Featured articles
The vast changes made to the broadcast of the World Poker Tour during its ninth season are apparently paying off. According to a WPT press release this week, FSN’s coverage of the popular program has increased in ratings by 35 percent over last season, with an average number of weekly viewers at 669,000. The WPT… Read more »
With titles on the World Poker Tour and European Poker Tour to his credit, along with numerous online accomplishments, Bertrand “ElkY” Grospellier is considered one of the most talented No Limit Hold ’em tournament players on the planet. The Team PokerStars Pro has accrued more than $7.5 million in live earnings, plus another $2 million… Read more »
It wasn’t exactly a tightly kept secret, but the team at PokerTracker officially let the cat out of the bag Monday with the announcement PokerTracker 4 (PT4). Now celebrating its tenth anniversary, PokerTracker will launch public beta testing of its new release late in the third quarter of 2011, with commercial sales scheduled for the… Read more »
We are not going to tell you to get your hopes up because, as we all know by now, lawmakers have a knack for inflicting soul crushing blows upon the poker community, but it looks like there may be a glimmer of light on the online poker legalization front. A glimmer. Nobody overreact, please. As… Read more »
The story at the World Series of Poker (WSOP) over the weekend was the incredible battle between all-time greats John Juanda and Phil Hellmuth in the $10,000 2-7 No-Limit Draw Lowball Championship. It would have been interesting enough had it just revolved around Juanda winning his fifth gold bracelet, but the attention of the poker… Read more »
Phil Hellmuth was so close to winning his 12th bracelet on Saturday night you could virtually hear the cork pop on the Dom Pérignon. Hellmuth absolutely punished the final table of the $10,000 No Limit 2-7 Draw Lowball Championship to reach heads up play with another legend of the game, John Juanda. The “Poker Brat”… Read more »
There are several fascinating storylines going into the final day of the World Series of Poker $10,000 2-7 Draw Lowball Championship. The stacked field of nine features two former WSOP Main Event champions, a former WSOP Europe Main Event Champion, and the winner of last year’s 2-7 Draw Lowball Championship. Eight of the nine remaining… Read more »
Russia’s Viacheslav Zhukov entered the $10,000 Omaha High-Low Split Championship this week as one of only a few unfamiliar faces in the tournament. But the 22-year-old poker pro, playing in his first World Series of Poker, never felt threatened playing in one of the most star-studded fields of the WSOP. Zhukov bested 201 talented players… Read more »
A magistrate judge in New York has denied bail to one of the 11 men indicted by the U.S. Department of Justice on Black Friday. Judge James Cott refused bail to 53-year-old Ira Rubin, one of the alleged payment processors that assisted PokerStars and Full Tilt Poker in “tricking” banks by disguising payments as transactions… Read more »
Remember that scene in the movie Rounders when Mike McDermott cleans up at the Binghamton police officers’ poker game (until Worm comes along and ruins everything)? Well, if you live in Maryland and lost money when the United States federal government indicted two online gambling companies in May, seizing ten domain names along with player… Read more »
There was no shortage of action at the 2011 World Series of Poker (WSOP) on Monday, as three bracelets were clinched in three entirely different events. To be fair, the final days of two of the tournaments were actually started on Sunday, but the bracelets were won after the clock struck midnight, so we’re going… Read more »
As we approach the two month mark since online poker’s Black Friday, most of the people named in the U.S. Department of Justice (DoJ) indictments have remained silent. A couple have pleaded guilty and a couple have made short statements proclaiming that they have violated no laws, but nobody has claimed to not have been… Read more »
Team PokerStars Pro Eugene Katchalov captured his first World Series of Poker bracelet Saturday by winning the $1,500 Seven-Card Stud title in Las Vegas. The 30-year-old pro from New York collected $122,909 in prize money and removed his name from the list of the best players in the world that have fallen short of poker’s… Read more »
If you didn’t know the name Jake Cody before now, it’s time to start paying attention. The 22-year-old from Rochdale, England accomplished an extraordinary feat late Friday evening, taking down the $25,000 Heads-Up Championship at the World Series of Poker to complete the last leg of poker’s Triple Crown. Cody has now won events at… Read more »
It was a busy day at the World Series of Poker (WSOP) Thursday as a total of six events were spread around the Rio Convention Center in Las Vegas. On top of that, the WSOP announced the inception of a $1 million buy-in tournament starting next year that will benefit One Drop, a foundation which… Read more »
The poker community was stunned this week to find out that the game’s biggest star, Phil Ivey, was boycotting the 2011 World Series of Poker. Ivey, speaking publicly for the first time since Black Friday, released a statement on his Facebook page late Tuesday evening that faulted Full Tilt Poker’s “painful” slowness in returning player… Read more »
With all the hand wringing over the collapse of online poker in the United States since Black Friday, one big thing has been largely ignored by the poker community as a whole: the 42nd Annual World Series of Poker (WSOP). The largest and most famous poker festival in the world kicked off Tuesday as thousands… Read more »
Over the last few days, rumblings could be heard in the online poker community that Full Tilt Poker was going to make some sort of announcement on May 30th. People’s hopes were raised, thinking that this may mean that Full Tilt was ready to start sending payments out to U.S. customers, who have had their… Read more »
With the World Series of Poker (WSOP) about to begin at the Rio in Las Vegas, there was one more piece of business for WSOP officials to conclude: the WSOP Circuit National Championship. Little Rock’s Sam Barnhart emerged victorious Sunday night at Caesars Palace, claiming the $300,000 first prize and a spot in the history… Read more »
Louisiana’s Jonathan Poche is having quite a month on the Circuit. Barely a week after winning the World Series of Poker Circuit Main Event in New Orleans for $121,000, Poche is the overwhelming chip leader at the WSOP-C National Championship final table at Caesars Palace in Las Vegas. Poche entered Day 2 second in chips,… Read more »
The top performers of the 2010-11 World Series of Poker Circuit season gathered at Caesars Palace in Las Vegas Friday afternoon for Day 1 of the inaugural WSOP Circuit National Championship. The invite-only freeroll tournament offered a prize pool of $1 million up for grabs, with first place collecting $300,000 and the first WSOP bracelet… Read more »
The inaugural season of the Federated Sports + Gaming (FS+G) professional poker league doesn’t begin until August, but the final measures are being taken to ensure that the highly-anticipated league goes smoothly. On Thursday, FS+G unveiled its eight-person Standards and Conduct Committee, which will work to ensure “fair play, good character and integrity in every… Read more »
While the U.S. Department of Justice continues its effort to weed out online poker in the States, many countries in the European Union are opening their doors to online gambling operators with new regulation systems in place. According to a report by eGaming Review, Casino Gran Madrid, which hosted this year’s European Poker Tour (EPT)… Read more »
While the U.S. Attorney’s Office, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, and the Internal Revenue Service are running around seizing online gambling domain names, freezing player funds, and otherwise doing whatever they can to stop Americans from playing internet poker at home, the state of Nevada is looking to do the opposite. On Tuesday, Nevada’s Senate… Read more »
Not that the first one wasn’t a gigantic, Shaquille O’Neal-sized boot, but since the indictments of eleven principals of the three largest U.S.-facing online poker rooms on April 15th, poker players have been wondering if the other shoe was going to drop. On Monday, it did, although nobody knows for sure how many feet the… Read more »
