Poker News Round-up

Brought to you every Friday

Poker News Round-up: Week #09

By Adam Noone, 02/03/2007

Pre-registration has now begun for the 2007 World Series Of Poker with a few significant stipulations from the organisers. Most notable amongst these is that no third party registrations will be accepted from online gaming sites conducting business with US residents – news that will not have been well received by those who have already won their places via satellites. Pokerstars continues to run its qualifying tournaments so it may be that players will simply be handed cash and asked to register themselves. However, sites still supporting US players will not be allowed to advertise at the WSOP so with no opportunity to benefit from the exposure of having sponsored apparel etc it seems likely that there will be a reduction in the number of online qualifiers this year.

Last year’s main event winner Jamie Gold has publicly acknowledged that he has some regrets over his actions during the tournament after admitting that he flashed one of his cards at a fellow player and also tried to warn a friend whom he didn’t want to bust as to the strength of his hand. Gold can count himself lucky as had his actions been picked up on at the time he would surely have been penalised for these clear violations of the rules, although his contrition extended only so far, stating “people are just going to have to forgive me.”

Still with WSOP news, the first ever bracelet events to be held outside Las Vegas will take place in London this September with the launch of the World Series Of Poker Europe. Events will be held at Fifty and The Sportsman casinos as well as London Clubs International’s new Leicester Square venue which is scheduled to open in April 2007. The three scheduled tournaments are £2,500 HORSE, £5,000 pot limit Omaha and a £10,000 no limit hold’em main event.

Following on from the recent cancellation of the EPT event at Deauville, the French authorities continue to apply pressure to non state owned gambling operations. 888 Holdings PLC has confirmed that former CEO John Anderson has been asked to attend an interview in France and is preparing legal advice. In December 888 were forced to cancel sponsorship of Toulouse football club following pressure placed on the club and 888 by French authorities. Meanwhile Party Poker has ceased accepting new real money accounts from French players.

In live tournament news, the Amateur Poker Association & Tour held the third leg of their tour at the Grosvenor in Cardiff, hosting a maximum capacity 220 runners. Lee Mulligan emerged victorious to take the title and a chance to play in the forthcoming EPT event in Dortmund.

The big tournament of the moment though has been the $10,000 no limit hold’em main event which brought to a conclusion the five week long LA Poker Classic festival. The largest field ever for a WPT $10k event was assembled at the Commerce Casino as 791 entrants spilled outdoors and into tents on the veranda in some cases. Early casualties on day one included the past two WSOP main event winners Joe Hachem and Jamie Gold, as well as a very unfortunate Daniel Negreanu. Twice in the space of three hands Negreanu found pocket aces and both times had them busted as his opponents’ 10 7 and 3 5 hands both made straights. Joe Sebok and Gavin Smith continued their series of prop bets with a last longer contest, placing at stake a tattoo of the winner’s initials on the backside of the loser. Smith will be the one making his way to the tattoo parlour after busting out on day one.

The top heavy prizepool ensured that the first prize would be a whopper and indeed the final total on offer for winning was only slightly shy of the amount Chris Moneymaker picked up for winning the WSOP main event in 2003. JC Tran had held a monster stack for several days but Eric Hershler, playing in his first ever tournament, managed to reel him in and pick up the $2.4 million first prize and WPT title.

Next week’s report will be bringing taking a look at how the poker circus fared in India as the Asian Poker Classic gets underway in Goa, as well as results from the Party Poker Premier League featuring stars such as Phil Hellmuth and Devilfish.

Post your comments in our forum

What's this?