Posts Tagged ‘world poker tour’
Antonio Esfandiari Makes Birthday Magic at Bellagio
December 10th, 2010
Imagine the birthday party those stacks of cash would buy in Vegas!
At Bellagio in Las Vegas, Antonio Esfandiari outlasted one of the toughest final table lineups in recent World Poker Tour history to grab his second WPT title at the Five Diamond World Poker Classic – and he did it on his birthday, no less.
The 32-year-old Esfandiari entered the final table second in chips behind Vanessa Rousso, who scored the day’s first knockout with Q-Q to Ted Lawson’s 9-9, busting Lawson in sixth place ($126,693). Andrew Robl stepped up next and sent Kirk Morrison home in fifth place ($168,924) when his 5-5 flopped a set against Morrison’s top pair with A-J. Then Esfandiari eliminated 2010 November Niner John Racener in fourth place ($232,271) with K-Q against Q-8 to set up a three-way battle for the top spot.
Robl and Rousso tangled again and again while Esfandiari sat back and waited for a good spot, with Robl getting the better of the confrontations. Eventually Rousso shoved all-in with Q-2, only to run into Esfandiari’s A-Q and hit the rail in third place ($358,964). The two remaining competitors traded the chip lead several times before Esfandiari’s K-J outlasted Robl’s Q-T, sending Robl to the payout cage to collect his $549,003 runner-up reward.
The $870,124 Bellagio win is the first tournament victory for Antonio Esfandiari since he beat the field in a $500 event at the Imperial Palace in Biloxi back in 2007. More importantly, it’s his first major victory since 2004, when he won both the WPT’s LA Poker Classic and his first WSOP bracelet in the $2,000 Pot-Limit Hold’em event. Those wins helped to catapult him into poker’s spotlight, where he’s managed to stay ever since. Only time will tell whether The Magician capitalizes on his recent success the way he did back in the day, but for now, at least, he’s enjoying the moment.
Online Poker Player Wins Florida WPT Event
November 24th, 2010
He can’t legally buy a drink, but he could buy a couple of Ferraris if he wanted to. (Photo: Michael Laster)
Florida is one of the only places in the United States where you don’t have to be 21 years old to play live poker, so it’s no big surprise that a 20-year-old Floridian won the state’s first live tournament with a $5,000-buy-in.
Harrison Gimbel, known to his fellow online poker players as “gibler321,” conquered the Fall Poker Open at the Seminole Hard Rock casino and took home $330,000 for his efforts. Gimbel, who lives in Jupiter, Fla., had to overcome a field of more than 300 players, including a number of experienced poker pros, on his way to the win. Shannon Shorr and Shawn Cunix were among those who made the money, while Gimbel had to fend off Allie Prescott (9th), Raj “BadCardsAA” Vohra (4th), and Fred Goldberg (3rd) at the final table. Gimbel’s even-numbered payout came as the result of a deal with Anthony Ruberto, the second-place finisher who took home an extra $42,000 over what first place was scheduled to pay.
The win is actually the second major victory of 2010 for Gimbel. Back in January he won the PokerStars Caribbean Adventure, an event noted for its enormous fields packed with tough online poker players, and claimed $2.2 million in the process. Not bad for a guy who won’t be eligible to play in the World Series of Poker until 2012.
The Fall Poker Open was the first WPT Regional Event, a series of tournaments recently announced by the World Poker Tour that will sport the WPT brand but not feature any television coverage. They also apparently won’t feature much in the way of online coverage, so a tip of the hat here goes to Nick Sortal at the Action South Florida Gambling blog, who put in a marathon reporting session to get the info out where the WPT didn’t.
Big Omaha Cash Game Action in Marrakech
November 22nd, 2010
Casino de Marrakech offers some of the world’s biggest Omaha action.
It looks like the historically huge cash games in Macau are done for a while as Phil Ivey and Tom Dwan head back to the United States for business, giving their Chinese hosts a break for a bit. That doesn’t mean the international cash game action is finished, though. This week the World Poker Tour is heading to Casino de Marrakech in Morocco, where the pot-limit Omaha cash games are some of the biggest in the world.
Cash games in Marrakech are played in the local currency, the Moroccan Dirham, which converts to the US dollar at a rate of about 8 to 1. That means that the highest-stakes Omaha game offered, with 2000dh/4000dh blinds, is played with blinds of $250/$500. The blinds are bigger than those in the $200/$400 Omaha games played online by the likes of Phil Ivey, Tom Dwan and Phil Galfond. Even the middle blind levels on offer like 1,000dh/2,000dh ($125/$250) and 500dh/1,000dh ($62.50/$125) compare well with some of the bigger live Omaha cash games in the United States.
Even more attractive to international high-stakes than just the money on the table is the fact that Morocco’s Omaha cash games have a reputation for being extremely juicy. The locals love to gamble it up, so anyone looking for an Omaha action fix will want to hop a flight to Marrakech ASAP. There’s also the value of playing against those same super-loose local players in the €5,000 WPT main event, which starts November 27. Of course, with the pot-limit Omaha games so juicy, you might find yourself trying to bust out of the tournament durrrr-style just so you can get back to the cash game action. If that happens, don’t say we didn’t warn you.
