Poker Listings

With the EPT Grand Final down to its final day a number of pros hit the online felt including Victor Ramdin, Vanessa Selbst and Martin Staszko but the final tables of all the major events were full of relatively unknown players.

Here’s a more detailed look at what went down in the biggest online poker tournaments yesterday:

PokerStars Sunday Million

As usual the PokerStars Sunday Million reigned supreme in the online tournaments on Sunday.

This week a total of 7,376 paid the $215 buy-in to get it on the contest, which created a prizepool of $1.4 million.

As usual there were plenty of Team PokerStars Pros on hand for the event with Richard Toth, Martin Staszko and Victor Ramdin all in attendance.

As the final table approached online players CC2332 and iacog4 began to distance themselves from the field.

Indeed it was those two players who would meet heads-up, although there was a three-way deal, with CC2332 eventually getting the best of iacog4. CC2332 took down $176k but iacog4 took nearly the same amount at $175k.

Here are the complete final table payouts (including the three-way deal):

1. CC2332 - $176,949 2. Iacog4 - $175,559 3. Ugulala55 - $149,609 4. MaryPop_SP - $78,185 5. Triathlon4 - $60,483 6. Obafemi 9 - $45,731 7. AW 500 - $31,716 8. Oldrich88 - $17,702 9. Mikael 666 - $11,432

PokerStars Sunday Warm-Up

Online poker’s second biggest weekly tournament didn’t disappoint this week with a total of 3,371 runners competing for a piece of the $674k prizepool.

Team PokerStars pros Shane Schleger and Vanessa Selbst both made it into the money although they bowed out far before the final table.

Although the final table was made up of virtually unknown players, Berkyy had made an appearance at a Sunday Million final table in 2010.

Unfortunately the Australian pulled out of a five-way deal that would have seen him paid $75k and ended up busting in fourth place for $38k.

The three-remaining players chopped with Sweden’s Slaktaren007 taking first place for $97k. SDK13 took second place for $81k.

Here are the complete final table payouts:

1. Slaktaren007 - $97,481 2. SDK13 - $81,394 3. Catafract80 - $61,477 4. Berkyy - $38,766 5. Radiihead - $28,653 6. Instigator85 - $21,911 7. Bubys - $15,169 8. Halfrek - $8,427 9. Arsenalfca - $5,393

J.C. Alvarado   PokerStars Sunday 500

The PokerStars Sunday is widely regarded as a “pro’s tournament” with it’s high $500 buy-in and it was certainly true this week with a stack of pros looking to crack the final table.

 James “mig.com” Mackey, J.C. "PrtyPsux" Alvarado, Victor Ramdin, Dan “djk123” Kelly, Jonathan “PearlJammer, Turner, Kevin “WizardOfAhhs” Thurman, Shaun Deeb, Toni Judet, Annette_15, Randy “nanonoko” Lew and more on hand for the elite online event although none of the aforementioned players made it anywhere near the final table payouts.

Instead Argentina’s garompon cruised to a first place payout of $78k. Lithuanian jusc took second place for $56k.

Here are the complete final table payouts (including a three-way deal):

1. garompon - $57,310 2. Jusc - $58,804 3. De bluffer - $62,150 4. Gkap13 - $31,755 5. Ezu1 - $22,075 6. Stev0L_ - $17,520 7. FairLaw - $13,140 8. acalld - $8,760 9. Nikolaus64 - $5,256

iPOPS #1: $200k Guaranteed

PokerStars isn’t the only player on Sundays and the iPoker Network, which includes Titan Poker, Winner.com Poker and ChiliPoker, is hosting the massive iPoker Online Poker Series.

The first event took place yesterday, instead of the usual weekly $200k guaranteed, and it drew 1,899, which created a slight overlay for value-conscious players.

Tdradiannnn took first place for a total of $32k while runner up breeolsen had to settle for $24k.

Here are the complete final table payouts:

1. tdradiannnn - $32,000 2. Breeolsen - $24,000 3. Deise05 - $18,000 4. UpYoursMush - $12,400 5. Plutuplasts - $9,000 6. Souris2a - $7,000 7. Jesper19 - $5,000 8. GerArez - $3,400 9. AMVC16 - $1,900

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Tales of the Titanic have fascinated generations. And as it happens, a few of the stories concerning the ill-fated ship -- both historical and imagined -- involved poker.

Jack’s “Very Lucky Hand”

Coinciding with the event’s centennial is a rerelease of James Cameron’s 1997 blockbuster Titanic, this time in 3-D.

During its initial theatrical run Titanic broke box office records to become the highest-grossing film of all time (a record since eclipsed by Cameron’s Avatar). Titanic also won a whopping 11 Academy Awards including Best Picture.

While poker is hardly prominent in Titanic -- just a two-minute scene in a more than three-hour movie -- the game does serve a particular purpose with regard to the plot, and even helps introduce a thematic point about the importance of luck the film not-so-subtly advances throughout its lengthy running time.

We first meet Jack Dawson (Leonardo DiCaprio) playing poker in a Southampton pub, in fact, where he and his friend Fabrizio are involved in a game of five-card draw.

We only witness the end of a single hand involving Jack, Fabrizio, and two Swedes named Olaf and Sven.

Apparently betting before the draw was heavy enough to build a pot full of coins from various countries, a knife, a pocket watch, and a couple of third-class tickets for the R.M.S. Titanic’s scheduled trip from Southampton to New York City.

Leonardo DiCaprio's character wins his way onto the Titanic in a game of poker.  

As the camera pans around the table we catch a quick glimpse of Jack’s hand which appears to contain at least a couple of tens and an ace. Fabrizio then leans over to ask Jack about having bet everything they have, to which Jack replies “when you got nothing, you got nothing to lose.”

The line is meant to introduce Jack’s bohemian, care-free worldview, although Bob Dylan fans recognize it as a weird lift from “Like a Rolling Stone.”

Meanwhile the Swedes are also in disagreement, with Olaf berating Sven for having risked their Titanic tickets.

During the draw, Sven takes a single card, as does Jack. “All right, the moment of truth,” announces Jack. “Somebody’s life’s about to change.”

Fabrizio and Olaf show busted hands, then Sven turns over two pair, eights and sixes. Jack feigns disappointment, telling Fabrizio he’s sorry. Then comes the smile.

“I’m sorry... you’re not going to see your Mom again for a long time,” Jack says to his friend.

“’Cause we’re going to America! Full house, boys!”

Indeed, Jack punctuates his slowroll by showing tens full of aces to win the pot and tickets. An angry Olaf unexpectedly punches Sven -- not Jack -- and soon Jack and Fabrizio dash onto the ship just a moment before it departs.

“We’re the luckiest sons of bitches in the whole world, you know that!” cries Jack to Fabrizio once they are aboard.

“When you got nothing, you got nothing to lose.”  

As far as poker scenes go, it’s not the most suspenseful, nor even especially convincing. But it does manage to introduce the young hero and get him on the doomed ship.

Hey, at least Jack didn’t say he had a full boat.

Shuffling Decks on Deck

The remainder of Titanic includes a couple of references back to Jack’s poker game, including his explanation of the “very lucky hand” that landed him aboard and subsequent declaration that “you never know what hand you’re gonna get dealt” and thus need “to make each day count.”

The film does not, however, show passengers entertaining themselves with poker during the days and nights prior to the ship’s fatal crash. It might well have done so, since it’s very likely poker was played aboard the White Star liner, just as it was frequently played on passenger ships during the 19th and early 20th centuries.

For example, one Titanic survivor, Renee Harris, would share a story for Liberty Magazine two decades after the tragedy in which she described having joined a private poker game that took place in one of the “B deck” suites featuring a private promenade.

