Posts Tagged ‘live poker tournaments’
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.
Poker Pro ElkY Playing in French StarCraft II Tournament This Weekend
October 21st, 2010
Will ElkY return to his Terran ways, or choose the Protoss or Zerg instead?
Bertrand “ElkY” Grospellier has enjoyed a wildly successful poker career, winning more than $6 million in live poker tournaments since 2007. It’s pretty well known at this point that ElkY enjoyed similar success playing computer games competitively before taking up poker – he was once a sponsored pro while living in South Korea, where the game of StarCraft is big business.
Now ElkY is returning to competitive gaming – at least for a weekend – at a major French tournament for StarCraft II, the recently released sequel to StarCraft. The eGG-One StarLeague Winter in France, which will be held this weekend, will be the stage for ElkY’s return to professional gaming.
“My biggest issue is since I’m very competitive I don’t want to come back just for fun,” ElkY said in an interview. “I want to be able to practice to have a chance to win it all. I don’t want to play tournaments just to get destroyed so it’s quite difficult. I love playing poker and I love StarCraft II so I try to have time for both. If there were some tournaments that don’t take a lot of time, i.e. online tournaments, I might be able to play more. I definitely don’t want to be around just for show. It makes me happy to go back to competitive gaming, it’s pretty motivating.”
It could be a tough row against pro players for the French poker pro, who says he has booked about 400 online games of StarCraft II in preparation for the tournament. But given that it’s all about the love of the game – the money is exponentially bigger in poker – the return of ElkY to pro gaming could be quite a sight for his fans to behold.
Former November Niner Scott Montgomery Robbed at Bellagio
October 11th, 2010
What’s two grand when you’ve got one of these? (Photo: Rob Mathis)
Life has been good for Scott Montgomery over the past couple of years. He made the WSOP Main Event final table in 2008 and won more than $3 million, won a bracelet at the WSOP this summer, and most recently was linked romantically to Norwegian poker phenom Annette Obrestad. But yesterday he caught a bit of success’ flip side when he was robbed at the Bellagio casino in Las Vegas.
Montgomery was at Bellagio to play in a Festa al Lago preliminary event and went to the bathroom on a break from the tournament. As he described it on his Twitter account, “Got mugged today at Bellagio. Black guy pulled a knife on me in the restroom. I gave him the $2k in my wallet and he left.”
“I called security, but they took like 15 mins so they didn’t catch him. They are useless twits. Didn’t even ask me to look at camera footage,” Montgomery continued. “Security pretty much just said oh well, life sucks, have a nice day. I’m pretty annoyed.”
There’s not much more in the way of details right now, unless you count the thread about the robbery at 2+2, which has mostly turned into a discussion of whether the ex-November Niner is racist because he mentioned that his attacker was black. Getting robbed certainly sucks, but Scott Montgomery should cheer up. It’s definitely better to be annoyed and out $2,000 than stabbed and out a pint or two of blood – especially when you’ve won $4.1 million in live poker tournaments since 2008.
EPT London Final Features John Juanda, Tom Marchese
October 3rd, 2010
London’s long month of poker tournaments is nearly over.
Five long days of poker are finished at the largest live poker tournament in UK history, and just eight men remain in contention for the £900,000 top prize at the EPT London main event.
American Kyle Bowker will enter tomorrow’s final table with the chip lead and a solid opportunity to grab the biggest score of his career. He ran roughshod over the field, building his stack from 921,000 chips at the start of play all the way up to a truly impressive count of 7,165,000 by the time the final eight player had been determined. Regardless of what happens Bowker is guaranteed his biggest cash since finishing second in the WSOP Circuit main event at Harrah’s Atlantic City last December, but he’ll certainly have the ammunition to make a title run instead of settling for an eighth-place finish.
The biggest obstacle standing between Bowker and an EPT title is his fellow American John Juanda. Juanda’s day went much like Bowker’s as he built his stack from a starting count of 1,272,000 chips up to 7,075,000 at day’s end. Sitting one seat to his left, he’ll have position on Bowker for the rest of the tournament. After years of not playing the EPT, this marks the second straight year that Juanda has cashed at EPT London. He finished in 40th place last year.
Also in the mix is Tom Marchese, who won the NAPT Venetian Las Vegas main event back in the spring. Marchese has won more than $1.6 million in live poker tournaments in 2010 despite never having cashed in one before this year. He’s one of the shorter stacks, starting in fifth place with 1,480,000 in chips, but he’s also a very dangerous player who sits one double-up away from making an impact on this final table.
