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Poker News Round-up: Week #33The European Poker Tour starts up again next week as EPT Kiev kicks off season six, but there is interesting news this week of what we can expect when the tour comes to London in October. Ever increasing numbers at the London leg have meant that a new home has had to be found to accommodate everyone who wants to play so now the main event moves out of the Vic and shifts a few doors down Edgware Road to the Hilton Metropole hotel. As well as catering for increased numbers, EPT London will also feature the widest range of games ever seen on this tour. A total of 16 events includes a mixed tournament playing eight different poker variants plus a debut appearance for Omaha hi/lo. Buy ins range from £500 (or £200 for the ladies event) to £20,000 so there really is something for everyone, and John Duthie deserves plenty of credit for trying to cater for as wide a range of poker players as possible.  GUKPT Luton winner Richard Gryko Domestically the GUKPT still seems to be going strong and the Luton leg had another turn out of over 300 people all willing to stump up £1,000 for the main event. The £88,850 first prize eventually went to Richard Gryko who managed to go from chip leader to short stack at the final table, then gradually claw it all back to take the title. A notable result in one of the side events saw JJ Hazan follow up his Dragons Den appearance with a win in the £300 bounty event for £6,060 – impressive enough but not quite the sort of money to make Peter Jones’ eyes light up.  MTT king Chris Moorman A much bigger score has been collected by a fellow UK player this week though as Chris Moorman continued his domination of online tournaments. It was a fairly fruitless World Series for Chris but with a mouse back in his hand again he has soon made up for that at Full Tilt’s FTOPS. The six handed $300 rebuy event 17 saw him and another player chop up the top two prizes, and MoormanI’s $204,000 share sees his tournament cashes on Full Tilt alone rise to over $1.7 million. Add to that a similar amount on Pokerstars and it’s not hard to see why he was ranked the number one online tournament player in the world earlier in the year.  Chris Moneymaker Over in Tunica, Mississippi former world champion Chris Moneymaker recently recorded his first known live tournament win since his 2003 WSOP main event victory when he took first in a $500 Omaha event at the World Poker Open. A few days later at the festival’s main event (formerly part of the WPT roster) it looked as though he was going to make 2009 his comeback year in style as he held the chip lead going into the final table with around four times the average stack. Unfortunately for him he could only convert that into a third place finish, but it was his comment that he runs worse than anybody else in tournaments that has prompted more interest. That statement may or may not be true and nobody but him can really know how well he has run in recent years, but following those remarks there has been very little sympathy for the man who came from nowhere to become world champion to be moaning about his luck.  Any 2 will do The durrrr online challenge has been described by many as a bit of a let down due to the amount of time it has taken Tom Dwan and Patrik Antonius to get through around only 40% of the total number of hands. It looks likely that they won’t be finishing off their match in the near future, especially as both will be in London during September, but whilst Dwan’s here he will be playing shorter live versions of the challenge. Durrrr will play four matches of only 500 hands each with 500 big blind stacks at $500/$1000 pot limit Omaha or no limit hold’em. These should be a bit more lively than the online version and the man named as his first opponent this week should definitely add some spice to proceedings. Anyone taking on Dwan in these challenges needs to have a big bank roll and play fearlessly, and there are few who fit that description better than Sammy “Any Two” George. Dwan has to be considered the superior player technically but over a short match it may be a case of who has the bigger balls, so hats off to Sammy for being up for it – there should be some fireworks whatever happens. With these challenges, EPT London and the WSOP Europe all just around the corner we have plenty to look forward to in the next couple of months.
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