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.
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.
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.
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.
MGM Resorts International Sells 50 Percent Share of Borgata Casino
October 14th, 2010
Atlantic City’s best-performing casino has a new half-owner.
Though it’s best known for its horde of Las Vegas Strip casinos, the MGM-Resorts International corporation has been a 50 percent owner in Atlantic City’s Borgata alongside Boyd Gaming since before construction began on the 161,000-square-foot casino. But when the company decided it wanted to partner with Hong Kong businesswoman Pansy Ho to open a new casino in Macau, it was ordered by the New Jersey Division of Gaming Enforcement to sever its ties to her because the regulators concluded that Ho’s father, billionaire Stanley Ho, had “extensive ties to organized crime.”
Since Macau is booming while Atlantic City is, well, Atlantic City, the company decided instead to seek a buyer for its share of the Borgata – and as of today, the company says, it has found that buyer. Details on the new owner are scant right now; MGM Resorts International didn’t disclose them, though analysts say a private equity firm is the most likely candidate to be the new half-owner of the strongest player on a rapidly weakening team. The sale price for the 50 percent share of Borgata, which opened in 2003 at a cost of $1.1 billion, is reported to be $250 million.
The sale of MGM’s share in the Borgata comes as Atlantic City casinos are caught in a collective downward spiral. Borgata continues to bring in more money than all the other casinos in A.C., but its September revenue figures were down 16.1 percent from the year prior. Though the numbers for the rest of the casino have followed the local trend, the Borgata still enjoys a reputation as one of the finest poker venues on the United States’ east coast. Last month’s eighth annual Borgata Poker Open, a World Poker Tour event since the tour’s second season, drew a WPT-record 1,042 entries to its main event, and the casino continues to draw large enough crowds with its big guaranteed prize pools that it hosts three other tournament series throughout the year.
World Poker Tour London Airs on Five in UK Tonight
October 13th, 2010
Jake Cody (center) will get some serious face time on the telly tonight.
It used to be that there was an extensive time gap between a World Poker Tour tournament being played and the final package hitting television sets around the world. Tonight, however, viewers in the United Kingdom will get to bypass that long delay when the first of four episodes covering last month’s WPT London poker festival airs on Five.
The first half of Five’s WPT London coverage will follow the £5,300 main event, which drew 171 players and was won by the UK’s own Jake Cody. The victory marked his second major win of the year, following up on his success at EPT Deauville in France back in January, and earned him £273,783 (US $425,492). That tournament will stretch across two weeks on the television before Five moves on to the £15,000 High Roller event.
The field in the WPT London High Roller tournament was much smaller at just 19 players, but every one of them was capable of winning the title. In the end American pro Justin “Boosted J” Smith was the winner, taking home £141,000 (US $219,131) after he defeated Tony G in heads-up play. Five will also air two episodes from the High Roller event, bringing its total number WPT London episodes to four.
The quick turnaround should be a welcome sight for UK poker fans, who have read all about the enormous success of their poker pros this year but haven’t had the opportunity to see much of it on the television just yet. WPT London begins airing on Five at 11:55 p.m. tonight.
Dwyte PIlgrim Wins WPT Borgata Poker Open
September 24th, 2010
Tears of joy streamed down Dwyte Pilgrim’s face in Atlantic City last night. (Photo: World Poker Tour)
Dwyte Pilgrim promised before the Borgata Poker Open final table that he would “shock the world” – and then he went and did just that, capturing his first World Poker Tour title last night in dramatic fashion.
Pilgrim, known for his enormous success in smaller events over the last few years, came into the final table of this decidedly big tournament fourth in chips. But he went on the attack immediately, effectively announcing his intention to be the most active player at the table. It was Kia Mohajeri who struck first blood, eliminating Ben Klier (6th place) in two big pots, but Pilgrim would eliminate the next two players, Daniel Makowsky (5th) and Brandon Novena (4th), to set up an epic three-handed battle between Mohajeri, Ofir Mor and himself.
Mor never really had much luck in the cards he was dealt. He managed to stick around trading jabs with his opponents for 63 hands before Mohajeri’s 8-7 of clubs outdrew his A-4, sending Mor home in third place with $266,835. Mohajeri held a 3-to-2 chip lead as heads-up play began, but Pilgrim’s relentless aggression put him on the defensive. The battle of attrition was interrupted by the occasional big pot, more often than not bringing Mohajeri back to even before Pilgrim would begin pulling away again. Finally, after 45 hands, the perfect flop gave Pilgrim a straight and Mohajeri two pair; all the money went in and the straight held up through the river to add Dwyte Pilgrim‘s name to the roll call of WPT champions.
For his Borgata Poker Open win, Pilgrim earns $733,802, boosting his total career earnings to more than $1.5 million in a little less than three years. He also wins a seat in the 2011 WPT Championship, giving him a free chance to prove to the poker world once again that he is a force to be reckoned with at the table.