The rest of tomorrow’s lineup is relatively short on major final table experience, but it does include former LA Poker Classic main event final tablist Per Ummer, and Artur Wasek, who survived a hold-up to finish in fifth place at last season’s EPT Berlin. Still, the nature of the game means that David Vamplew, Kayvan Payman and Fernando Brito all have the chance to walk away the winner at EPT London. They’ll start playing down to a champion at 12 p.m. local time Monday.
Dwyte Pilgrim Goes For First WPT Title at Borgata Today
September 23rd, 2010
In tournaments big or small, Dwyte Pilgrim is a heavyweight at the table.
Dwyte Pilgrim has only been playing live poker tournaments since early 2008, but he’s compiled more than $800,000 in winnings and a pretty impressive track record during that time. Some 22 of his 36 career cashes have been for paydays of at least five figures, and six of his cashes have been for tournament wins. That includes three wins on the WSOP Circuit, helping him to earn the nickname “The Best Minor League Player in Poker.”
Now Pilgrim has been called up to the majors – he’s playing for his first World Poker Tour title later today at the Borgata Poker Open. He’ll have 4,800,000, or 30 big blinds, in his stack, good for fourth place when play begins. That’s not a ton of room to maneuver, but the rest of the table is similarly stacked so that a single double-up would make Pilgrim the chip leader.
The man who occupies that top spot at the moment is Ofir Mor, a cash mixed-game regular at Borgata who finished 27th in this event last year and holds 7,300,000 in chips. Behind him are Benjamin Klier (6,625,000), Brandon Novena (5,125,000), Pilgrim, Kia Mohajeri (4,225,000) and Daniel Makowsky (3,300,000). Those who had hoped for a more star-studded final were disappointed by the eliminations of defending champion Olivier Busquet (25th place), Mike Sexton (20th), John D’Agostino (14th), Lee Childs (9th) and Jeffrey Papola (7th).
Dwyte Pilgrim and his tablemates will get the latest WPT TV table underway at 4:00 p.m. ET today.
British Poker Awards Honor Top UK Poker Pros
September 15th, 2010
Poker is huge in the UK these days, and now its top pros are being honored.
It’s been a big year for British poker players, who have been dominating live poker tournaments around the world, so it’s fitting that 2010 would be the first year for the British Poker Awards. And the names of those awards’ recipients matched up well with the list of the last year’s biggest winners from the UK.
James Akenhead, who made the final tables of both the WSOP Main Event and the WSOP Europe Main Event last year, took home the award for Best Tournament Player. Recent EPT Vilamoura final tablist and World Poker Open VI winner Sam Trickett took home the trophy for Best Newcomer, while WSOP bracelet winner Richard Ashby was named the Best All-Around Player.
Praz Bansi, who this summer became only the second player from the UK to win two WSOP bracelets, was honored as Player of the Year. UK poker guru Neil Channing won Best Cash Game Player, top-ranked online poker star Chris Moorman was named Best Online Player, and all-time tournament earnings leader Phil Ivey was named Best International Player.
The British Poker Awards show was hosted by Michael Casselli, editor of Bluff Europe magazine, and pro poker player Antonio Esfandiari. More than 3,000 poker fans voted for the awards, which will likely be coming back next year after this successful first installment.
British Poker Players Dominate EPT Vilamoura Day 4
September 1st, 2010
British online poker star Toby Lewis leads EPT Vilamoura. (Photo: The Hendon Mob)
Four days are down in Vilamoura, Portugal, site of the latest European Poker Tour main event, and the top three chip stacks heading into the final table all belong to British poker players.
Chip leader Toby “810ofclubs” Lewis (3,322,000) is a successful online poker player who’s a relative newcomer to live poker tournaments. Already the eighth-ranked online player in the UK according to PocketFives, Lewis’ first live cash came with a win in a £200 buy-in tournament in Brighton back in the spring of 2009. Since then he has piled up another $171,669 in live tournament earnings, including two EPT cashes. He has already secured the biggest live tournament cash of his career regardless of his finish tomorrow.
Second-place man Sam Trickett (3,365,000 in chips) has been cashing in poker tournaments for only about the last three years, but he’s made the most of that short time by winning nearly $1.33 million, impressing nearly every time he sits at the table. His fourth-place finish in the 2008 WSOP $5,000 No-Limit Hold’em event was worth $245,927. At this year’s Series the biggest of the former professional soccer player’s six cashes ($505,725) came from a second-place performance in the same event, and he had a chance at an even bigger score before becoming the final table bubble boy in the $25,000 Six-Handed No-Limit Hold’em event and settling for a $141,168 payday instead. A win tomorrow would mark the seventh tournament victory of his short career.
