Posts Tagged ‘napt’
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.
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.
NAPT Los Angeles Main Event Begins Today
November 12th, 2010
For the first time ever, it’s NAPT time at the Bike.
With Las Vegas and its glitzy WSOP Main Event finally out of the way, Los Angeles once again steps into poker’s limelight this weekend as it hosts the latest stop on the North American Poker Tour.
The NAPT Los Angeles main event kicks off today at the Bicycle Casino in Bell Gardens, Calif., the venue best known for its Legends of Poker festival held every August. The $5,000 event boasts two starting flights, and if the typical crowds at L.A. poker tournaments are anything to go by, both flights should see solid turnout. The main event will play out its final table next Wednesday, November 16, but in between now and then there will be a slew of smaller events running, including HORSE, pot-limit Omaha, six-max, no-limit hold’em and ladies-only tournaments.
Unlike the NAPT’s Venetian and Mohegan Sun events earlier this year, there won’t be any coverage of the NAPT Los Angeles main event airing on ESPN. That’s because the Bicycle Casino is an original member of the World Poker Tour and its contract grants exclusivity to the WPT in the area of television rights. So to make sure they get at least a little exposure for their jaunt to LA, the NAPT folks arranged to have their $5,250 Bounty Shootout at the nearby Crystal Casino. If you haven’t heard of that venue before, it might just be because Crystal Casino is located in Compton (link NSFW) and hasn’t hosted anything resembling a major poker tournament since 2007, when Bill Edler beat Barry Greenstein in the final of its 1st Annual Heads-Up Championship. (Despite solid turnout for the first year, there was no 2nd Annual Heads-Up Championship.)
Assuming everyone makes it out of Compton in one piece next Friday, ESPN2 will air coverage of the NAPT Los Angeles Bounty Shootout later in the year.
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.
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.
WPT Festa al Lago Main Event Starts Today
October 15th, 2010
It’s major-league tournament time at Bellagio once again.
The Festa al Lago poker tournament festival has been running at Bellagio since late last week, and the list of winners so far reads like a roll call for poker pros. Among the winners of the 11 preliminary events were “Miami” John Cernuto, James Van Alstyne, John Phan and Scott Clements. Also in their company was Matthew Jarvis, the November Niner from Canada. He won a $1,000 no-limit hold’em with rebuys event, taking home $71,895 for defeating a final table that included NAPT Venetian champ Tom Marchese and 2009 Card Player Player of the Year Eric Baldwin.
Now that all the prelims have been completed, it’s time to move on to the World Poker Tour main event, which begins at noon PT today. The buy-in is $10,000 this year, down from $15,000 in previous years. It remains to be seen whether that will help the event improve on its total of 275 entries from 2009; Bellagio tournaments are notoriously tough because of the high percentage of the field that’s made up of skilled poker pros. One thing that seems certain is that the top prize will be smaller than the $1,218,225 won by Tommy Vedes last year.
As usual, the WPT will be providing live updates for the duration of the Festa al Lago main event.
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.
Record Field Turns Out for EPT London Main Event
September 30th, 2010
The Hilton Metropole hotel, home of EPT London and all of its poker glory.
The EPT London main event got underway yesterday at the Hilton Metropole hotel in the UK capital with a first starting flight of 339 players, including a full complement of accomplished poker pros and online poker players.
Leading the pack after nine levels of play was American Soheb Porbandarwala, who finished Day 1A with 218,600 in chips. That put him more than 30,000 ahead of his nearest competitor with blinds still at 500-1,000, giving him a lot of room to maneuver when he returns to the felt tomorrow. Among the other well-stacked players who will return with Porbandarwala are 2009 WPT Merit Cyprus Classic winner Thomas Bichon, 2009 WSOP Europe Main Event champ Barry Shulman, former WPT Championship final tablist John O’Shea, former child chess prodigy turned EPT final tablist Jeff Sarwer, NAPT Venetian champ Tom Marchese and 2004 WSOP Main Event winner Greg Raymer.
Day 1B began earlier today and drew an even larger field. This time 514 players showed up, packing the Metropole to capacity and pushing the tournament’s total attendance up to 853. That makes this year’s EPT London the largest live poker tournament ever held in the United Kingdom, smashing last year’s EPT London record mark of 730 players. Among the top pros in today’s starting flight are David Benyamine, Daniel Negreanu, James Akenhead, Praz Bansi, Scott Seiver, Padraig Parkinson, and last night’s EPT Heads-Up winner Annette Obrestad.
Day 1B continues until the end of the ninth level of play tonight. Surviving players from both EPT London starting flights will combine and resume play at noon local time tomorrow.
Largest Field in WPT History Turns Out in Atlantic City
September 20th, 2010
Borgata is one of the few bright spots this year in Atlantic City.
With casino profits and attendance down across the board and the governor of New Jersey threatening to take over the city, it’s been a pretty bad year all around for Atlantic City. But after this weekend the seaside resort town has something to cheer about – it’s home to the largest main event field in World Poker Tour history.
Day 1A of the Borgata Poker Open drew 311 players. That’s a decent turnout but nothing worth getting excited about, especially since the tournament’s buy-in is $3,300, a relatively low price point for WPT events. But Day 1B drew 731 players, boosting the total field to 1,042 and setting a new WPT attendance record. The old record – 1,018 players – was also set at the Borgata last year in this same event.
Leading the 641 remaining players into Day 2 is Vincenzo Abate, who finished his starting day with 201,450 in chips. He’s followed pretty closely by Jeffrey Papola (156,200 in chips), who won one six-handed no-limit hold’em event at this year’s WSOP and finished second in another. Others within a long stone’s throw of the leader include Jacobo Hernandez (145,100), Allen Bari (127,300), ESPN poker commentator Bernard Lee (120,025) and NAPT Mohegan Sun main event runner-up Mike Beasley (104,700).
The action is just getting underway in Atlantic City, and you can follow to entire tournament on either the WPT website or the Borgata poker blog.
