Poker News Round-up

Brought to you every Friday

Poker News Round-up: Week #32

By Adam Noone, 08/08/2008

London will be the setting for several poker events over the next couple of months, starting with the Poker In The Park exposition on August 15th and 16th. A number of marquees will be set up on the green in Leicester Square to create an event similar to the Gaming Life Expo held at the Rio during the WSOP. The headline sponsor for this event has been named this week as PKR and they will host a poker dome hosting 90 seat turbo sit n goes every hour. Several other poker sites will also be setting up camp including an Ultimatebet/Absolute Poker academy where eleven lectures will be given over the two days by Tony Holden, Ian Frazer, Marc Goodwin, Paul Jackson, Liv Boeree (twice), Nik Persaud, Neil Channing, Dave Ulliott, Tom Sandbrook and Montel Williams.

After Full Tilt’s Million Pound Challenge in mid September, all eyes will be on the World Series Of Poker Europe which kicks off with the £1500 no limit hold’em event one on 19th September. It had previously been stated that events would be played at various London Clubs International venues Empire, The Sportsman, Fifty, Rendezvous and Golden Nugget but that has changed after a new announcement this week. Each day’s play for all four events will now be hosted within the Empire casino with some of the house game tables making way for poker. This move is sure to prove popular with players, spectators and media who will no longer have to make their way across a city unfamiliar to most to find the different venues.

Nobody will be able to get the chance at winning a prestigious double of WSOPE and EPT London titles this year as the two overlap slightly, but what it does mean is that there will be a continuous spell of top drawer poker in the capital. This may well be a canny move by John Duthie to help ensure a good turn out for his event by starting it just as a host of players in town are getting paid out from another tournament. The latest news from the EPT is that Pokerstars are adding £250,000 to the prize pool and guaranteeing £1,000,000 for first place. There is also a £1,000,000 guaranteed prize pool for those with deep pockets who fancy a crack at the £20,000 buy in high roller event where the likes of Hansen, Antonius and Obrestad will surely be lurking. Over at Ladbrokes poker, changes are afoot after some disappointing half yearly figures were posted recently. Despite an increase in online revenue for the company for its sportsbook and casino games, poker showed a drop in total revenue, number of active customers and yield per active player. Ladbrokes management is obviously keen to staunch the reduced player liquidity it is seeing and the massive player pool in the USA might be the answer. The site is well known for not accepting customers based in the US though and whilst that is not going to change (for now) some Ladbrokes players will still find themselves sat at the same table as Americans from next year. Up until now Ladbrokes customers have been segregated from the rest of the Microgaming network, but in future some of the tables will share the entire Microgaming player pool. Initially this will be on the high stakes tables where player liquidity is worst, but if the merger is a success and Ladbrokes sees increased revenue as a result it is hard to imagine that its shareholders wouldn’t push for the move to be expanded to other tables as well. If it did get to the point where American players were sitting at all its tables, it might then be the next logical step to accept their custom rather than see other skins collecting rake for exactly the same games. That however is just conjecture at the moment, but what is certain is that when the high stakes tables merge with other skins Microgaming will see a big increase in player liquidity that would see the network ranked as one of the top ten in the world.

Now the WSOP is over for all but nine players the domestic poker tours are starting up again beginning with the GUKPT Luton event. Early indications are that it’s going to be a good turnout for the main event and there are a few very good players in there such as Dave Colclough and Chris Moorman to name just a couple. So, next week’s round up will feature some live tournament action for the first time in a while as we see how things turned out in the picture postcard town of Luton.

Post your comments in our forum

What's this?