And in third place is Teddy Sheringham (1,783,000). With 415 English Premier League games and 51 international appearances for the English national soccer team under his belt, Sheringham picked up live poker tournaments as a hobby. He nearly had a big breakthrough at last year’s WSOP Europe Main Event, finishing in 14th place of 334 players to grab a $66,738 prize. If he finishes in seventh place or higher in this tournament he’ll have grabbed his biggest career cash.
Of course, there are still five other players left, including short-stacked former EPT Grand Final champ Rob Hollink. But at the 12,000/24,000/2,000 level they’ll all need some luck on their side since none of them have more than 50 big blinds. Along with the three British poker players dominating the leaderboard, they’ll be back in action at noon local time tomorrow to see who takes the €467,835 ($597,285) top prize.
Shannon Elizabeth Visits New Poker Room Outside Philadelphia
August 7th, 2010
Amateur poker player Shannon Elizabeth stopped by Philadelphia’s newest poker room last night.
Poker has only been legal for a short time in Pennsylvania, and the poker room at Harrah’s Chester has already had a visit from Shannon Elizabeth.
The actress-turned-poker-player made an appearance yesterday at the new 25-table World Series of Poker Room at Harrah’s Chester, greeting fans and signing autographs for 20 minutes before sitting down to play a bit of poker with a randomly selected group of local players. Then it was off to Atlantic City, a town teetering on the edge of a state government takeover, for all-night gambling at Showboat, another Harrah’s property.
The American Pie star has been enjoyed a fair bit of modest success in live poker tournaments over the last five years, with that stretch of results punctuated by two very high-profile finishes. In 2007 she beat Rene Angelil, Jeff Madsen, Barry Greenstein and Humberto Brenes in the NBC National Heads-Up Poker Championship before losing to Paul Wasicka in the semifinal, taking home $125,000. And this year she finished second to Phil Gordon in the Ante Up For Africa tournament at the WSOP, winning $79,776.
Pennsylvania’s state government explicitly legalized poker and house-edge table games earlier this year after a contentious political battle ate up much of the end of 2009. The first casinos in the state spreading those games on July 8th, while Harrah’s Chester began spreading hold’em, seven-card stud and Omaha in its World Series of Poker-branded poker room on July 18th. The fans that turned out to see Shannon Elizabeth on Friday night contributed to a crowded house in the new room just south of Philadelphia, with waiting lists for some games reportedly running 60 deep.
Live Poker Tournaments Provide WSOP Hangover Cure
July 22nd, 2010
Think of the Gold Strike in Tunica as the hair of the dog that bit you.
What better way to cure your hangover than to start planning the next trip to the bar? For those of you still hanging your heads after the end of the World Series of Poker, here’s a look at all the upcoming big live poker tournaments where you can go get your donk on.
The Gold Strike World Poker Open in Tunica, Miss., begins today. The preliminary events are all low-buy-in affairs with the exceptions of a $1,070 no-limit hold’em tourney and a $2,500 pot-limit Omaha event, but the championship event sports a $5,000 entry, with all but $200 going to the prize pool. Last year’s championship event at the Gold Strike awarded Jeremy Gaubert $192,952 for taking first place ahead of former WSOP Main Event champion Chris Moneymaker (3rd) and top poker pro Chad Brown (4th).
Legends of Poker begins another year at the Bicycle Casino on July 28th, with the World Poker Tour-broadcasted championship event taking place from August 20th to 25th. This year the buy-in for that event returns to $5,000 for the first time since 2005. Last year’s champion was Prahlad Friedman, who defeated November Niner Kevin Schaffel heads-up to win $1,034,000.
The European Poker Tour begins its seventh season with a venture further into former Iron Curtain territory with a new event in Tallinn, the capital and largest city of the tiny Baltic republic of Estonia. The €4,250 main event begins on August 11th, with the €10,300 High Roller event kicking off on August 15th.
And rounding out the return of poker from its pounding headache and fever dreams of gold bracelets will be the first event of the new WSOP Circuit season in Council Bluffs, Iowa. No longer held in the dead of winter, preliminaries at this newly revitalized stop on the Circuit get started on August 19th. The $1,600 main event gets going on August 29th.
With those events out of the way we’ll see a return by the World Poker Tour, European Poker Tour, WSOP Circuit and countless other tours and independently run events around the world to the seemingly round-the-clock nature of live poker tournaments we’re used to these days.