According to Harris, it was just after lunch when her husband, Henry, had asked her to sit in on the game. “He explained that in a previous ‘session’ one of the players had been under suspicion, and rather than bar him from the game, this time it would be simpler to let him see that the table was filled.”

“It turned out I was called on to be the eighth ‘man,’” Harris explained, noting that “when the suspected person was pointed out to me I thought he was a minister of the gospel, he looked so virtuous.”

In an interview given years later to Titanic historian Walter Lord, Harris filled in a few more details about the poker game, explaining that they used $1 chips and that she had done quite well for herself. In fact, when she decided to leave momentarily to return to her stateroom she remembers being $90 ahead.

The Titanic  

As fate would have it, Harris slipped when descending the stairs and broke her arm, thus preventing her from returning to the game.

In the Liberty article, Harris suggests the fall actually indirectly saved her life, saying that if she had not been sedated at the time of the crash she would have resisted getting in a lifeboat when her husband implored her to do so. Henry sadly did not survive.

Given the amount of study and attention the Titanic has garnered over the past 100 years, it isn’t surprising to find some historians calling Harris’ account of the poker game into question, with a few pointing to contextual clues suggesting she may have been thinking of a game that occurred on another ship entirely.

Even so, given the popularity of poker and the fact that it was such a frequent pastime on passenger ships, it stands to reason the game was played by some during the Titanic’s lone voyage.

Questing for Bracelets, and Other Expeditions

Of course, as the 1997 film also depicts, the story of the Titanic has also long involved efforts to find the sunken ship and discover its many secrets. And as it turns out, that part of the story, too, has a poker connection.

A 1977 Sports Illustrated article profiled an amateur player from Texas named Cadillac Jack Grimm and his quest to win that year's World Series of Poker Main Event. Grimm ended up drawing a seat next to that year's eventual winner, Doyle Brunson.

Perhaps predictably, Grimm failed to survive the first day of play, finishing outside the top 20 among a field of 34. Thus was the article titled “An Amateur Is Burned at High Stakes.”

Financially speaking, the loss didn’t hurt Grimm too greatly, as he was “a millionaire many times over, not from poker but from other forms of gambling, mainly drilling oil wells.”

He also is described as having funded various expeditions such as one to discover Noah's Ark and others to find the Loch Ness monster and Bigfoot. The implication is that those quests were as futile as his attempt to beat top pros like Brunson and others at the WSOP.

Cadillac Jack Grimm  

Not long after the SI article appeared, Grimm would find himself on yet another quest -- to find the Titanic.

He'd eventually launch three expeditions during the early 1980s to try to locate the sunken ship. Grimm would never earn official credit for finding the ship, although his searches were said by some to have provided valuable clues for later seekers.

The ship would eventually be discovered in 1985 by a team led by Dr. Robert D. Ballard.

A Losing Hand, Poorly Played

There are still more connections between poker and the Titanic, like the one involving the famous poker player and gambler from Missouri who earned himself the nickname “Titanic” Thompson when a defeated opponent woefully declared “he sinks everybody.”

By now the Titanic has become a familiar symbol of failure. However, a number of factors -- unheeded ice warnings, flaws in the ship’s design, shifting tides, a steersman’s wrong turn, the unavailability of binoculars, insufficient lifeboats, further instances of human error and poor judgment, and more -- all had to converge for the tragedy to play out as it did.

One Titanic chronicler, Charles Pellegrino, employed a poker metaphor to describe the so-called “unsinkable” ocean liner going down to cause such a massive loss of life.

The ship “would have needed to cross the Atlantic for more than a century and perhaps for as long as a thousand years before the lining up of so many low-probability events became a mathematical inevitability,” argues Pellegrino in Farewell, Titanic.

“What the ship’s builders and officers did not understand was that the odds of drawing two royal flushes in a row are the same in the first two hands of poker as in any two hands in the next two million.”

Pellegrino has a point. However, hindsight suggests that as happens in poker, the sinking of the Titanic and the tragedy that ensued resulted from a combination of bad luck and a a deficiency of skill, with the event made all the more tragic given that the stakes were so high.

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Cailly, who is already guaranteed the biggest payday of her poker career, sits third in chips behind leader Bernard Guigon and Brazilian Rodrigo Capriolo who heads into the finale in second.

“It’s hard to think that €1.5 million is just seven players away but it would mean the world to me to win,” Cailly told PokerListings.com moments after the final hand.

“To be honest I don’t think I can realize that I’m at the final table of one of the biggest poker tournaments in the world.

“I have no words. I’m speechless,” she said.

When Lucille Cailly made the final table tonight she bested the previous record for a female player at the Grand Final, set by Isabelle Mercier in Season 1 when she finished 10th.

Leading the final table is Bernard Guigon, a 64-year-old pharmacist who lives in Dakar, Senegal. The father of three has been playing Draw Poker since the 1980s but switched to Texas Hold’em just three years ago.

Rounding out the final table in terms of star power is American Mohsin Charania. Despite enjoying massive success online Charania has yet to break through in the online arena.

“It would mean everything to me to make the final table here,” Charania told PokerListings.com on Day 2 of this event.

“I’ve had three or four years of live poker and obviously I’ve won a good amount online but I haven’t really had a breakthrough live yet,” he said.

Chip leader Bernard Guigon.  

“Winning this would be the biggest thing ever,” he added.

Here are the official final table chip counts:

1 - Bernard Guigon - 4,900,000 2 - Rodrigo Caprioli - 2,945,000 3 - Lucille Cailly - 2,865,000 4 - Daniel Gomez - 2,665,000 5 - Mohsin Charania - 2,215,000 6 - Michael Dietrich - 1,550,000 7 - Clayton Mozdzen - 1,430,000 8 - Sergio Castelluccio - 1,410,000 Makhija, Wheeler Headline Busted List

Highlighting the list of players who made the top 26 but failed to make the final table is a group of pros that have done big things in the poker world.

When the day began it was live and online pro Amit Makhija on the shortest stack, but he wouldn’t be the first one to hit the rail. The man known as “amak316” online navigated his way to 23rd place, earning himself €40,000.

The first player to go broke this afternoon was Canadian Andrew Pantling and he did it on the very first hand of the day.

Pantling, who won the €5k Heads-Up event here two years ago, was short and got it in with K♦ 6♦ against pocket aces from Lucille Cailly.

Makhija was able to work his stack up to about 20 big blinds before running queens into kings all-in preflop.

UK pro Ben Vinson.  

American pro Jason Wheeler, who’s made about $3.1 million playing online tournaments, managed to chip up a bit before flopping two pair against top set to go broke.

Pratyush Buddiga, who finished eighth at the recent EPT Berlin main event, made it to 16th in this tournament before being eliminated.

It was a sick hand that sent Buddiga packing and it started with Bernard Guigon limping with pocket kings. Buddiga then moved all-in with A-8 and had to endure waiting for Guigon, who asked for a full count of Buddiga’s short stack before making the call.

Guigon received no instant karma for the slow-roll. His kings held up to bust Buddiga.

Last among the name players to fall short of the final table was Brit Ben Vinson. The UK pro shoved with 9-T and ran into pocket nines.

The final table will be streamed live with hole cards tomorrow beginning at 8:30am Eastern Time and can be viewed here.

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Inman’s grandfather was a bookmaker. His father was a bookmaker. And he grew up exposed to the world of horse racing from a young age.

Now, barely older than 30, Inman is making seven figures trading futures, owns nine horses and travels to places like Monte Carlo to play poker against the best players in the world.

“I’m wired a bit different to other people, I don’t know. I choked myself for two minutes when I was born so maybe it was the lack of oxygen,” Inman told PokerListings.com at the EPT Grand Final.

