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Poker News Round-up: Week #13As was mentioned in last week’s round up the GUKPT London is underway in the Vic and the £2,500 heads up event which has been running all week has now drawn to a conclusion. With many big names eliminated in round one Richard Gryko and Tom Bentham were installed as joint favourites by bookmaker and event sponsor Blue Square going into round two, and they lived up to their billing by both making it to the final. Their match concluded when all the money went in on the flop with Gryko holding top pair, king kicker but Bentham’s straight flush draw had so many outs to hit that he was actually favourite in the hand. One of the fifteen cards he was looking for showed up at the second time of asking and the rivered ace gave Bentham the title. Elsewhere in the GUKPT side events Dave Colclough made it three final tables from the three legs of the tour so far when he placed third in the £200 no limit hold’em rebuy, which was won by Richard Kellett for £26,350. Over in America the Bay 101 Shooting Stars tournament has been the main event recently, which saw just enough runners to generate a million dollar first prize but there was also money to be made elsewhere along the way. Fifty high profile players had a $5,000 bounty on them, plus there was added money for the early pace setters who finished the day as chip leaders. The bounties seemed to be something of a hindrance to the nominated shooting stars as only four remained by the end of day two, and three of those fell early on day three. That left Kathy Liebert as the last remaining bounty and she made good progress to reach the final table, looking to become the first woman to win an open WPT event after some near misses of her own in the past.  Brecher and Liebert battle it out heads up All was looking good for Liebert until as chip leader with only three left a crucial hand went against her. She was all in pre flop with A  The optimistic Scotty Nguyen It’s quite some achievement to win just one million dollars so setting a target of winning four million at one WSOP seems a very tall order, but that’s what Scotty Nguyen has claimed he intends to do this summer. He is so confident (some would say it might be Dutch courage) that he says if he fails to win the $4m he won’t play in 2010. Even with the addition of the $40,000 event this year it’s still a claim that is hard to take seriously seeing as he would need to cash for something like the sum total earned by the top five players in last year’s WSOP player of the year race. One American bookmaker has even opened a market on whether he will achieve this, although they will only offer a price on success as failure seems too much like buying money. Still, Scotty seems to subscribe to the theory that there is no such thing as bad publicity and he has successfully managed to talk his way into the headlines again. As has already been mentioned recently 2009 is turning out to be a bad year for the casinos, and this week the news got even worse for MGM Mirage. Following the recent announcement that it would unlikely to fulfill its commitments to make debt repayments on time this year, MGM is now being sued by Dubai World – its partner in the massive CityCenter project in Las Vegas. Things have not been going well for CityCenter (a large complex of hotel rooms, casino, apartments and shops where the Boardwalk casino formerly stood) including several horrific deaths of construction workers and building defects which led to delays and the size of the project being scaled down due to safety concerns. However, it is the financial side of things which poses the biggest threat as MGM Mirage is struggling to come up with the money it envisaged it would have before the global economy took a turn for the worse. The original cost of the project was estimated by MGM to be $7.5 billion but whilst the cost has risen to $8.8 billion, MGM’s financial input has dwindled. Having initially committed to contributing $5 billion they have ended up raising only $1.8 billion and the December 2009 completion date is in serious jeopardy. The investors from Dubai have now decided that (in the words of Scotty Nguyen) enough is enough, and have filed a complaint alleging breach of contract with an award for damages being sought. To muddy the waters further, it turns out that Dubai World is actually also a major shareholder in MGM Mirage with 9.4% ownership of the company. The online industry obviously has fewer overheads than their brick and mortar counterparts but it seems several internet operations are also feeling the pinch these days. Since the passing of the UIGEA several poker sites have folded and the latest to go is Bugsy’s Club which had been in operation for over six years. All accounts at Bugsy’s Club have been closed down although players’ balances have been preserved and can be withdrawn at Pokerstars. On the downside, customers will have to clear a minimum amount of play before they are allowed to get their hands on their own money and all loyalty points have been lost. Over the next few days we’ll see who is the latest GUKPT champion, and early indications are that the increased buy in for the London main event is proving no less popular than last year with good numbers in attendance. Further details will follow next week.
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