Poker News Round-up

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Poker News Round-up: Week #33

By Adam Noone, 15/08/2008

With less than a month to go until Pokerstars’ 2008 World Championship Of Online Poker starts, the controversy surrounding the winner of 2007’s main event is now finally over. The account which finished first in that event was disqualified amid allegations of unfair play, and the past few weeks have seen the matter taken to court in the Isle Of Man. The owner of the account, Natalie Teltscher, had filed a lawsuit against Pokerstars but that has now been withdrawn with Teltscher conceding that she has no chance of ever seeing the $1.2 million that she originally thought was on its way after defeating a field of 2998 runners. The allegations are that not all of those entrants were playing against her though and that TheV0id was actually one of several entries in a multi-accounting operation.

Having initially tried to claim that she was playing on the account, the evidence produced by Pokerstars has forced her to admit that she was not and that in contravention of the site’s rules, someone else was using her account. The person actually controlling the account that day has not officially been named but given that Natalie is the sister of accomplished British player Mark Teltscher, not many people have been unable to at least hazard a guess as to likely suspects.

It might have seemed like it was at least worth having a pop at getting the decision overturned given the huge amount of money involved, but Pokerstars security is generally very good and it was unlikely that they would have taken such action without being in possession of all the facts. In fact, it has actually cost Teltscher money as a contribution towards Pokerstars’ legal costs has had to be made as well.

Over at the G casino in Luton a decent turnout of 376 paid £1000 apiece to enter the GUKPT main event, and as is often the case with GUKPT tournaments there were many tough players from the British poker scene in attendance. Dave Colclough, Jerome Bradpiece, Micky Wernick, Chris Moorman and Stuart Rutter were some of the more recognisable names, but these days there are also always plenty of good players you have never heard of that are ready to make a name for themselves in events like these. Rutter made it to the final table which also included pro darts player Wayne Mardle but both made early exits, finishing seventh and eighth.

Sam Trickett

The man who knocked Rutter out, Sam Trickett, went on to collect all the chips for a nice £109,050 payday but this wasn’t even his biggest cash to date. Trickett has recorded some good tournament results including fourth place for nearly a quarter of a million dollars in a $5,000 no limit hold’em event at this year’s WSOP, and is someone we could well be hearing more of in the near future.

Elsewhere, with the European Poker Tour season five about to begin, it has been announced that two more events have been added to the itinerary. The first is a completely new venue on the tour – the Hungarian capital of Budapest where the Las Vegas Casino will host the country’s biggest ever poker tournament. The buy in for the main event at this festival will be slightly smaller than usual at €4,000 which will surely help to ensure a good attendance to get this new leg of the EPT established.

The second addition comes with the confirmation that the Pokerstars Caribbean Adventure is back in January 2009 for the sixth time in total and second as part of the EPT. Last year’s event was a big hit with 1136 runners generating a $2,000,000 first prize which was won by Frenchman Bertrand Grospellier. The buy in for this remains at $7,800 and unlike all other EPT events there is no cap on the size of the field.

In the online world there is also news of a big tournament coming up with the recent announcement that Full Tilt will be hosting another heads up championship in early September. This time it’s a pot limit Omaha tournament and once again the buy in will be $25,000. Omaha has been known to generate a lot of action on Full Tilt and there will be no shortage of players ready to stump up what is a huge amount of money to most people. Expect to see the likes of Patrick Antonius, Phil Galfond, Gus Hansen and David Benyamine all getting their fix of action in this one. Satellites will be running soon if anyone out there fancies mixing it up with the big boys, and if there are 64 runners as there were last time then there will be over half a million dollars on offer for first place.

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