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Poker News Round-up: Week #38The inaugural WPT Cyprus classic was concluded this week, seemingly under the radar as it barely received a mention. Thankfully, The Hendonmob database came to the rescue and I can report that Frenchman Thomas Bichon took the spoils, along with a handy $580k. Maybe there would have been more interest if the final table had consisted of the 7th-11th place finishers rather than the top 6. Maybe it is symptomatic of the sheer volume of tournaments going on right now that I struggled to keep up with them all! Meanwhile in the UK, players were joined by Phil Hellmuth, Annette Obrestad and Doyle Brunson at Dusk Till Dawn in the pursuit of the English Poker Open title and the $1million guaranteed prizepool. You have to take your (bowler) hat off to the DTD crew, everyone I have spoken to has had nothing but praise for the way the tournament was run, with no detail too small not to have been meticulously planned beforehand. Definitely raising the bar for other venues to try and emulate with their festivals. Seats were available online beforehand for $3500/$4000 although I have no idea how many of the 200+ runners took advantage of that discounted rate. When the dust had settled and the smoke cleared, the ‘name’ players had fallen by the wayside and David LaRonde was the lone survivor, clutching a trophy and £208k for his trouble. In Atlantic City, the event causing most of a stir was the Ladies only event, won by Abraham Korotki. Yes, that is a male name. Yes, it was a ladies event. Yes, it was bound to happen sooner or later. Korotki made use of local laws that rendered The Borgata powerless to stop him entering. Without getting drawn into a misogynistic argument on the subject, I will simply report that Korotki generally got shot down by various sections of the media. They chose to bill it as ‘depriving the 2nd place finisher’ who happened to be in remission from breast cancer, rather than recognising his legal right to enter the tournament. Korotki is rumoured to have donated his winnings to charity, so it is difficult for anyone to have a long-term beef with his actions. To show journalistic balance (ok, I couldn’t find a picture of Korotki) below is the second place finisher Nicole Rowe. Meanwhile in Las Vegas, news surfaces of a team of four supervisors in Planet Hollywood that had been scamming the high hand jackpot pools for a reported $2k, but presumably the true figure is much higher than this unless these guys literally got caught on day 1 of their misdemeanours. The sharp guys decided to have a whole bunch of fictional players hit the jackpots on the same day. I guess with a cunning plan like that, their inevitable lifetime bans from Gaming won’t be too badly missed by the industry.  Nicole Rowe UltimateBet are back in the news this week with the KGC taking a couple of years to clear the parent company (Tokwiro) of any direct involvement. I think most shrewd sports bettors out there would have liked to have taken any kind of price before the report was published. There are 31 persons associated with wrongdoings, but KGC have so far resisted calls to name them, stirring speculation that high profile names might be in the mix. As it stands, only Russ Hamilton has been named, and that was by the combined efforts of the poker community rather than UB or the regulators. CEO of Tokwiro was anxious to point out that the individuals responsible for the cheating never had any involvement with Tokwiro. Personally, I think it might have been better for UB if there was an acknowledgement of an ‘inside job’ and people have been removed. As is, it shows the vulnerability of the software and security in a dim light that outsiders could perpetrate these crimes with no help from the inside whatsoever. |
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