Inman’s first experience with poker came by way of friends at the age of 14. As he got older his interest in poker continued to grow.

Making His Mark as a City Trader

During summer breaks from university Inman was working at a bookmakers which also dealt with poker, and he ended up working a six-month stint in customer service at the online poker room Pacific Poker.

Originally from Camberly, Surrey, Inman graduated from Swansea University in Wales in 2002 and moved to London to trade full time.

He was so successful Trader Monthly named him one of its “30 Under 30” in 2006.

A large part of that nod was thanks to a single transaction that made Inman roughly £700,000 in a single hour. Inman was watching a speech by European Central Bank president Jean-Claude Trichet on television and made a big bet on the future of the five-year German government bond known as the Bobl.

Poker is still a recreational pursuit for Inman, but the skills he’s honed in the financial world have stood him in good stead at events like the €10,000 PokerStars EPT Grand Final.

“In trading you’re constantly being given information. Some of that information is maths and probability and some of it is psychology because the markets are basically humans acting a certain way,” said Inman.

But the similarities don’t stop there.

Inman had a horse racing in the UK while he was playing the EPT Grand Final main event in Monte Carlo.   Skills in Trading Pay Dividends in Poker

“It’s so similar because I can sit at my desk for two weeks and be doing all the right things, and just be losing money,” he said.

“Sometimes I’ll be sat at my desk at the end of the day, thinking I’ve done all the right things and made all the right moves, but I just feel like someone’s kicked me in the knackers, so it’s a lot like poker,” continued Inman.

Inman finished 53rd out of 665 players in Monte Carlo, good for a payday of €20,000. He adds that to a record that includes a final-table bubble at the £2,500 Six-Max event at the 2010 WSOP Europe, and a string of solid results at other events around the UK.

But it seems like Inman is a born multi-tasker. He said that trading takes up 90 per cent of his time, but it’s still left him enough energy to play poker and manage his horses.

With three fillies and a male horse at stud in France Inman is looking forward to expanding his business to include breeding.

“I actually have a horse running tonight at Doncaster so I’ll be trying to keep an eye on that and play this at the same time,” he said while on a break from the main event.

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His death was confirmed by his daughter via WSOP media rep Nolan Dalla and the family released the following statement on the WSOP website:

"We hope everyone will remember our beloved Amarillo Slim for all the positive things he did for poker and to popularize his favorite game - Texas Hold'em."

Renowned for his quick wit and larger-than-life personality, Preston is often credited for making Texas Hold’em what it is today.

One of the original Texas road gamblers with Doyle Brunson and Brian “Sailor” Roberts, Preston and his peers traveled around Texas playing underground poker games before eventually bringing the game to Vegas.

Slim proceeded to win the 1972 World Series of Poker Main Event and turned his victory into dozens of network television appearances including frequent spots on The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson.

From Road Gambler to Poker Exile

By the time the true Texas Hold'em boom came about in 2003 after Chris Moneymaker's win in the WSOP Main Event, however, Slim was no longer in a position to reap the rewards.

In August of that year a grand jury indicted Preston on multiple counts of indecency with a child after his grandaughter had accused him of molestation.

The felony charges were eventually dropped but Preston did plead "no contest" to misdemeanor assault charges.

In an exclusive interview with Nolan Dalla for PokerListings.com, Slim maintained he only plead out to protect his family and that he was decidedly not guilty of any charges brought against him:

Slim: Plead no contest to protect his family.  

"Contrary to all these charges and things," Slim said, "I've always been a family man. And now after 80 years I'm going to be accused of being a predator of children? No chance."

Preston was ultimately fined $4,000, given two years probation and ordered to undergo counseling but his reputation continued to suffer throughout the poker community - despite repeated expressions of support from Brunson.

The lack of support from the poker community at large always bothered him, he said, despite the fact no one would confront him about it:

"I have never had anyone say anything negative to me. Whether I was playing, or not playing. I think there are a bunch of hypocrites in the poker world and a lot of them are obligated to me.

"Not a one of them has showed up and stood beside me ... I don't hear from them anymore.

"Some of them could have said something and shown their support. But they didn't."

Much of Preston's life, including many of his old road stories, renowned hustles and legendary prop bets, is chronicled his book Amarillo Slim in a World of Fat People released in 2003.

Preston was born on December 31, 1928 in Johnson, Arkansas.

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Also still in it with a shot at the €1.5 million first-place prize are Ben Vinson, Pratyush Buddiga, Jason Wheeler, Mohsin Charania, Andrew Pantling and Amit Makhija.

Pratyush Buddiga is coming straight off an eighth-place finish at EPT Berlin less than two weeks ago which, as it turns out, is the only reason he’s here in Monte Carlo at all.

“I wasn’t going to come here until I got eighth in Berlin so it’s definitely working out,” Buddiga told PokerListings.com in the day’s final level.

“Coming off the disappointment of the close call in Berlin it’s pretty nice to have another chance at redemption but you never know, I could be out in 26th or I could win,” he said.

Buddiga is a former Scripps National Spelling Bee champion who has notched cashes on the EPT, WSOP and WSOP Circuit since turning to poker just a couple years ago.

Buddiga was sitting with 150,000 in chips when the bubble broke but went on a run from there and finished the night with 970,000, good for seventh position out of the 26 who remain.

“I’ve been lucky in some flips but I’ve been able to chip up a lot without showdown, so even if those races hadn’t gone my way I would still have a stack,” said Buddiga.

UK pro Ben Vinson finished fifth our of 26.

“I had never gone deep in a big tournament before Berlin so I think that’s helping at this stage,” he added.

Vinson, Wheeler, Charania Keep Pros’ Hopes Alive

Also through to Day 4 are a handful of professional poker players who should be familiar to the astute poker fan.

Ben Vinson, a UK pro with a long list of cashes dating back to 2006, finished fifth in chips with just over 1 million, while France’s Lucille Cailly, the last woman standing in this event, is just a few steps behind with 999,000.

Cailly has had two previous EPT results but is now guaranteed the biggest score of her career since everyone who returns tomorrow will pocket at least €35,000.

Two more American professionals, Jason Wheeler and Mohsin Charania, are sitting in the upper-middle class of the chip counts with 903,000 and 875,000, respectively.

Heading into Day 4 dead last in chips is live tournament regular Amit Makhija with 317,000.

Here are the top ten counts heading into Day 4:

1 - Geert-Jan Potijk 1,320,000 2 - Bernard Guigon - 1,212,000 3 - Georges Dib - 1,118,000 4 - Andoni Larrabe - 1,071,000 5 - Ben Vinson - 1,039,000 6 - Lucille Cailly - 999,000 7 - Pratyush Buddiga - 970,000 8 - Anatoly Gurtovoy - 945,000 9 - Sergio Castelluccio - 944,000 10 - Vadzim Markushevski - 922,000 Just a few days ago Justin Bonomo won the Super High Roller for €1.6 million.   Bonomo, Benger Among Busted

American pro Justin Bonomo was fresh off winning the €100,000 Super High Roller event here in Monte Carlo and managed to make a deep run in the main event as well.

Bonomo worked the shortstack like a pro, navigating himself to 28th place and a €35,000 payday. It doesn’t quite stack up to the €1.6 million he won just a few days ago, but in Monte Carlo you need every euro you can get your hands on.

The last surviving member of Team PokerStars Pro was Matthias de Meulder, who finished in 34th place for €30,000.

The Belgian got unlucky to go, all-in preflop with pocket queens against Jason Wheeler’s pocket jacks. A jack on the flop sent the pot to Wheeler and de Meulder out the door.

Canadian online MTT crusher Griffin Benger also went bust today, but snagged his first EPT cash.

