his post-Foxwoods days. “Every day, I just wanted to be in action. It’s like rags to riches to rags, fast.” Schulman was also candid about his battles with depression and anxiety, describing how he first experienced panic attack in high school and subsequently dropped out. He says he still has to fight anxiety when he’s alone, but he somehow keeps the anxiety at bay when he plays poker.
You can watch the full Nick Schulman episode of World of Jenks at the MTV website.
