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Poker News Round-up: Week #35Last week we heard how the sale of the World Poker Tour and its assets to Gamynia Ltd had stalled in the face of a new offer, and now this week we can see exactly why. WPT Enterprises neglected to file a statement which would have pushed through the sale to Gamynia for $9,075,000 because at the last moment Peerless Media (a subsidiary of PartyGaming) made an offer for a much juicier $12.3 million plus an ongoing 5% participation in gaming and other revenues generated by the assets. It’s no wonder WPTE quickly lost interest in the sale to Gamynia when an alternative offer of around 35% more for the same product fell into their laps, but the planned usage of the money from that sale has left many shareholders feeling pretty disgruntled. Instead of paying a dividend to investors, WPTE bosses intend to keep the proceeds and plough it into another business unrelated to poker. So not only have the shareholders not made any profit when their company receives a massive sum of cash, they will now end up holding shares in a business completely different to the one they originally wanted to invest in. It’s not hard to see why many of them aren’t happy but at least the share price is back above a dollar again having been as low as 30 cents towards the end of last year. The fact that Party was prepared to make an offer substantially larger than the one which was on the verge of being accepted would suggest that this is an important purchase for them strategically. A tour of poker events currently held predominantly in North America being taken over by a poker site that doesn’t accept customers from the USA can surely mean one of two things. Either Party Poker expects to be returning to the American market pretty soon, or alternatively there are plans afoot for the tour to spread its wings and start taking in more of the countries where Party’s present customer base is. Whichever it is (or possibly even both) it will be interesting to see how this one develops. Having a big name like PartyGaming behind it may be exactly what the tour needs right now as on current evidence it is in dire need of a change of direction. This week’s Legends Of Poker $10,000 championship event managed to draw just 279 entries, which compares pretty unfavourably with 373 in 2008, 485 in 2007 and 466 in 2006. There are several reasons for this such as the UIGEA, global economic recession and also the fact that there is much more interest in high stakes cash games these days whereas tournaments have previously been seen as the more glamorous events. However, given that the EPT is still managing to thrive and expand it would appear that the WPT organisers need to take a good look at where they are going wrong.  Prahlad Friedman is back At the Bicycle Casino in Los Angeles it wasn’t just a reduction in the number of casual players, as none of the seven former champions of this WPT event showed up including Dan Harrington, Doyle Brunson and John Phan. Although numerous well known players seem to be appearing in these events less frequently there are always some new additions to the player pool such as the WSOP November Nine who will surely be looking to tournaments like these to provide some valuable live experience in big events before their return to the Rio. Steve Begleiter made the most of the opportunity and raced into the chip lead at the end of days one and two, only to see fellow WSOP contender Kevin Schaffel take over as the big stack and lead the last six going into the final table. In his first tournament since the WSOP main event, it really would have been a fairy tale to collect a WPT title during the four month break but Prahlad Friedman had a fairy tale of his own to realise. Friedman lost a lot of money playing on Ultimatebet during the time when superusers were sucking millions from the game, and he has pretty much been in the wilderness for several years after a very promising start to his career. At the Bicycle he announced to the world that he was back though by beating Schaffel heads up to take first place and get his finances back in order with a prize of $1,034,000. For Schaffel it’s an impressive performance in his first outing under the microscope and a pretty decent cash for $471,670 but how much has he revealed about himself to the other members of the November Nine? Some of them will surely have been taking a keen interest in his final table play as they prepare for their shot at a much bigger prize in three months’ time. Over in Kiev, despite the last minute change of venue to a country which has virtually zero history as a poker playing nation, the first leg of EPT season six still managed to attract a bigger crowd than its WPT counterpart as 296 players contested the first major poker tournament ever to be held in Ukraine. Unsurprisingly the Russians were out in force for this one and made a very strong showing as they filled the final four spots. After coming close to winning the $5,000 shootout event at this summer’s WSOP Max Lykov managed to fare a little better in Kiev, closing out the tournament for a €330,000 win as he beat Alexander Dovzhenko to round off a lengthy final table. Next up for the EPT is Barcelona in early September where the buy in for the main event jumps to a hefty €8,000.
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