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Poker News Round-up: Week #08After a quiet few weeks on the tournament front the action is back on again and the big one here in the UK this week has been the Party Poker European Open V at Maidstone Studios. Many of the best players in the country and beyond paid up their $7,000 for a chance at the title including Annette Obrestad, Roland de Wolfe and the Hendon Mob’s own Barny Boatman. A shootout format saw all the winners of the first round of six handed games proceed, with two extra places available for the runners up via two further turbo heats. Chris Bury and Roberto Romanello were those last two through the door into the semi-finals, where Romanello made the most of his second chance to join Marc Goodwin, Craig Burgess, Andy Ward, William Taylor and Neil Channing at the final table.  European Open winner Roberto Romanello Stacks were carried over from the previous round but the chip leaders failed to dominate the final, eventually leaving Marc Goodwin and Roberto Romanello as the last two to battle it out. A swift heads up encounter was ended when Goodwin shoved with K  Adam Geyer aka csimmsux In online poker Full Tilt’s FTOPS XI has now come to an end, concluding with the $500 main event which drew over 5,000 players. Top of the pile was Adam Geyer playing as csimmsux who claimed $456,056, but this isn’t actually his biggest win on the site. Geyer seems to thrive on FTOPS events having previously won two others including the $2,500 buy in event in 2008 for $488,175 to make him one of the highest earning online tournament players of all time. As can be seen from the attendances at the FTOPS internet poker seems to be still going strong despite the setback of the UIGEA and global recession hitting. That is to be expected though according to Ernst & Young who predict that online gambling will be one of the few industries to actually experience growth as a result of the recession. They say that traditionally gambling has flourished in hard times and at a time when people are staying in more, money that might otherwise have been spent in casinos, bookmakers etc will instead be channeled to online offerings. The statistics would seem to back up what they are saying, with online traffic reporting site Pokerscout.com showing an increased number of average players for each of Pokerstars, Full Tilt, iPoker network and Party Poker over the last six months. They certainly seem to be right about bricks and mortar casinos which have been sounding pessimistic for some time now. A report released this week showed that shares for Las Vegas Sands, owner of The Venetian, are down 93% in the past twelve months whilst for MGM Mirage the figure is 88%. MGM has also had to freeze plans for new construction projects in Atlantic City but the news is even worse for rival group Trump Entertainment Resorts Inc. which has had to file for bankruptcy. Donald Trump tendered his resignation from the board shortly before the bankruptcy application, leaving the Trump Taj Mahal, Trump Plaza and Trump Marina with uncertain futures. It is thought that something in the region of $140 billion has been wiped from the value of all casinos across the USA in the past year.  Scotty Nguyen and another HORSE trophy Meanwhile at the Commerce Casino in LA Scotty Nguyen has been at it again – winning at HORSE and offending people along the way. Enjoying the hospitality at the Commerce, Nguyen seemed to be getting increasingly vocal at the final table of the $10,000 HORSE event in scenes reminiscent of last year’s WSOP final table. Things took a turn for the worse when Nguyen sucked out on Matt Graham to bust him in fifth, prompting a burst of laughter and a taunting “bye bye” from Nguyen. Tournament director Matt Savage immediately stepped in to warn the table as a whole about its conduct and issue a reminder that hands in play should not be discussed, and that appeared to be enough to calm the situation. Eventually Nguyen and David Rheem were left as the last two and with even stacks they came to an agreement to divide the money between them on the understanding that it would be Nguyen named as the champion. A little more humility would have gone down well but it’s another big result for Scotty Nguyen who moves up to fifth on the all time money list. The EPT Copenhagen is underway this week and whilst we wait for a winner to emerge from there, some other EPT related news is that the grand final in Monte Carlo is due to undergo some changes. The five events which made up the 2008 festival have been expanded upon to a new total of eight tournaments including two pot limit Omaha events and a €25,000 high roller game. The structure of the €10,000 main event has also been amended to allow for more play with deeper stacks. After consultation with former EPT winner Arnaud Mattern, John Duthie and Thomas Kremser revealed that starting stacks will now be 30,000 and on day two the levels will increase from sixty to seventy five minutes, which should prove popular with many players. One other thing to look forward to this week is the durrrr challenge which has now got underway on Full Tilt Poker. Tom Dwan and Patrick Antonius have played their first session of pot limit Omaha, and whilst Antonius took an early lead it was Dwan who ended up ahead. After 1541 hands Dwan is $134,000 up but it’s very early days – this represents just 3% of the total number of hands they are due to play and it’s sure to swing in both directions by large numbers before the challenge is done.
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and was called by Romanello holding A