Benger got unlucky with pocket tens against A-6 in a big preflop all-in, and then got what was left of his stack in with A-8 against A-9 shortly after.

PokerListings.com spoke with the former pro video gamer about his millions in online poker earnings and what it was like to move from video games to online poker. Check that interview here.

Also busted today but getting a piece of the cash were Erik Seidel (46th), Stephen Chidwick (48th), Sandra Naujoks (51st), Leo Margets (57th), Basil Yaiche (59th), Angel Guillen (66th) Tristan Clemencon (67th) and Noah Boeken (91st).

Day 4 will see the final 26 reduced to eight. Check our Poker News Section for the update.

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The son of Canadian actress Nicky Guadagni, Benger got his first taste of international travel and high-level competition in professional gaming as a top-ranked Counter-Strike player.

But despite being one of the most dominant players in that corner of the gaming world, his earnings don’t even come close to the $2.83 million he’s made playing online MTTs.

A rabid fan of sports, movies, television, and of course poker, Benger is in Monte Carlo at the EPT Grand Final chasing his dream of winning a major live poker tournament.

PokerListings.com: We know you’ve got a background in gaming, and a ton of online poker results, but tell us a bit more about where you’re from and what your poker career’s all about.

Griffin Benger: Sure. I turned 27 today and I’m from Toronto. I used to be a professional gamer. I played Counter-Strike for a living, so I transitioned into poker because it has a lot of the same skills, mostly being able to sit in front of a computer for long periods of time.

But it’s a pretty natural transition and a lot of people were doing it. Once I got into poker I became really obsessed with it. It’s really one of those games where there’s always room to get better, and that was one of the problems with Counter-Strike, I got to a point where I couldn’t really get much better.

I started playing the low buy-in Sit and Gos on Full Tilt in about 2006 and it was a while before I started playing MTTs. But the first MTT I played was one of the $24+$2 massive field ones on Full Tilt and somehow luckboxed my way to fourth place which boosted my roll a bit.

But I didn’t really get into MTTs until I met Shyam Srinivasan, who is “s_dot111” on Full Tilt Poker and “g’s zee” on PokerStars, and he sort of took me under his wing and I started to blow up a bit.

PL: What was the development of your poker career like? Did you know right off the bat you were going to be able to do this for a living?

GB: It was definitely a gradual thing that developed as an idea as I started to get better.

"I didn’t even know what a light three-bet was."  

I started getting into the poker during the tail-end of my Counter-Strike career and started making a bit of money on the side playing on Full Tilt.

After I stopped gaming I was supporting myself playing Sit and Gos, but I sort of hit a wall before meeting some of the better MTT players in Toronto and I was exposed to some strategy and the different ways you can play MTTs. That’s when I started being successful.

PL: Did it blow you away when you were exposed to what the best players were doing in tournaments?

GB: Yeah it definitely did. In Sit and Gos it was possible to be profitable just being a nit so I didn’t know much. I didn’t even know what a light three-bet was. So when I was shown things like light three-betting, ICM and bubble play it was really eye-opening.

I remember when I started if I opened A-Q and got three-bet you’d just be folding, but now sometimes you’re five-bet calling off with A-J for value. It’s just amazing how the game changes and how it’s getting more aggressive.

So it’s a game that’s always evolving and you have to adapt to stay successful.

I think one of the big problems people have is that they see the best players doing all this crazy stuff and they just don’t understand it, so they think it’s just hyper aggressive players getting lucky, but really there’s no perfect way to play a hand.

So a lot of people think you have to stick to some sort of system but really you need to think outside of the box.

You have to have an open mind because there’s always something you can learn from someone who’s playing well. Like, even if I’m better than someone at a lot of things, it doesn’t mean they’re not better than me at something.

"I didn’t even know what a light three-bet was."  

PL: What’s it like coming from the Counter-Strike world into poker? There’s got to be a lot more money up for grabs in poker.

GB: In Counter-Strike first place for a tournament was usually between $20k and $50k for a team of five so it’s a lot different.

In poker you don’t have to be the best of the best to make money, whereas in Counter-Strike to win the money you had to beat all the best players in the world and be number one. And there was always someone training harder than you so it was very difficult.

In poker you can be a bit lazier and still make money but it’s the same because if you want to be the best, and that’s something I’ve always wanted to be, you have to put in the work.

PL: Were you the best in the Counter-Strike world?

GB: At one point or another I was probably considered one of the best players in the game, and I was definitely on the best team in the game.

Over the course of the five or six years I was playing professionally I was probably on the number one team half a dozen times so I was certainly one of the biggest players in the game.

PL: Coming from that world, what was it like when you sit down and win something like $110,000 from your home computer?

"I can’t even imagine what winning a tournament like this would feel like."  

GB: Oh man it’s just huge. Winning that $110k, and then the $95k or whatever in the COOP was just an incredible feeling.

Ironically, I finished second and third in those tournaments, and there’s nothing like actually winning a tournament.

I think one of my favorite feelings in poker was just a few months ago when I won the BetFair 100 1R1A major for like $27k, which is like a quarter of either of those scores but I actually won. That’s just my competitive side. I’m not happy until I have every chip.

So I can’t even imagine what winning a tournament like this would feel like.

Really just winning any live poker tournament would be amazing. To have all the chips at the end and to take that picture is definitely a dream of mine.

PL: What are your passions and dreams outside of poker?

GB: I’m hugely into television and film. Actually my girlfriend and I might travel to Cannes to see The Avengers because it comes out a week earlier here and apparently there’s an English language theater there.

I went to school for sports broadcasting so that’s what I was doing before I met my backer.

I’m a huge hockey fan obviously, coming from Toronto, and a huge Blue Jays fan so basically sports, movies and television is where it’s at for me.

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In January PokerStars introduced real money mobile poker in Italy and followed it up by making the app available in the UK in February, and France just last week.

The app is now available in all areas that have access to the PokerStars.eu client, and it’s coming to more and more .com regions as PokerStars continues their multi-phase release.

The Android version is not available in the Android Marketplace but can be downloaded directly from PokerStars.

“We want to cater to players on whatever devices they may have, wherever they might be and whenever they want to play poker,” said Jeffrey Haas, Director of New Platforms, Mobile & Social Gaming at PokerStars.

The real-money app supports cash games, sit and gos and tournaments in all games and stakes, and once Zoom Poker is introduced it will boast all the same functionality as the PokerStars desktop client.

"Expect to be playing Zoom Poker on your mobile device this summer," said Jeffrey Haas.  

“I can’t put an exact date on it but expect to be playing Zoom Poker on your mobile device this summer,” Haas told PokerListings.com.

PokerStars Mobile has been in development since 2010 and it shows. The app is slick and undisputedly sets a new standard in mobile online poker.

Taking advantage of mobile devices’ native gestures and hands-on interface, the app gives players a level of tactile interaction that’s never been possible with a keyboard and mouse.

Players can play up to five tables on tablets and as many as four on smart phone devices.

“We don’t want to force players into a certain behavior, we want to compliment whatever they’re doing naturally so wherever people are, if they’re traveling or watching TV or whatever, we want to be there,” said Danny Kashti, Head of Mobile at PokerStars.

Player Input Drives Mobile Product Development

In the roughly two years that PokerStars has been working on the app, developers have been going straight to the source to understand how players use mobile devices, and how best to tailor the product to players’ habits.

“PokerStars is a company of poker players and our staff has had the earliest version of this software installed on their devices as early as December of 2010 and since then it’s been constantly evolving,” Danny Kashti told PokerListings.com.

“We don’t have the attitude that we know better than the user what the product needs so we’re trying make it easy for poker players to get their feedback to us so we can learn from it,” he added.

