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Poker News Round-up: Week #45The World Poker Tour is all set for a change of ownership after shareholders this week voted to approve the sale of most of WPT Enterprise’s assets to PartyGaming subsidiary Peerless Media. It’s been an action packed few weeks for investors and management of WPTE, which not so long ago could do nothing right. After repeatedly posting big financial losses, losing its broadcasting slot on the Travel Channel and closing its online poker room it seemed as though WPTE was in big trouble. Since then fortunes have changed dramatically though, and now it seems people are falling over themselves to get a piece of the WPT. In August Gamynia Ltd made an offer of just over $9 million for the company which was originally accepted until Peerless Media waded in with an offer of $12.3 million which was deemed preferable. That deal has now been approved although not without a further bit of drama when Mandalay Media also made a last minute bid for the company by offering a massive $36.5 million. As well as offering around three times as much as Peerless, Mandalay Media also proposed to pay a dividend to shareholders which Peerless Media would not have done. However, despite what appears to be a far superior offer on the table WPTE shareholders decided to reject the bigger sum and stick with Peerless. In fact it was an overwhelming majority who voted to stick with the Peerless Media offer so presumably they are pretty confident about the benefits of being part of PartyGaming and where the company is heading under them. The European Poker Tour has also been in the news itself this week after revealing the second half of the tour’s itinerary for season six. On the whole the schedule looks pretty similar to the back end of season five with venues such as San Remo, Copenhagen and Deauville all hosting events. One notable change is that Austria is back on the tour although players will no longer heading to Baden in 2010, instead heading for the Alpine resort of Saalbach-Hinterglemm for an event known as EPT Snowfest. As well as having the usual selection of tournaments, the emphasis seems to be on making this one more of a holiday experience (perhaps inspired by the massive success of the Caribbean leg) as satellite winners will receive ski hire and lift passes as part of their packages. This idea certainly seems to be a popular one amongst many including 888 Poker sponsored player Shane Warne who is said to be keen to take part after hearing that there would be plenty of opportunity for sledging.  Bambos At the world heads up championships the Vic took over from Casino Barcelona as the host venue when 42 players signed up for the £3,000 buy in tournament. That meant that more players sat out round one than took part in order to reach the 32 required for a full set of matches in round two. From there the action started to pick up though and once the four paid places were reached we had two English players plus Charalambos Xanthos (aka Bambos) from Cyprus and Russia’s Victor Ilyukhin. Bambos saw off Ilyukhin to bag a spot in the final whilst the all English semi final saw James Mitchell overcome Laurence Houghton. Early on in the final Bambos won a big pot to take a commanding chip lead and from there he never relinquished his advantage, finally winning when his top pair held up against Mitchell’s shove with middle pair. Having been a regular fixture at UK events for many years now, this win for Bambos represents his biggest tournament result so far with £65,000 more banked.  The November Nine Taking a look at what’s coming up next week, there is one very obvious highlight as nine players return to the Rio to make their final push at becoming world champion. It’s an eagerly awaited final table this year with some fascinating possibilities. The best player in the world is there and although returning to one of the shorter stacks, many people fancy him to outplay the rest of the table. At the other end of the scale probably the least experienced player has 30% of the chips in play, and he says that he intends to play even tighter than he has done previously. With such a big percentage of the chips effectively locked up barring a cooler hand for Moon, what effect will that have on the rest of the table? The next level will cost 810,000 per round so there may not be enough chips to support the shorter stacks for too long and we could see some early action. England’s James Akenhead is one of those shorter stacks and needs something to happen for him pretty quickly, but he will know how to manage his chips having successfully nursed a short stack through nearly all of day eight following a KK v AA cooler within minutes of sitting down. It’s sure to be an entertaining final with the different combinations of ability and chip stacks making no one player a clear favourite in this. He has the shortest stack and Ivey to his left but if James can get hold of some chips early on he would also be in with a good shout of winning this so let’s hope he gets the chance to show the world what he is capable of.
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