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Poker News Round-up: Week #40After last week’s success in the Full Tilt Million Pound Challenge, Adam No-one has gone missing in action, presumably out in the big wide world now that he is Adam Some-one. Reports of a sighting on Mustique are unsubstantiated, but if he tries to hustle a poker game up together there, he will be back in Hendon broke within a fortnight. Until then, here’s the news..  Jesper Hougaard The WSOPE was in London this week again and this time around, someone remembered to add a £1500 curtain-raiser to proceedings. With 410 entries, Neil Channing managed a very creditable 4th and a £45k contribution towards his stable fees, rumoured to be a larger yard than Godolphin’s. However, victory went to Jesper Hougaard when he made mincemeat of Ac Kc with his Ad Jd and flopped the flush. Jesper took his £144k prize money and added it to the $610k prize he won for his bracelet in Las Vegas exactly 3 months previously.  SherkhanFarnood Next came the £2.5k HORSE event and a limit format that is rarely seen played on these shores. Apparently no-one remembered to tell Jeff Duvall that and he took a day off from getting the cake in The Vic to manage a very creditable 4th. However, most attention seemed to be on Howard Lederer and Phil Ivey who had both brought plenty of ammunition with them to the final table. Sherkhan Farnood and Phil Ivey managed to cook up a gigantic pot in a stud round with Ivey showing (??)88 and the only person in the room that didn’t think he had an 8 to go with it in the pocket was apparently Farnood. Either that or he was confident that this 2pair holding of fives up would fill up on the end against Ivey’s unimproved trips that sent Ivey spinning into a break with virtually only ante chips remaining from what was once a decent stack. The beat seemed to phase Ivey more than expected and then it dawned on me that all the side action that took place on Ivey winning a bracelet in 2008 was worth a lot more than the meagre £77k riding on this event. Farnood used the extra chips wisely and went on to take down the event.  Theo Jorgensen Onto the £5k PLO and a ‘who’s who’ of the world’s best Omaha players sat down with the usual smattering of holdem players with £5k spare and nothing better to do. When the dust settled, the final table was an unlikely composition with perhaps most attention focused on perennial stake horse Dave Penly who had sold off most of his action to half the audience in order to play the event. Penly produced a decent return for backers with 6th place, more money moved over to the Vic when Eric Dalby took down 3rd spot, leaving Theo Jorgensen to take care of Sorell Mizzi heads up and the £218k prize.  John Juanda The £10k main event turned out to be the marathon of all marathons, beating the longest final table record by more than 3 hours, the final hand being dealt at 10:32 in the morning, presumably much to the relief of all concerned except the runner up, Stanislav Alekhin. Alekhin had to yield ultimately to John Juanda who many felt was long overdue for a result of this magnitude, a not inconsiderable £868k. In 3rd place came Ivan Demidov who is one of the 'November nine' awaiting his fate at the delayed final table in Las Vegas. Finalling in both competitions has to be considered as useful form by anyone's standards and may give the ESPN boys something to work with ahead of what otherwise threatens to be a sterile final table with no household names amongst the lineup. Meanwhile, over the road in The Victoria, the London leg of the EPT has kicked off giving poker players the opportunity to put another large chunk of their bankroll into action. For those that need to play higher to feel the buzz, a mere £20k will buy you into the Showdown event that follows the main event.  Russ Hamilton In other news, Russ Hamilton has been implicated in the UltimateBet cheating scandal report from the Kahnwake Gaming Commission. Whilst Hamilton’s role within UB was described as ‘associated with the affiliate program’ his involvement was deemed as central enough by the KGC to hand down a $1.5m fine and a player refund order to the tune of a further $6m. UB also have to remove ‘unsuitable persons’ which you would figure now includes Hamilton and the files are heading off towards Law enforcement officers for further consideration.  Phil Ivey Finally, Barry Greenstein has finally managed to do what no other poker player has managed to achieve, he got Phil Ivey to post some strategy content on his blog! Daniel Negreanu will probably wish that he hadn't if he ever reads it as it wasn't particularly complimentary about him in the WSOPE HORSE event. |
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