"We’re trying make it easy for poker players to get their feedback to us so we can learn from it,” said Danny Kashti.  

Since launching the app PokerStars has been communicating with players through their customer support, forums and discussions with members of Team PokerStars Pro in order to continue making improvements.

“We’re very proud of this product but it’s always evolving and there’s always going to be a long list of improvements we want to make,” said Kashti.

Emphasis on Responsible Gaming for Mobile Poker

Because the mobile poker client will give players more access to online poker than ever before, PokerStars has made responsible gaming a priority.

“We’ve worked very closely with our responsible gaming team to make sure that all the functionality we’ve put in place in the PokerStars client is also available on the Mobile app,” said Jeffrey Haas.

Functions include self-imposed deposit restrictions and the ability to cut yourself off from accessing the site for a certain amount of time.

“And we feel like these issues are especially important for the app because players are no longer tethered to their desk so they have more opportunities to play,” said Haas.

Check the App Store and the PokerStars site to find out if the app is available for download in your region.

Here's a sneak peek at the what the app looks like in action.

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Any player who previously had a balance on PokerStars, or even still has a balance on the site, can take advantage. Players receive a 50% bonus match up to a maximum of $250.

You just have to punch in the bonus code ‘MAX250’ when making a deposit prior to May 3.

The 2012 SCOOP runs May 6-20 with a guaranteed prize pool of $30 million across 40 events in a variety of games including No-Limit Hold’em, Pot-Limit Omaha, Seven-Card Stud and more.

Each tournament also has a low, medium and high buy-in level so everyone can play.

New players can sign up using our marketing code to get a 100% deposit match up to $600. The PokerListings’ marketing code is: pl.com.

PokerStars also runs monthly Sunday Millions qualifiers for PokerListings players who generate 100 VPPs in a single month. The next one is coming up May 26.

New PokerStars players also have access to a total of four $1,000 freerolls every day for an entire month.

For more information check our exclusive PokerStars review for an overview of the software and the various promotions available.

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“It would mean everything to me to make the final table here,” Charania told PokerListings.com after the day was done.

Charania, who’s earned more than $3.5 million playing online poker, has had a ton of close calls in big events but has yet to truly break out in the live arena.

“I’ve had three or four years of live poker and obviously I’ve won a good amount online but I haven’t really had a breakthrough live yet,” he said.

“Winning this would be the biggest thing ever,” he added.

Charania rocketed up the leaderboard this afternoon when he doubled through start-of-day chip leader Nick Yunis from Chile.

Yunis six-bet shoved roughly 140 big blinds with A-T and got snapped off by pocket aces from Charania. Left with just 18k Yunis busted shortly after.

After busting Yunis tweeted that he had misread both his and Charania’s stack sizes.

With $3.5 million in online earnings, Mohsin Charania is still looking for his breakout live score.  

130 players made it through the day, all of whom will return tomorrow to fight it out for one of the 96 places that will be paid.

Also through with respectable stacks are Germany's Giuseppe Pantaleo (294,400), Canadian Griffin Benger (284,100), David "Doc" Sands (281,800), recent Grand Final Super High Roller winner Justin Bonomo (221,900) and Amit Makhija (215,900).

Here are the top ten chip counts heading into day 3:

Max Martinez (Italy) - 456,300 Mohsin Charania (Canada) - 413,500 Erik Seidel (USA) - 362,200 Anatoly Gurtovoy (Russia) - 339,100 Geert-Jan Potijk (Netherlands) - 324,600 Vadzim Kursevich (Belarus) - 317,800 Lawrie Inman (UK) - 303,500 John Andress (USA) - 301,200 Giuseppe Pantaleo (Germany) - 294,400 Tudor Grangure (Italy) - 293,900 Negreanu, Ivey Among Busted

Plenty of big name pros hit the rail this afternoon but the biggest among them were Daniel Negreanu and Phil Ivey.

Negreanu went broke with A♥ Q♥ all-in preflop against pocket kings. His opponent made quads by the river to send Kid Poker on his way.

Phil Ivey is no longer with us.  

Phil Ivey, meanwhile, busted on his very first hand after being moved to the feature table.

Also out was Canadian Sorel Mizzi, who ran A-K into kings to lose roughly half his starting stack. He went bust shortly after.

Vanessa Selbst and Ville Wahlbeck, two members of Team PokerStars Pro, both went broke in the same hand, not long after Mizzi was eliminated.

Selbst and Wahlbeck both held K-Q on a K-Q-J flop but unfortunately for them another player had A-T for Broadway. The straight held up and the two name pros were gone.

Fatima Moreira de Melo, a member of Team PokerStars Sport Stars, was eliminated in a lost all-in preflop race against Fabrice Soulier.

Soulier would make it within the last ten minutes of the day before getting himself eliminated as well.

Action continues tomorrow at the EPT Grand Final as we play into the money and beyond. Check our Poker News Section for the update.

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Any suggestions for a future 3-Bet, feel free to drop a note in the comments.

Today in the 3-Bet we find Phil Ivey sinking further into his divorce proceedings, a $10m poker tournament on hold for seven years in Massachusetts and Daniel Negreanu sharing his obsession with his nut.

1) Ivey Divorce Case Hung Up on $5k Donation What a difference a year makes.  

Of all the millions of dollars that have come and gone from Phil Ivey’s hands, it seems particularly ironic that a measly $5k is sinking him even further in his divorce proceedings.

Rumored to be making over $800k a month from his Full Tilt Poker dividends, any way you cut it Ivey’s divorce from his wife Luciaetta was going to be costly.

But strangely enough it's the $5k donation Ivey made to the judge set that presided over the case that's coming back to haunt him.

Long story short, Luciaetta Ivey filed a petition last September to remove the judge, Bill Gonzalez, because of campaign contributions Ivey made in April 2010 - four months after the divorce was settled.

Her initial appeal was denied but now according to the Las Vegas Review-Journal, a new order has directed the court clerk to hear oral arguments and revisit the decision.

Ivey's lawyers have argued the campaign donations were made after the case was closed and Gonzalez no longer had jurisdiction anyway.

Ivey was last seen busting out of the EPT Grand Final today but is expected to stick around for the $25k High Roller event. Check the poker news section for more.

2) Four People Die Waiting for Massachusetts Poker Tournament What $10m looks like, give or take.  

The story, from the Metrowest Daily News:

In October 2005, the Massachusetts Lottery introduced a Texas Hold ’Em scratch ticket game offering a $10 million grand prize tournament for 560 randomly selected players.

Almost seven years later, 501 players drawn from the instant-winners list are still waiting for the other 59 players to be picked.

As of this week, 79.8 million of the 80.6 million tickets (92%) had been sold but the state is waiting for the rest to be bought before picking the final contestants.

“Seven years is an unusually long time,” Lottery communications director Beth Bresnahan said. “The game didn’t sell as quickly as the Lottery expected.”

In the interim, four of the initial winners have died (although a family member or proxy can represent them in the tournament).

Truth be told the 500 chosen so far have received $2k in cash and the "end game" tournament isn't really a tournament anyway - the 560 players will be cut to 80 then 16 and then four finalists over three rounds through simulated poker hands randomly computer-drawn.

Still, at least the Lottery commission says all the prize money is still there (take note, Epic Poker).

The winner will get $10 million and the three losing finalists will get $1 million each.

3) Negreanu Films Underwear Drawer, Passes on FTP Comment

We went back and forth on including Daniel Negreanu’s weekly rant in the 3-Bet this week as, well, you only need so many video tours of his hotel rooms and underwear drawers.

On rewatching though, Danny does pull it together for the last half of the vid and makes some helpful suggestions on how to think about your monthly nut (don't live beyond your means), the rampant sense of entitlement among young players and a solid Erik Sagstrom degen story.

