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Poker News Round-up: Week #20It’s been less than a month since Yevgeniy Timoshenko was crowned champion at the WPT season seven grand final but already the first leg of season eight is in the books. The newly added destination of Venice proved popular enough to bring in 397 players for the €4,0000 main event, which is no match for the 1178 at EPT San Remo but not a terrible attendance for a non-televised tournament. Amongst the recognisable names to go deep were Surinder Sunar and Dario Minieri who both just missed out on final table appearances, collecting eighth and seventh places. Canadian Mike McDonald is still too young to play in the casinos of North America so always seems keen to travel to Europe to get some big buy in tournament experience under his belt, and so far things have been going extremely well for him. To his two EPT final tables (one of which was a win) he can now add a WPT final after finishing fourth in Venice to add another €109,540 to the coffers. It might have been so much better for Timex who got his chips in with the best of it against Martin Jacobsen of Sweden, but in true Scandinavian fashion he hit his two pair on the river to collect a huge pot. Jacobsen’s final opponent of the tournament also hailed from Sweden in the form of Sven-Ragnar Arstrom who was playing in his first significant live tournament. When Jacobsen made an ace high flush he was happy to get all his chips in but to his dismay the newcomer across the table from him had made a full house and Arstrom became the winner of the first ever WPT event to be held in Italy, good for €397,960. A quick look at the tournament schedule shows that Venice was the last big buy in event on the calendar before the WSOP, but then event number one is less than two weeks away now. That event is irrelevant for most of you reading this as it’s the casino employees’ event but that is swiftly followed by the first open event which really gets the series started with a bang – the $40,000 40th anniversary event. From now on the WSOP is really going to be the focus of most poker news, and this week Jack Effel got the ball rolling by revealing that there would be new flatter payout structures in place this summer. With a smaller percentage of the prize pool being allocated to the top few spots there is no chance that anyone will be collecting a first prize as big as Jamie Gold’s $12 million in 2006, but there will be more millionaires created this year. If the main event were to have the same number of runners this year as in 2008 there would be twelve prizes of a million or more compared to eight last year, but in truth many will be happy just to cash for any sort of prize at all. A little more WSOP news to emerge this week is that the Gaming Lifestyle Expo has been re-branded and will return as PokerPalooza which is billed as being focussed on fun, social and interactive elements. There will no doubt still be the same mix of novelty card protector vendors and disinterested pole dancers, but on the plus side there will be a bucking bronco and seminars conducted by past WSOP champions. As if not enough calories are consumed in Vegas as it is, PokerPalooza will also feature a hot dog eating contest for anybody who fancies himself as the next Joey Chestnut. One final piece of WSOP information is that tournament winners will be treated to a ceremonial presentation of their bracelet on the day after their win, when national anthems will be played as with the Olympics. This does at least make an effort to recognise the achievements of players who sometimes complete their wins in the early hours with no crowd present, but there are probably going to be a few turning up worse for wear or even not making it at all after indulging in celebrations of their own.  Lisa Hawkes When the London Poker Circuit announced its arrival on the scene in February it looked as though they had a lot to offer by going down the route of staging tournaments in hotels which has proved popular over in Ireland. So far though the whole tour has been something of a letdown. The timing of events to date has been pretty poor, with the inaugural £1,000 event getting just 18 runners after going head to head with GUKPT London and then both high rollers events so far having to be cancelled. It might have been prudent then to do everything possible to whip up a decent crowd for the latest festival which took place this past weekend. Instead the rather dubious decision was taken to bill this event as being playable by invitation only from either Donnacaha O’Dea or Michael Greco. The result was that just 15 people showed up to play at the Kingsway Hall Hotel in Covent Garden for a pretty low key affair which was won by Lisa Hawkes. Sadly these events haven’t got off the ground yet but the next one in Kensington at the end of July doesn’t clash with anything else and there should be plenty of time for organisers to come up with ways to get a few more bums on seats this time. If not, it’s hard to imagine what sort of future there is for the London Poker Circuit.
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