Poker News Round-up

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Poker News Round-up: Week #47

By Adam Noone, 23/11/2007

Paul Bracken wins in Blackpool

Several live tournaments to report on this week starting with the Blackpool leg of the Grosvenor United Kingdom Poker Tour. The final leg of the tour before the grand final at the Vic next month saw a decent turnout of 353 players enter the £1,000 main event. Following up his good form from the GBPT final in Bristol was Neil Channing who made it to the final table second in chips, and eventually finished in fifth place for his second live tournament cash of the week.

First place was collected by professional cash game player Paul Bracken who picked up £119,700 plus a seat to the grand final in London which starts on 29th November.

TJ Cloutier

In America TJ Cloutier racked up what is believed to be his 60th tournament win when he won the Scotty Nguyen Poker Challenge IV main event. Adding to his six WSOP bracelets (at six different disciplines no less) and three other wins at $10,000 buy in events, Cloutier topped up his mightily impressive record with another $5,000 entry win in Tulsa. The final table was a tough one, featuring Gavin Smith, Bill Edler and Scotty Nguyen himself but the 68 year old Cloutier saw them all off to add another $240,000 to his earnings.

Chris Ferguson

Meanwhile, the man who crushed Cloutier’s dreams of becoming world champion with a bad beat in the 2000 WSOP main event was also winning a $5,000 buy in event. Five time WSOP bracelet winner and former Motorhead lead singer Chris Ferguson emerged victorious from the 142 entrants that sat down at Harvey’s in Lake Tahoe for their World Series Of Poker circuit main event. Ferguson ended day one in a good position and went from strength to strength, entering the final day as chip leader with around a third of the chips in play. He polished things off by eliminating the third and second place finishers on back to back hands, making trips both times and busting pocket aces on the final hand.

Despite having more entries than Scotty Nguyen’s tournament, a more generous payout structure for the lower places meant that Ferguson picked up less than Cloutier for his third WSOP circuit win at $204,000. A man who can turn absolutely nothing into $10,000 purely as a bankroll exercise though will not be short of a few dollars in the first place.

None of these tournament winners have even come close though to having as much success this month financially as Gus Hansen. Hansen’s approach to poker can lead to some massive swings and at the moment he is on a rush playing $200/$400 pot limit Omaha. In the space of four days he crushed the game on Full Tilt for a profit of $1,750,000 – which included such gems as getting it all in on the flop with top pair and no obvious draw against a set, only to pick up a runner runner straight for a pot of $104,000.

The proposed deportation of Shahram Sheikhan from the USA over a previous conviction has hit the rocks after a judge ruled that the prosecution had not provided sufficient information to continue with its case. Sheikhan was convicted in 1995 reportedly on a charge of ‘sexual battery and annoyance or molestation of a child’ in California and spent nine months in prison. That issue came to light recently when Iranian born Sheikhan, known as Shawn for the benefit of Americans, applied for American citizenship and his background was investigated. However, California officials were unable to provide the judge in Las Vegas with details of the offence as they do not keep records of misdemeanour cases more than ten years old. Unable to determine exactly what Sheikhan had been convicted of and how i.e. by jury, bench trial or plea, the judge concluded that the case for deportation had to be rejected. For now, Sheikhan retains his status a legal alien although the department of homeland security is expected to appeal.

Jerry Yang

Jerry Yang was not generally regarded as one of the better world champions when he took first place at the WSOP main event earlier this year, but he has got his first cash as champion under his belt quicker than any of his four immediate predecessors. It may not have been for enough to even buy into one of the smallest events at next year’s series but at least he has got off the mark, whereas Jamie Gold failed to trouble the scorers until close to a year after his big win. Yang is now looking to add to his tally by making the trip to Macau for the Asia Pacific Poker Tour starting this week. Many people think that hold’em is ready to make a big impact in China, and Yang will be in good company over there. Three other former world champions will make the trip in the form of Scotty Nguyen, Joe Hachem and the rarely seen Mansour Matloubi. Curiously the festival has both a $2,500 main event and a $15,000 high rollers tournament – details of how it goes to follow next week.

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