He also skirts around the PokerStars-FTP deal, but you can read what he's said so far about it here.

Skip to the 6-minute mark to get to the good stuff. (Note to Daniel: Ease off the bathroom products for real. For a vegan, that's awfully cruel to animals. And never film your closet again).

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For the last five months Heinz has been traveling the world, spreading the good word about the game that made him a millionaire at 22 years of age.

But it was Germany where Heinz focused his energy, and he's hoping it will pay off.

PokerListings.com: The WSOP is almost here so tell us, what’s life been like since you won the Main Event?

Pius Heinz: In my personal life not much has really changed. I think I’ve stayed the same person as I was before.

But as far as my professional life, almost everything has changed. I was a total unknown before I won the Main Event and now everyone in the poker world knows me.

I definitely get around a lot more than I used to, a lot of traveling, a lot of interviews and photo shoots. Basically I’ve just got a whole different perspective on the poker world.

Before I only had the outside perspective of a poker player but now I’ve seen how the media works and how parts of the poker industry work.

Sometimes all the attention and responsibilities are hard to deal with but it’s been an amazing experience. I wouldn’t trade it for anything.

PL: The world champion of poker is always looked at as a sort of “Poker Ambassador”. What have you done since winning the Main Event to be an ambassador?

PH: I’ve definitely been focusing on Germany because I feel like that’s where my responsibility is. Poker isn’t necessarily viewed very positively there so I feel like we have a lot of make-up work to do.

"I'm really happy with the way my win was treated and written about in Germany."  

I’ve done a lot of interviews and gone on television shows and just tried my best to show people that poker isn’t a game for criminals or whatever stereotypes these people have about it.

So I’m just trying to spread the word that poker is this great game that’s interesting and has so many different aspects.

PL: Poker seems like a game Germans would love. Do you think there's a boom coming in German poker?

PH: There definitely is a lot of potential for big growth. I’ve done my best and I hope what I’ve done has had a good effect.

I'm really happy with the way my win was treated and written about in Germany.

There wasn’t any jealousy and German people tend to be a bit jealous when someone wins something, especially a 22-year-old kid, and that didn’t happen at all.

But it was a big thing to have someone who’s fairly humble and fairly intelligent talking about poker in the mainstream media in Germany.

I just hope going forward poker’s image will keep getting better in Germany and I hope I managed to represent the poker community well for my country.

PL: What was the biggest thing that happened as a result of winning millions of dollars?

PH: Freedom. That’s definitely the most important thing for me, the freedom and the security that came with it.

With the money I got, if I’m not an idiot with it, I can probably live for the rest of my life in a very comfortable lifestyle. If I don’t blow it that is, and I haven’t so far. But I’ll keep my fingers crossed.

I don’t think many 22-year-olds have already reached their life savings goal. I’m so thankful for it.

PL: How do you feel about going back to Las Vegas for the WSOP this summer?

PH: Well, if a lot of people know me now in Germany, everyone’s going to know me in Las Vegas so I’m not sure how crazy it will be.

"Vegas is the place where it all happened so I’m definitely looking forward to going back."  

If it takes me like half an hour to get through the halls in the Rio I don’t know if I’ll like it after 30 days.

Vegas is the place where it all happened so I’m definitely looking forward to going back. And I’ve only won one bracelet so there’s definitely room for a couple more.

PL: How much will the experience of playing in front of the cameras and huge crowds help you when you’re playing at the WSOP this year?

PH: That’s definitely something that’s going to come in handy if I’m playing on a TV table this year.

I remember on Day 6 last year it was the first time I had been in front of cameras and the first few hours were definitely weird.

I immediately started losing a lot of chips and I’ve talked to a lot of people who say the same thing, that you start playing badly.

You start thinking about how everyone’s going to see your play and if you mess up a hand you’re going to look stupid on TV, so you definitely worry about that.

It took me like three or four hours to get over that and from there I was just thinking about the hands.

If you could pick someone to win the Main Event this year, as far as having a positive impact on poker, what kind of person would you choose?

PH: I think a woman winning would be amazing. Especially if it’s a good-looking woman.

PL: If you had one tip for someone who had never played at the WSOP Main Event before, what would it be?

PH: Just to enjoy the experience. It’s a long event so don’t spew your chips and have fun.

PL: And what advice would you give the person who wins the Main Event next year?

PH: The exact same thing. Enjoy the experience and have fun.

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Tiger’s Poker Night is set to take place tonight with confirmed guests Phil Hellmuth and Doyle Brunson. Hellmuth will emcee the event.

The buy-in is $10,000 but that also includes a suite at for two nights at THEhotel at Mandalay Bay as well as two tickets for Tiger Jam, which features Bon Jovi and friends on Saturday, April 28.

The winner of the tournament will receive a foursome of golf with Woods. Some of the other prizes include a putting lesson with Woods, Pro-Am Spots on the PGA tour, rounds of golf at exclusive clubs around the country, Woods’ memorabilia and a Nike Golf custom club-fitting at the “The Oven” in Fort Worth, Texas.

All proceeds from the tournament go to support the Tiger Woods foundation, which offers a variety of initiatives to give college access to underprivileged youth.

Specific programs include the massive 35,000 square-foot education facility in California and the Earl Woods Scholarship Program.

The tournament begins at 7 p.m. tonight but be sure to check the Tiger Woods Foundation website for more information.

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If you’ve got an inside scoop for a future 3-Bet be sure to hit us up in the comments section.

Today we’re looking at Carmen Electra bringing some excitement to the free-to-play poker world, the unfortunate hack of 2+2 poker forum and a stunning Howard Lederer video that you have to see to believe.

Carmen Electra   Carmen Electra Lights up Pokerist

Actress/glamour model Carmen Electra has signed on to be the face of popular free-to-play Texas Hold’em game Pokerist.

Electra will greet players in the loading screen, main menu and act as a teacher in the game’s tutorial mode.

A long-time fan of poker, Electra opened the first WPT-branded poker room at Foxwoods in 2006 and has hosted various charity tournaments at venues such as Hollywood’s Hard Rock Hotel & Casino.

Pokerist is actually the second-biggest free-to-play poker game in the world, with nearly 100,000 daily active users, second only to Zynga’s Texas Hold’em app.

The game is available online on numerous platforms including Windows/OSX as well as on mobile operating systems like iOS and Android. It’s also available directly in Facebook.

It’s not exactly uncommon for sexy celebrities to get their own online poker room. In 2006 Pamela Anderson was the face of the short-lived Pamelapoker.com on the Doyle’s Room network.

TwoPlusTwo Poker Forum Goes Down

If you’re a TwoPlusTwo forum member and you’re reading this article there’s a good chance it’s because you have nothing else to do.

That’s because TwoPlusTwo, the world’s biggest online poker forum, was temporarily shut down earlier today due to an alleged hack.

According to the brief message on the site the forums were closed as the result of a hacker who displayed the ability to access email addresses and encrypted passwords on the message board.

The message suggested that any users who use their 2+2 password for other sites to immediately change it.

For security purposes the forum will remain closed until they figure out how to patch the breach.

A more pressing concern is where we’re going to get funny Photoshops of professional poker players as farmyard animals.

It’s troubling, to say the least.

Howard Lederer Champions Honesty and Integrity in Video

Well this is awkward.

So-called knowledge forum Big Think has posted a video on business ethics by Howard Lederer.

Yes the same Howard Lederer that was involved with the much-maligned Full Tilt Poker that has failed to pay back its players for over a year now.

It’s hard to believe this isn’t a level but we’re thinking it was filmed over a year ago.

