Posts Tagged ‘poker tournaments’
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.
Samuel McMaster: “I’ve Never Been A Poker Pro”
November 30th, 2010
Shocker: a guy with a one-page tournament resume isn’t a poker pro.
If you read us regularly you’ll remember the case of Samuel McMaster, Jr., the former insurance agent and stock broker convicted on 26 counts of securities fraud who was ordered to repay $444,000 to the elderly victims of his crimes. Despite the fact that he only had a little over $30,000 in tournament cashes dating back to 2003, a New Mexico court believed McMaster when he claimed to be a professional poker player and gave him permission to play poker tournaments so he could raise the money for restitution.
McMaster was ordered to make six consecutive payments of $7,500 to his victims in order to have his 12-year jail sentence reduced, and as long as he didn’t miss two payments in a six-month period he was free to continue playing tournaments instead of going to jail. That might not be too tall an order for a pro poker player, but for McMaster it was too much to handle. Unable to muster up enough funds for a single payment, he has returned to the court where he was sentenced and copped to the fact that he was trying to bluff the judge all along.
“I have never been nor will ever be a professional poker player,” the fraudster told Judge Ross Sanchez, admitting what was already pretty evident to anybody with an internet connection and the wherewithal to look up tournament results. The judge then ordered that Samuel McMaster be tested for gambling addiction before embarking on a 12-year prison term. Now that the entire world knows how easily Judge Sanchez can be bluffed, does anybody else get the feeling that there’s going to be some pretty heavy competition among all the other judges in New Mexico to see who gets to invite him to play in their private poker games?
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.
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.
Randal Flowers Becomes Youngest 2-Time WPT Champion
October 21st, 2010
No more long face for Randal Flowers, who booked the win at Bellagio.
A little over a year ago, Randal Flowers was too young to play in poker tournaments held at American casinos. Now, just past his 22nd birthday, he’s the youngest two-time winner in World Poker Tour history thanks to a victory at the Bellagio’s Festa al Lago.
This Festa al Lago finale was one of the shorter WPT final tables in recent memory, taking just 96 hands from start to finish. Flowers held the chip lead when the final table began, but with only 40 big blinds in his stack he had to get to work quickly. The amount of work on his schedule got a bit shorter when Skip Wilson left in sixth place ($112,840), his top pair, queen kicker on a T-6-5 board no good against Michael Benvenuti’s pocket queens. Then Flowers made his job a bit easier by eliminating reigning Legends of Poker champion Andy Frankenberger in fifth place ($161,200) – an all-in confrontation with pocket tens to Frankenberger’s pocket fives went according to plan and Flowers had a solid lead on the remaining players.
Just 25 hands later Flowers would come out on the right end of a debacle with Jason Koon – both players checked to the river and backed into a straight, but Koon had to leave in fourth place ($225,680) when Flowers showed a higher straight. Then Flowers caught another big break, raising with A-Q and snap-calling when Noah Schwartz moved all-in with K-Q; the ace held to send Schwartz home in third place ($344,968) and give Flowers a big 2.5-to-1 heads-up lead over Benvenuti.
The heads-up match lasted just 14 hands. The final hand saw Benvenuti move all-in with Q-7 of spades on a 9-6-5, two-spade board. Randal Flowers called with 9-3 for top pair, which dodged Benvenuti’s 15 outs to seal the win. Benvenuti took home $564,200 as the runner-up, while Flowers claimed $831,500 for the victory. At just 22 years old, he also became the youngest two-time winner in WPT history, adding the Festa al Lago title to his WPT Spanish Championship win from last season. His total career winnings now total $1.8 million.
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.
