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Poker News Round-up: Week #40Anyone who has been following the story of Pitbull Poker recently will have been wondering whether something had to give in the wake of increasing evidence of wrong doing on the site, or whether it might be able to shake off all the allegations and continue to operate. Things came to a head this week when owner Kevin Baronowski turned up in the middle of the night with a truck and tried to remove all the computers and servers from the office. However, he appears to not be the most popular of bosses and the night shift staff at this boiler room style operation called the police who quickly put a stop to his midnight flit and invited him down to the station. There seems to be some confusion as to whether arrests were actually made but it has been widely reported that Baronowski is seen as a risk by the Costa Rican authorities and will not be allowed to leave the country until this has been properly investigated. In the meantime the poker site is down and unfortunately things don’t look good for anyone who had an outstanding balance with Pitbull. It would seem that Baronowski is still running his internet casino though so please choose wisely if you fancy an online flutter.  Omaha winner Jani Vilmunen As the WSOP Europe moves into week two the ever increasing buy ins have meant smaller but tougher fields, so even with only 154 entrants in the £5,000 pot limit Omaha event it would still take a massive effort to find a way through the field of pros. From the very start Finland’s Jani Vilmunen was tearing it up, leading the field after day one with nearly double the chips of his nearest rival. Although on day two Tom Dwan briefly took over as chip leader, Vilmunen came back strongly towards the end of the day and as a final table was reached he was once again the man in charge. British interest in this final table came in the form of Jeff Kimber, Roberto Romanello and the Mob’s Ross Boatman but this was to be Finland’s tournament as Vilmunen, Aarno Kivelio and Ville Haavisto took home the lion’s share of the prize money with three finishes in the top five spots. Separating them were Ross who managed to steer his relatively short stack into fourth place, and Howard Lederer whose back to back final tables resulted in second place this time. There was to be no stopping Jani Vilmunen though and although he had to overturn a chip deficit when heads up, he duly finished the job when his flopped nut straight was too good for Lederer’s smaller straight. As Finland’s first ever winner of a WSOPE bracelet Vilmunen collects £204,048, which nicely complements the $172,140 he recently won for taking first in the Pokerstars WCOOP six handed Omaha event. Whilst the Omaha was finishing up, elsewhere in the Empire Europe was taking on the USA in the first ever Caesar’s Cup team tournament. This new event saw one player from each team taking control of the hand pre-flop and then passing the cards to a team mate to see for the first time and then play out subsequent streets in a series of heads up matches. The best of seven match up saw Patrik Antonius and Ilari Sahamies draw first blood against Phil Ivey and Huck Seed, before online qualifier John Harvey and Bertrand Grospellier saw off Phil Hellmuth and Daniel Negreanu. A win for Doyle Brunson and Jennifer Harman over Annette Obrestad and Dario Minieri gave the USA some hope but Danes Peter Eastgate and Gus Hansen restored Europe’s lead against Barry Greenstein and John Juanda before Obrestad applied the finishing touch in game five. It was a hugely talented side the USA put out with 45 WSOP bracelets between them but ultimately they came up well short against the more youthful Europeans. As a more light hearted distraction to the bracelet events, this format seemed to go down well with the players and it would be no surprise to see this fixture retained for next year. And so to the main event…at £10,000 to enter it’s about 60% more expensive than its Vegas counterpart and with many many fewer online satellites running it’s no surprise that the field is nothing like the size of the world championship event. On the plus side though a smaller more condensed field is more likely to generate an exciting final table and that was certainly the case here. As the bubble burst there were many high calibre players amongst the 36 still in contention such as Dave Ulliott, Yevgeniy Timoshenko, Doyle Brunson and Ram Vaswani but none of these were to come back for the final day’s play. Of the nine who did make the final table, incredibly two of them are also due to appear at November’s WSOP final but James Akenhead and Antoine Saout will be hoping to run a little better in Vegas though as both were early eliminations in London. The man starting the final table as big chip leader continued to accumulate as Jason Mercier applied the pressure but a few aggressive moves too many saw him reeled in to eventually bust in fourth at the hands of Daniel Negreanu. With three left England’s last remaining contender Praz Bansi made a surge for the title and briefly held the chip lead but he also succumbed to Negreanu’s ever growing stack.  Bullet dodger Barry Shulman So after what can only be described as a ludicrous showing at this year’s main event in Vegas, Daniel Negreanu was on the verge of making amends and giving a proper account of himself with only Barry Shulman standing between him and another bracelet. Holding the chip lead after having eliminated six of the other seven finalists, Negreanu’s chances of winning were further bolstered by the fact that he managed to pick up pocket aces four times during heads up play. His opponent would just not die though and on the only one of those four occasions when all the chips went in Shulman hit his flush draw to double up. With stacks around even as five a.m. passed it looked as though a repeat of last year’s marathon final might be in store but suddenly two decisive hands settled it all. A flop of 5
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8
sparked all the action as Shulman re-raised all in, leaving Negreanu with a decision he clearly wasn’t that keen on. He decided he couldn’t let go of his J
though and made the call, only to find that he had been right to be wary as Shulman tabled A
. The turn card of J