Incredibly Lederer starts the article by saying that in the poker industry all you have is your good name and there's no way you could borrow a bunch of money and then not pay it back.

He actually said that.

Check out the complete video below:

 

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“This was probably the worst, most boring day ever. I think I had a pair once all day,” Moneymaker told PokerListings.com after the day was over.

“The old Chris Moneymaker would have spewed somewhere so I’m happy I was able to maintain some discipline and make it through the day,” he said.

While Moneymaker finished with just 24,000, Nick Yunis was able to stack 191,700 which is good for the overall chip lead heading into Day 2.

Also finishing Day 1B well-stacked was Italy’s Alessio Isaia, France’s Ilan Boujenah, American Tom Marchese and former EPT winner Vladamir Geshkenbein.

Here are the top 10 chip counts overall going into Day 2.

1. Nick Yunis (Chile) - 191,700 2. Ivan Kudriavtcev (Russia) – 186,200 3. Andoni Larrabe Sanchez (UK) – 181,300 4. Martin Kabrhel (Czech Republic) – 167,800 5. Franck Blanc (France) – 160,800 6. David Sands (United States) – 160,300 7. John Eames (UK) – 157,200 8. Alessio Isaia (Italy) – 139,600 9. Malte Moennig (Germany) – 136,900 10. Andres Artinano (Austria) – 125,000

394 players turned up for the second Day 1 heat at the Monte Carlo Bay Hotel which, combined with the players from Day 1A, makes for a grand total of 665 for this year’s Grand Final.

Chris Moneymaker  

With a prize pool of €6,650,000 this event will be awarding €1.5 million for first, and paying out a total of 96 places.

The winner will also take a bracelet from Shamballa Jewels valued at €25,000.

229 players made it through the day, meaning 394 players will be returning for Day 2. And with only 96 spots getting paid, the majority of the players still in will be walking away with nothing but memories to show for their time in Monte Carlo.

Moneymaker Loves the Grand Final, Hates Monte Carlo

It’s getting close to a decade since Chris Moneymaker won the Main Event and although the former champ is playing less, there are still a few must-attend events on his schedule.

“All the PokerStars events are different and this is probably the most prestigious as far as ones you want to win,” said Moneymaker.

“There are three events I mark on my calendar every year which is this, the PCA and the Main Event,” he added.

And Moneymaker has had success at all three. In addition to his 2003 Main Event victory he scored an 11th place finish at the 2011 PCA main event for $130,000 and cashed in the Grand Final here

But despite being a big fan of the Grand Final, Moneymaker doesn’t look forward to visiting the city.

“Even though I love this event, I’m not the biggest fan of Monte Carlo,” he said.

“I don’t love the $50 cheeseburger.”

Action continues on Day 2 tomorrow from the Monte Carlo Bay Hotel. Check our Poker News Section for the update.

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Seidel is in Monte Carlo playing the PokerStars EPT Grand Final Main Event and took a few minutes to talk about Full Tilt Poker and one of the greatest tournament heaters in the history of poker.

The interview ended with Seidel addressing the matter of Full Tilt Poker but for the sake of convenience those questions and answers have been moved to the beginning.

PokerListings.com: Can you comment on your reaction to learning about everything that was happening internally at Full Tilt leading up to Black Friday?

Erik Seidel: Like a lot of people I was pretty disgusted about how things were run and what happened.

Hopefully everything gets resolved but it still doesn’t make up for a year of stress that so many people have been put through. It was a huge financial stress and upset and such a hard year for so many people.

What’s your reaction to the recent talk that PokerStars will be acquiring Full Tilt and players might finally get paid back?

ES: I’m very excited about it. I certainly hope everything goes through without any problems. It’s fantastic for all of us.

PL.com: You’ve had an unbelievable couple of years in tournaments. Is there anything you can point to, to explain your success?

"Hopefully everything gets resolved but it still doesn’t make up for a year of stress that so many people have been put through"  

ES: I really have no explanation for it. I think to a certain extent it was just an aberration. If you stick around long enough you’re going to have a good run.

I like to think I was making some good decisions and I was playing okay but it’s hard to tell exactly what’s going on when you have a streak like that.

PL: Is that really how you think about it, as a “good run”, given the frequency and the magnitude of the results you’ve been posting?

ES: I do look at it as a good run. Every time I sit down and play I’m still just trying to figure the game out. I certainly don’t feel like I know exactly how to play or I have some special understanding.

PL: So many of the results you’ve had have come in High Roller events and there’s certainly more of those now than in the past. Do you excel in those events or is just good luck that your good run came in huge events?

ES: I think it helped a lot that I played a few of the early ones last year and got a good feeling for the structures should be played. I think my focus was good last year and really I just enjoy those events more, so when I sit down for a $100k I’m really excited about playing.

I really love being there and I don’t feel that way about events that have hundreds and hundreds of players because you know the parlay of luck it takes to get there, whereas you have so much more control over a high buy-in event with less people, because you don’t have to make it through a thousand players.

PL: You mentioned understanding the structure really well. Do you think there are talented players who enter these events and don’t fully understand them, or don’t have the experience you have?

ES: I think that is true. I think there are some players who are really great players but they haven’t necessarily adjusted to the difference in play that High Roller structures dictate.

I feel like I’m in love whenever I’m in New York.  

PL.com: You’ve been around and you’ve played high before so how do you feel when you put down $100k, or $250k or even $1 million like you will this summer at the WSOP Big One?

ES: I find it really exciting. When I played the one here, I’m just so happy to be here and be in the game and to be able to play and make decisions that matter.

I think that has a lot to do with the enthusiasm because you know every decision you make could be a very big swing. But when you’re playing against 800 people, certainly the decisions matter but there’s just so much more luck needed to get through it.

What are you looking forward to about the $1 million buy-in Big One for One Drop at the WSOP this summer?

ES: I’m very excited about that event. It’s a historic event and only someone like Guy (Laliberte) could put this together. A good percentage of the field are not going to be professional poker players so I think it’s going to be an amazing event and I think everyone’s going to be really excited about it.

PL: I heard you talking about possibly moving away from Las Vegas. Is that true?

ES: Yeah I’m thinking about it very seriously. I’ve lived in Vegas since ’95 and you know, I certainly like it there but I don’t do as much compared to when I’m in New York.

When I’m in New York I’m doing something every day. There’s always something going on. There’s music and theater, or just walking around.

I feel like I’m in love whenever I’m in New York.

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The AGCC confirmed the move earlier this week. Although the Commission gave no reason for the withdrawal, Orinic Limited was believed to have been applying for the licence as part of the potential deal with the Bernard Tapie Group.

Since the Tapie deal collapsed earlier this week there was apparently no reason for Orinic to go forward with the application for the time being.

Orinic Limited was seeking a Category 2 eGambling license that would have permitted them to handle online gambling funds.

The Full Tilt Poker subsidiary was able to avoid getting its Category 1 license revoked last summer because it didn’t host of the games on FTP and wasn’t in violation of any AGCC regulations.

In other Full Tilt Poker news the company has released an official statement addressing the collapse of the Bernard Tapie deal.

“To address issues reported today in the media and on blogs, Full Tilt Poker confirms that its agreement with Groupe Bernard Tapie has in fact been terminated,” said FTP Attorney Barry Boss.

“Despite this development, Full Tilt Poker is more optimistic than ever that its number one goal will be obtained: Full Tilt players will be repaid. Full Tilt Poker has been in settlement discussions with the US Department of Justice.  As such settlement discussions are always confidential, we are unable to comment on any rumors related to the details of those discussions.  As soon as we have information to share publicly we will do so.”  

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Hit us up in the comments if you have something you’d like to suggest for a future 3-Bet.

