Poker News Round-up

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Poker News Round-up: Week #41

Simon Galloway, 10/10/2008

Michael Martin

Another week, another dollar, for those that can win races, and another week of London-centric tournaments completed. First, the conclusion of the EPT London leg where Pokerstars very generously added £250k to the prize pool. All the usual faces lined up to take their shot in this, including the full suite of Pokerstars pros and many others that took the easy decision to extend their stay from the WSOPE. Ultimately it was American Michael Martin who took the spoils and a useful £1million addition to his retirement fund, a reasonable comeback from a 2BB stack. Martin obviously likes things this side of the pond, completing a twelve month final table treble after recent success in Amsterdam and Monte Carlo.

Jason Mercier

What do you do if you bust out of the EPT main event? Raise the stakes and try again of course. Which is precisely what the majority of the 85 runner field did with the £20k buy-in £1million EPT Showdown event. The usual superstar field that you might expect for such an event, led into Day 2 by David Benyamine, followed by the likes of Jason Mercier, Scotty Nguyen and John Juanda. Recent form seems to count for a lot in these events at the moment and so it proved to be again, with Juanda and Jason Mercier emerging to contest the title, fresh from their respective WSOPE successes. In the winning hand Jason was dealt KQ. John raised from the button with AJ and Jason moved all-in. John called, his enthusiasm dampened somewhat by the 9-T-J flop giving Mercier the insta-nuts. After his WSOPE success, I imagine that Juanda will come to terms with only 2nd place in this event, and I doubt very much if he will be travelling economy on the way home.

Poker players both sides of the Atlantic are now spoilt for choice. European players have the inaugural EPT event in Hungary followed by the Amsterdam classics to look forward to, whilst Americans have the ongoing Festa al Largo and WPT events in Las Vegas as well as a plethora of smaller buy in deep stack tournaments in town. An opportunity to try and murder a 45k starting stack in the first level awaits many.

Meanwhile in the online world, everyone awaits the decision of a court case in Kentucky where Kentucky Governor Beshear has attempted to seize 141 internet domain names on the grounds that they are connected to internet gambling. Many of the issues involved in the case will test the UIEGA validity further, so it could well be in poker player’s best interests to get the right ruling in Kentucky. The Kahnawake Gaming Commission are also involved, the Chief responsible for the Department of the Bleeding Obvious submitted the following to Beshear: ‘We are compelled to draw to your attention that your actions will also adversely affect the members of our community – and that is not acceptable.’ Incredible.

Teddy Monroe

The Bellagio are reported to have 86’d Teddy Monroe, much to the displeasure of everyone else in his regular game. The self-appointed Iceman, widely recognised to be the number 1 player in the world, according to a recent poll taken by his entourage, Teddy is alleged to have been responsible for rounding up suckers to take place in a coin flipping prop bet in a private suite. The scam is as old as the hills, but the Bellagio took a dim view of people forming a line outside of this suite all looking to make 7 to 5 on their money. Teddy has now resurfaced at The Venetian, so if you play there, don’t start playing flips for a rack. And whatever you do, don’t look for any clips of this on YouTube, you won’t be able to stand the results.

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