Posts Tagged ‘live poker’
Joe Tehan Wins Big in Los Angeles
November 18th, 2010
A coin flip here, a coin flip there, and a big LA win for Joe Tehan.
Las Vegas poker pro Joe Tehan entered yesterday’s final table of the NAPT Los Angeles main event squarely in the middle of a pack of highly talented poker players. With Chris DeMaci holding a big chip lead and tournament powerhouse Jason Mercier in second place you could be forgiven for discounting Tehan’s chances and betting the field – but you would’ve ended up on the losing end of that bet, because Tehan eliminated all seven of his opponents en route to his second live tournament win of 2010.
Tehan’s run was the stuff dreams are made of. He got off to a great start when his K-K held against DeMaci’s A-K before he lost part of his newfound chip stack with 7-7 to Anh Van Nguyen’s Q-Q. From there, though, the Las Vegas pro cruised at this California final table. It’s often tough just to win one coin-flip with hundreds of thousands of dollars on the line, but Tehan won three consecutive flips to eliminate Jake Toole (A-Q vs J-J), Mercier (J-J vs A-K) and Michael Binger (A-J vs T-T). Now holding a commanding chip lead, Tehan took out Nguyen (holding A-Q) and Ray Henson (holding A-J) in the same hand with K-5, eliminated Al Grimes with J-9 vs 8-7, and finished off DeMaci with K-T vs K-4 to grab the $725,000 top prize.
It was fitting that Tehan’s latest big score came in Los Angeles. His first career live poker tournament victory came in LA back in 2006 when he won a preliminary event at the LA Poker Classic for $179,605. Since then he has made six more final tables in the City of Angels, including the recent Commerce Hold’em Series Championship Event. The NAPT win, though, is easily his biggest LA score to date, and the second-largest of his entire career behind his 2006 WPT Mandalay Bay Poker Championship victory.
With his win at the NAPT Los Angeles, Joe Tehan moves over the $3 million mark for career live tournament winnings. That puts him into some select company – right around him on the all-time money list are former world champions Chris Moneymaker and Tom McEvoy, Brazil’s all-time money leader Alexandre Gomes, two-time WPT champ Cornel Cimpan and all-around superstar Patrik Antonius.
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.
Parx Poker Room Now Open in Philadelphia
November 4th, 2010
Philadelphia finally has its own live poker room at Parx Casino.
When SugarHouse Casino opened in Philadelphia earlier this fall it made the City of Brotherly Love the largest American metropolis with a casino. Thanks to the complete lack of anywhere in SugarHouse to play poker, Philadelphia simultaneously became the largest American city with a casino and no poker room. That little problem has officially been taken care of, though, now that Parx Casino has begun spreading everyone’s favorite card game.
Within an hour and a half of opening on Wednesday morning, the new 24-table facility at Parx – known in its horse-racing glory days as the Philadelphia Park Racetrack – was completely full. The players at Parx are used to making a round trip of more than two hours from Philadelphia to Atlantic City and back for their poker fix. Now they can play hold’em, stud and Omaha minutes from home instead of braving the Atlantic City Expressway and paying tolls as they enter and exit New Jersey. Pretty soon even more of them will get to play close to home without having to join a waiting list. Parx management says it plans to expand the room to 61 tables by early next year, making the room easily the largest in the state of Pennsylvania.
The new Parx poker room will get its moment of glitz on Friday evening when actor Kevin Dillon, best known as Johnny Drama on HBO’s series Entourage, stops by for its grand opening ceremony. (Another HBO star – Chris “Mr. Big” Noth of Sex and the City fame – opened the new Parx table games in July.) Dillon should hit the red carpet around 9 p.m. on Friday evening, most likely to at least a few cheers of “VICTORY!”
Dumbest Invention in the History of Poker?
November 2nd, 2010
The Cube – saviour of thumbs, or dumbest poker invention ever? (photo from pokerhcp.com)
You know what the absolute worst thing about live poker is? It’s that momentous hassle of having to look at your hole cards. What could be worse than having to expend all that energy to reach out with your thumb and nudge the corner of those cards about an inch off the table? It’s a complete and total nightmare, like changing a diaper, or Courtney Love. And isn’t it about time somebody did something about it?
Well, finally, somebody did. Finally, someone invented The Cube, a patented hole card viewer to help you play poker. Yes, it’s kind of funny looking. And yes, it wouldn’t actually be allowed anywhere near your cards at any respectable poker room. But it will allow you to replace the arduous task of lifting up the corner of your cards, with a totally not arduous task of sliding your cards up a little ramp into view of the LED-equipped card viewer window. And did I mention that it comes withe a mini-picture frame (at no additional charge), so you can always keep a photo of your loved ones close at hand when you play?
