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Poker News Round-up: Week #42 Mr Nice Guy Mike Sexton Sure things tend to be pretty rare in poker but Mike Sexton being elected to the Poker Hall Of Fame is as close to a banker as you are likely to see. As a player, author, commentator and spokesman for players’ rights Sexton has served the poker community with distinction, earning the nickname of the ambassador of poker, and has also done a huge amount for charity both by donating personal tournament winnings and setting up the PokerGives charity. Little wonder then that there was zero opposition from anyone on the selection committee to Sexton being inducted to the Hall Of Fame as the voting process was finalized this week. Perhaps surprisingly in a couple of cases the same could not be said of the other members on the shortlist as Sexton was the only person of the nine put forward who satisfied the criterion of receiving votes from at least 75% of the committee. The 30 members could vote for three players from the list but apparently several declined the option to use all three votes. The behaviour of Men and Scotty Nguyen may have done them no favours, and Phil Ivey is probably still a little young to be a Hall Of Famer but it’s hard to see how the likes of Dan Harrington, Barry Greenstein and Erik Seidel don’t fit the qualifying criteria well enough to deserve a vote (that is to have played high stakes poker against the toughest competition, to have stood the test of time and to have earned the respect of their peers.) Mike Sexton’s selection will be commemorated in November at the final table of the WSOP main event, whilst fellow nominee Phil Ivey prepares to take another step towards selection of his own and add another bracelet to the collection.  High roller winner Ross Boatman On the live tournament circuit the big tournament this week sees a new stop added to the WPT schedule as Marrakech plays host to an eight tournament festival. As is becoming increasingly common these days a high roller event was thrown in which in this case was a €9,000 buy in no limit tournament. Although there was an early bath for Joe it was otherwise a good tournament for the Hendon Mob as Ross and Barny Boatman both made the final table. A lost race saw Barny exit in fourth place but Ross was still in a commanding position and he saw off the challenges from France’s Thomas Bichon and Dominik Nitsche from Germany to seal the win. That sees him add €135,535 to his winnings in what has been a good second half to the year after final tables at both WSOP and WSOPE – congratulations Ross. Elsewhere, over in the Lesser Antilles the Aruba Poker Classic has drawn to a close with an unexpected change of venue for the final table. Events such as this as the Pokerstars Caribbean Adventure tend to get decent attendances in no small part due to the holiday feel to the trip, and so reliable is the weather there supposed to be that the final table was scheduled to be played outside by the pool in glorious sunshine. Unfortunately rare heavy rain meant that an alternative venue had to be found at short notice and proceedings were moved to a nearby restaurant. By the time 475 players had been reduced to a final table of seven, amongst those still in the hunt were Robert Mizrachi and double bracelet winner from this year’s WSOP Brock Parker. Parker busted in sixth after his big slick could not win a race, but Mizrachi was one of those who struck a deal when play was four handed to chop the money with Eric Baldwin, Chase Steely and Brandon Hall. With a small amount set aside for the winner, Mizrachi looked as though he would pick up the extra money and take a first tournament win since becoming Omaha world champion in 2007. He managed to get it all in with top pair when heads up against Brandon Hall’s draw and overcards but the turn and river were both kind to Hall who leaves Aruba with the trophy and what is thought to be $444,680 after the deal. In their efforts to rival the current big two sites of Pokerstars and Full Tilt the iPoker network has been adding new skins recently as sites like Mansion and William Hill have moved their business over to Playtech software. Now it seems a brand new operation on the scene will also be joining the network as Japanese firm Sega has been granted a gaming license with the Alderney Gambling Control Commission. Having withdrawn from the console market to focus on software production, Sega might have been in a good position to come up with some sort of fancy new poker client with which to wow new customers but it seems they have instead opted for the safe route in an attempt to get a foothold in the market by joining a network with an established player base. It is however rumoured that old Sega video game characters will somehow be incorporated into the playing experience. That alone is likely to make it a valuable addition to the network if it can draw in new players from the video games scene. Despite claims that Luke Schwartz would be banned from the Palm Beach casino following his salmon sandwich thievery at the EPT, __FullFlush__ himself was not in the slightest bit fazed. “Of course they’re going to let me play. They don’t have much of a choice” he said, “and I’m going to smash it up. I’m going to win.” That bold claim looked as though it may have been well founded as first Andy Black then Mike Sexton, Jennifer Tilly, and Bodo Sbrzesny all busted out to leave Schwartz up against Phil Laak and Jan Veit for the title. As usually occurs in these sort of televised events it had descended into push/fold poker by this point and when Schwartz chose to stick it all in with A 10 he was ahead of Veit who called with K J, but a flush came to the rescue of the German on the river. There would be no such reprieve for Veit when he again got it all in with the worst of it in the very first hand of heads up play and with the massive chip lead that Laak assumed when A8 held against A4, it was not long before he finished matters off. Laak is the new World Poker Open champion and collects $250,000 for his efforts.
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