Today we’re taking a look at the chromosome Y-lacking heads-up final match in Monte Carlo, some new observations from Dan “jungleman12” Cates and an update with current world champion Pius Heinz.

Dan "jungleman12" Cates   1) Dan “jungleman12” Cates Speaks Up

Dan “jungleman12” Cates has been pretty quiet since Black Friday hit last year.

He’s been active in live tournaments but it’s not quite the same as when he was thrashing Tom Dwan in the durrrr Challenge and winning millions on Full Tilt.

Cates decided to get something up on his blog this week, however, and as usual it was a fascinating read.

Perhaps the most interesting thing is that he’s going to be providing some insight into how he plays every week.

“I’m trying something new: Every week I will be randomly selecting an interesting hand history that is tweeted to me to review via twitter (provided you aren’t one of my competitors, or the hand is not against me). Not sure how well this work or if it will work at all, but I think the result will be fun, interesting, and everyone will benefit from it. So if you have a hand history, tweet it to me, and if you’re selected I will throw you a mention and a hand history review.”

Cates also revealed a number of interesting facts over the course of the blog including:

He’s still playing online and up seven figures since Black Friday            He’s going to be back on PokerStars to play Isildur1 soon If he gets his Full Tilt roll back he’s going to rock a party yacht He’s lost money on every tournament he’s gone to except the recent Premier League

Just do yourself a favor and read the complete blog here. And remember to harass him for more posts next time you see him on the street.

Vicky Coren vs. Melanie Weisner   2) All-Female EPT Heads-Up Final

It’s perhaps a sign of the times when two female poker players emerge from an extraordinarily tough 64-player field at the €5,250 buy-in heads-up tournament at the EPT Grand Final.

Melanie Weisner and Vicky Coren are currently playing out the final heads-up match of the tournament and the winner will walk away with €58,900.

Actor David Mitchell, Coren’s fiancée, is playing the cheerleader role in the above photo as he pulls for the English woman to pull off the victory.

Coren dispatched Dori Yacoub to book her seat in the final match while Weisner beat former EPT champ Mark Teltscher.

Weisner and Coren have been waging all-out war against each other with Weisner currently up 2-1 in a best of five series. Despite the battle the pair has been making small talk the entire time and they just opened a bottle of red wine.

The always-witty Coren put it perhaps best on Twitter earlier today.

“And how nice is this - my opponent in the final is the great Melanie Weisner. Ha! Men and poker are so 1986.”

3) Heinz Claims He Had a Read on Staszko in New Interview

Pius Heinz has been the toast of the poker world over the last week as the first German world champion made his first appearance at EPT Berlin since winning the Main Event.

Heinz did the rounds with the German media and he did one particularly interesting interview with DW-TV’s Euromaxx where he claimed he had a read on his WSOP ME heads-up opponent Martin Staszko.

Both players were widely considered to have noted tells in heads-up but this is one of the first interviews we’ve seen where Heinz publically claimed that Staszko wouldn’t make eye contact when he was bluffing.

Plus, a cameo by Boris Becker, who’s happy he doesn’t have to “jump all over the place” anymore.

 

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In the number one spot after eight levels of poker is Martin Kabrhel from the Czech Republic who stacked 167,800 to Doc Sands’ 160,300.

All told 271 players made it to the first day of the PokerStars and Monte-Carlo Casino EPT Grand Final Main Event. That’s down from the 302 who played Day 1A of the Grand Final last year when it was in Madrid, and even further down from the 351 who played this same day two years ago.

165 players made it through the day, including a slew of big names like Freddy Deeb, Scott Seiver, JP Kelly, Nicolas Chouity, JC Alvarado, Adam Levy, Joe Cada and Sam Trickett.

Also through to Day 2 is the legendary Phil Ivey, who scored a much-needed double up towards the end of the day to finish with 72,000.

Here are the top ten chip counts after Day 1A:

Martin Kabrhel (Czech Republic) - 167,800 David Sands (Canada) - 160,300 John Eames (UK) - 157,200 Malte Moennig  (Germany) - 136,900 Tristan Clemencon (France) - 121,100 Freddy Deeb (USA) - 114,600 Frank Koopmann (Germany) - 113,900 Jason Wheeler (USA) - 112,900 Reza Mostafavi Tabatabaei (USA) - 110,900 Ben Warrington (UK) - 104,800 Doc Sands Crushes Day 1A

David “Doc” Sands has a long list of cashes but the vast majority of them were in North America. Sands has just two results on the EPT.

Day 1A at the Grand Final.  

“It’s definitely one of the most prestigious tournaments and it’s a big field and a $13,500 buy-in so overall it’s just an awesome event,” Sands told PokerListings.com

“I find in general the players in Europe are more aggressive than in the US so you have to come into it with a bit of a different style, at least as an American who usually plays on the World Poker Tour.

“I think it’s really important to have a gear where you’re playing tight and a gear where you’re playing just absurdly aggressive,” he said.

Sands’ day started off on the right foot, with a series of confrontations that ended in James Akenhead’s elimination.

Sands won a big pot from Akenhead early, over-betting the river with the nuts and getting called. That hand knocked Akenhead down to about 11k.

Shortly after, Akenhead executed what looked like a squeeze play, forcing Sands to fold after open-raising.

Sands then opened with A-Q and got a few callers before Akenhead three-bet once again.

“I felt pretty darn good about four-bet calling there,” said Sands.

Unfortunately Akenhead had A-K. Fortunately a queen hit the flop.

“From there it was pretty smooth sailing. I had a really good spot when I four-bet A-K and bet-bet-shoved on A-5-7-2-9 and got called with worse,” said Sands.

Day 1B of the EPT Grand Final begins tomorrow. Check out Poker News Section for the update.

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Twitter is getting pretty hard to ignore. Especially in the poker world as many of the top pros have taken to the social media service like Scotty Nguyen to Michelob Light.

Fortunately for those who don’t feel like wading through thousands of poker Tweets every week we’ve compiled a list of the best Tweets in the poker world over the last week. If you're looking for more be sure to follow @PokerListings.

This week we’re dealing with a lot of buzz about PokerStars potentially acquiring Full Tilt Poker. Interestingly the story broke through a Tweet from Alexandre Dreyfus, who is the CEO of Chilipoker.

We’ve got the Tweet that started it all, along with interesting reaction from poker super agent Brian Balsbaugh, pros Eric Baldwin, Barny Boatman and comedy gold from FakeGusHansen and Joe Stapleton.

"Pokerstars buys FullTilt for a consideration of $750m, including settlement with DOJ and full balances of players (330m). I'm impressed."

-Alexandre Dreyfus @alex_dreyfus

"Thanks for your order! Would you like to add a UB for just $.99?"

-Eric Baldwin @basebaldy

"Lost another $100k in the EPT Super High Roller today. But I'll be fine. As a wise man once said- 'Money can't buy you Handsomeness'"

-Fake Gus Hansen @FakeGusHansen

"GBT never had any intention of buying FTP unless it was handed to them. Listed a couple ulterior motives in a blog few months back."

-Matt Glantz @MattGlantz

"I don't want to say Monte Carlo is expensive, but three fingers of Glenlivet costs THREE ACTUAL FINGERS."

-Joe Stapleton @twojacksjoe

"Groupe Bernard Tapie: 'Poker already dominated by a single player.' Do they mean Sam Tricket ?"

-Barny Boatman @barnyboatman

"It's hard to explain the level of corporate hatred btwn PS & FTP. PS w power/control over major FTP shareholders is their worst nightmare"

-Brian Balsbaugh @Balsbaugh

"If the $750m "all in" figure is correct, I know of 3 vastly more lucrative offers the FTP Board of Directors passed on last summer"

-Brian Balsbaugh @Balsbaugh

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