According to the The Cube sales video, it was “designed for poker players of every level, from beginners, to tournament players.” As seen in the above picture, the operation seems pretty simple – you slide your cards in, and voila, an image of them appears in a little window above the photo of the kid in the purple shirt (photo of kid in purple shirt not included).
All kidding aside, The Cube actually does seem like a worthwhile invention for some people – it would benefit those with poor eyesight or hand mobility. But for those without any issues like that, it seems like the dumbest invention this side of the Flowbee. And it can be yours for only $24.95 + shipping and handling.
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.
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.
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 Winner Crowned Champion of Champions
October 6th, 2010
David Vamplew added about £9,500 in freerolls to his EPT London take after beating this crew of poker champions.
Just a few days ago David Vamplew had under $7,000 in live poker tournament cashes to his name. Then he added the EPT London championship to his resume to boost his total to nearly $1.5 million. And now he’s freerolling on an entire tour’s worth of tournaments next year thanks to a big victory in a made-for-television tournament.
EPT London, in addition to being the third stop of this season’s European Poker Tour, also served as the Grand Final for the first season of the UK & Ireland Poker Tour. To celebrate the success of the UKIPT’s first go-round, the tour invited the winners of each of its events to play the Champion of Champions event, a sit-and-go with a unique prize: free entry into all of the UKIPT’s Season 2 stops, including the EPT London main event. The lineup included Vamplew and his fellow Season 1 champions Andrew Couldridge, Max Silver, Padraig Parkinson, Nick Risk, Joeri Zandvliet, Femi Fakinle, Gilles Augustus and Jamie Burland.
The 23-year-old Vamplew’s hot streak carried over from EPT London as he maneuvered his way to heads-up play against Burland and finally on to the victory, which gave him a freeroll into eight tournaments over the next year. “I hoped David would get tired after yesterday,” said Burland afterward. “But…he played really good.”
The first tournament on Vamplew’s list of freerolls will take place at the beginning of December in Galway, Ireland, just a quick hop over from Vamplew’s home in Scotland.
Nacho Barbero Wins EPT London High Roller Event
October 4th, 2010
Two-time LAPT champ Nacho Barbero has officially conquered Europe.
It’s been quite the year for Jose Ignacio Barbero. First the Argentine, better known in the poker community as “Nacho,” won the Latin American Poker Tour stop at Punta del Este, Uruguay. Then he became the first two-time LAPT champion by winning the tour’s next tournament in Lima, Peru. And now he’s added European Poker Tour hardware to his trophy case with a win in the EPT London High Roller event.
The tournament, which sported a hefty £20,000 buy-in, drew 77 entries and one of the toughest fields you’ll ever see in a live poker tournament. The final table of eight players, reconvened at London’s Hilton Metropole today for a third and final day of play, led by Vanessa Selbst and her 33 percent of the total chips in play. She was looking good to run for the title by the time Pierre Neuville, Will Molson, Matt Marafioti were gone, and she picked up even more chips when she knocked out English Poker Open winner Fabian Quoss in fifth place with A-2 to Quoss’ J-J.
At that point Barbero went on a tear. First he pulled off a huge suckout with A-8 against Andrew Robl’s A-J, crippling Robl in the process. Then Barbero and Selbst got into a raising war before the flop – five bets put her all-in and her pocket tens were marginally ahead of Barbero’s A-J. The flop even brought Selbst another ten for three of a kind, but the turn and river were running cards to give the Argentine a Broadway straight and send Selbst out in fourth place (£145,000). Finally Robl shoved for 11 big blinds with K-5 and Barbero made the call with A-3, which held to send Robl to the rail in third place (£198,000).
The last man standing between Nacho Barbero and European poker glory was Finland’s Jani Sointula, and he didn’t go away easily. For three straight hours the pair played heads-up poker, with Barbero starting with the lead and Sointula taking it away. But once Barbero pulled ahead again he wouldn’t be denied – he dodged the short-stacked Sointula’s all-in bets until he caught A-J in the hole and made the call. He was solidly ahead of the Finn’s K-4, and an ace on the flop was all it took to ship him the £556,000 (US $881,149) top prize. Sointula, meanwhile, settled for the consolation of £335,000.
With his EPT London High Roller victory, Barbero’s total tournament winnings in 2010 now total nearly $1.54 million – not bad for a guy who had won about $305,000 in the previous five years combined.
