Posts Tagged ‘venetian’
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.
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.
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.
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.
Delaware Casino Opens Tournament-Only Poker Room
October 1st, 2010
Supply and demand meet head-on in Delaware Park’s tournament poker room.
Poker games have been up and running in the Casino at Delaware Park since June, after the game was legalized in the tiny mid-Atlantic state earlier this year. But the marketplace’s demands have led to the introduction of something unique in the area: a special addition used specifically for poker tournaments.
Poker operations began at Delaware Park with a 20-table poker room. That’s a pretty standard size for a casino poker room, but the three daily scheduled tournaments proved so popular at Delaware Park that they were overwhelming the room’s ability to offer cash games. “What we originally had planned was three tournaments a day, but our [existing] room couldn’t handle that many [tourney] players and cash-game players,” Delaware Park poker room manager Anthony Chester, a former employee in the Venetian poker room in Las Vegas, told the Philadelphia Daily News. “We just didn’t have enough available tables.”
Rather than cut back on the number of tournaments, the casino decided to add more supply to meet the demand, building a 25-table room meant specifically to host its popular poker tournaments. Ten of the tables can also be used for cash games if needed, but it’s a fair bet that the three daily tournaments and two weekend tournaments with bigger buy-ins will keep the room packed most of the time. There might not be a Delaware WPT or WSOP Circuit stop in the near future, but the locals should certainly be happy with the tournament action at the new facility.
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.
Poker Player From Peru Wins LAPT Grand Final
September 27th, 2010
It’s not every day a player has the chance to put his nation on the poker map.
While the poker world’s attention has been firmly fixed on London, there’s been a little tournament with a $5,000 buy-in and a $1-million-plus prize pool running on the other side of the world – and its winner just walked away with a prize as large as most of those on offer in the UK the last two weeks.
Last night Martin Sansour of Peru became the latest player to win on the Latin American Poker Tour, taking home a not-so-insignificant prize of $322,280 for his victory in Season 3′s LAPT Grand Final at Rosario, Argentina. He overcame a field of 254 players, most of them from Central and South America with a smattering of poker players from the rest of the world, to score his first live poker tournament win. Sansour’s previous live tournament record had consisted of a small cash at the Venetian back in 2008, a cash in one of this year’s $1,000 WSOP events, and a 13th-place finish at another LAPT event earlier this season.
“I am very happy,” Sansour understatedly said after his win. “The next tournament, I’ll be there.”
Sansour’s victory is a big one for Peruvian poker players, and not just because he knocked out all but one of his final-table opponents. Peru is so obscure in the poker world that it doesn’t even have a national all-time money list – something enjoyed even by its neighbor, tiny Ecuador – posted on The Hendon Mob poker database. Now, though, it may be time to start putting that list together – the win ranks Sansour third all-time in LAPT winnings, behind only two-time winner Jose Ignacio “Nacho” Barbero and 2008 LAPT Grand Final winner Dominik Nitsche. If ever there were a time for a Peruvian poker boom – and trust me, I never thought for a moment that I’d one day write that exact phrase – this would be it.
John D’Agostino Leads WPT Borgata Poker Open
September 21st, 2010
A familiar face from years gone by leads the field at Borgata.
Just 165 players will return to the tables today as the Borgata Poker Open continues to work its way toward a final table, and the man at the top of the chip counts should ring a few bells for poker fans who have around since the beginning of the boom. John D’Agostino ended Day 2 of this year’s Borgata Poker Open with 681,200 in chips, good for the overnight lead. He has enjoyed plenty of success at Borgata World Poker Tour events in the past. He finished second to Michael Mizrachi at the 2006 Borgata Winter Open, and in 2005 he took fourth when Al Ardebili won the Borgata Poker Open.
Those two scores came within a four-month period and seemed to indicate that D’Agostino was one of the game’s hot young talents. But after 2006, his poker schedule slowed down as he took more family time away from the felt. He cashed only twice in 2007 and then didn’t cash at all through 2008 and 2009. He returned to the felt this year at the Borgata Winter Open, cashing in a preliminary event before making the money in three WSOP events this summer.
There are still plenty of serious poker players left in the field, though, giving D’Agostino a lot of hurdles yet to clear. Lars Bonding (521,900 in chips) won three events at this years Venetian Deep Stack Extravaganza, Jeffrey Papola (447,000) finished first and second in two six-max events at this year’s WSOP, Dwyte Pilgrim (400,000) is one of the most successful players on the WSOP Circuit – and those are just the most notable players in the top ten.
The plan is to play down to 27 players today. You can get follow the John D’Agostino comeback story with either the WPT or the Borgata.
WPT: 15 Remain As Legends of Poker Starts Day 4
August 24th, 2010
Jonathan Little is looking to repeat his considerable past WPT success at the Bike.
Three days of poker have reduced the 2010 Legends of Poker main event from 462 players to just 15, and today will see that field whittle down to just six for the televised final table. Holding the biggest stack when play resumes this afternoon will be Andrew Frankenberger, who holds 1,958,00 in chips. That’s more than two and a half times the average stack, so Frankenberger’s fate in this tournament is really in his own hands. The New York poker pro has five cashes this year, the last being a win in a $2,000 event at the Venetian Deep Stack Extravaganza this summer.
Meanwhile, Season VI World Poker Tour Player of the Year Jonathan Little lurks in second place with 1,314,000 in chips. He’ll be looking to make his fifth WPT final table today, which would give him a chance to tie the all-time record of three WPT wins currently held by Gus Hansen and Carlos Mortensen. Part of Little’s ascent to the front of the pack involved picking off a big river bluff with second pair against former chip leader Phil Collins to send the online star home in 29th place. If he makes the final table, Little will make his first appearance in front of the WPT cameras since winning the Foxwoods World Poker Finals in November 2008.
Play resumes at the Bicycle Casino at 1 p.m. PT today and will go on until the Legends of Poker TV table lineup is set; the WPT will provide live updates all day on its website.
