Poker News Round-up

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Poker News Round-up: Week #36

By Adam Noone, 05/09/2008

It had been a week in which virtually nothing newsworthy had happened, so all credit to Tom Dwan for livening things up whilst playing the high stakes games on Full Tilt as Durrrr. A couple of years ago Swedish player Mohamad Kowssarie caused quite a stir when he won the largest online pot of all time ($465,451) playing as Fast_Freddie against Johnny Lodden aka bad_ip. Recently a bigger pot was passed across the table between pr1nnyraid and TonyBliar but that is generally accepted to have been a publicity stunt rather than a genuine pot.

On 3rd September Kowssarie’s old record was broken three times in the space of two hours and Durrrr was involved in all three hands. Firstly, playing no limit hold’em, his A A dodged the flush draw of Peter Jepsen to take down a massive pot of $474,949, but it wasn’t long before the money was moving back the other way. 43 minutes later Jepsen flopped the straight whilst holding 6 9 and got paid on every street by Dwan including a big river bet of $180,000 to make a total of $499,037 for the largest genuine online pot of all time. Defeat in that massive pot was not enough to spoil Durrrr’s day though as he also managed to win another two monsters of $476,305 and $447,785 against Phil Galfond aka OMGClayAiken in the same session on Full Tilt’s newly created Railheaven high stakes table.

Tom Dwan

Remarkably Durrrr might not even be up for the week as he has taken a pounding over the past few days from Phil Ivey over at his Ivey Thunderdome pot limit Omaha table. Several pot in excess of $200,000 have been won by Ivey against Dwan at this variant of the game recently to see Ivey clock up a profit of over a million dollars in the space of a couple of days. Win or lose though, wherever there is big action Tom Dwan seems to be involved and he has now been in the thick of it for five of the seven biggest online pots of the year so far, winning four of them. It’s no wonder Phil Ivey once referred to him as “the kid who’s going to bust me.”

Chris Moorman

While we’re on the subject of online poker, congratulations are due to England’s Chris Moorman for his tournament results this year. Playing as Moorman1 Chris has been tearing up the online tournament scene and his fine work has seen him rewarded with recognition as the world’s number one ranked online tournament player – a prestigious accolade previously held by the likes of Cliff Josephy, Annette Obrestad and Sorel Mizzi.

It’s a bit of a quiet period for live tournaments at the moment, but there are a couple being held in a location which could be set to become very big for poker in the next few years. On 26th August the poker room at the Galaxy Starworld Casino Resort in Macau officially opened with a book signing by Doyle Brunson, and many believe this is a place where big big money could be changing hands over the poker tables.

Yevgeniy Timoshenko wins the APT Macau

The first tournament to be held there was the $5,000 Asian Poker Tour event which guaranteed a prize pool of $1,500,000. Those who made the journey to take part were rewarded with an overlay of $215,000 and tournament organisers were in turn rewarded with plenty of notable players such as Doyle, Johnny Chan, JC Tran and John Juanda all helping to ensure that the first event went off in style. None of these were able to take advantage of the added value, but it might have been a good thing for future attendances that there was strong representation of far eastern countries at the final table. Russia’s Yevgeniy Timoshenko eventually defeated South Korea’s Joon Hee-Yeah for a first prize of $500,000, with Thailand’s Rober Karian in third.

Next up in Macau is the Asia Pacific Poker Tour which has attracted even more famous players such as Barry Greenstein and John Phan to compete in a series of big buy in events. A $25,000 main event will be complemented with several other tournaments with buy ins ranging from $1,000 to a massive $150,000 for the real high rollers. A total of 538 players bought in for the main event, which is still in progress at the time of writing, and this event looks like it could become a major fixture on the poker calendar in future.

For those without the bankroll to jet over to Macau, or perhaps simply without the inclination to venture far from the computer monitor Pokerstars’ World Championship Of Online Poker starts on 5th September and also offers a wide range of tournaments in which you can take on the likes of Moorman1 and possibly win a tidy sum in the comfort of your own home.

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