Poker Blog & Poker Forum

The two most followed events at the WSOPE were the High Roller event and the Main Event. Daniel Negreanu, one of the most high profile poker professionals, emerged victorious in the 2013 WSOPE High Roller event. Kid Poker took home €725,000, which increased his overall tournament earnings to just over $19.5 million. The top three faced a tough grind. The German Philip Gruissem was knocked out first in third place. Then in the heads-up, Negreanu bore down Nicolau Villa-Lobos to seal the top spot. The other notables to cash included David Peters, Timothy Adams, Scott Seiver, Jason Koon, Erik Seidel and Joni Jouhkimainen.

2013 has been a good year for Negreanu. Even before winning the High Roller event, Negreanu had been declared the WSOP Player of the Year for 2013. He has won this title for the second time. The first time was in 2004. Kid Poker said, “2004 was just such a different time for me. This one means a lot more for me than the last one – it was a little more difficult to win. I came here and won it in the very last [tournament]. I love drama!” Check this out for more drama from Negreanu.

In the WSOPE Main Event, Adrian Mateos of Spain bested a field of 375 to claim the title along a €1 million payout. Like the first-ever WSOPE Main Event Champion Annette Obrestad, Mateos is under age to play in the USA, where the legal age is 21. So he will have to wait until 2015 before he can participate in the Las Vegas WSOP. But Mateos assured the poker fans that they would be seeing more of him in the European circuit till then. After Carlos Mortensen, Mateos is only the second bracelet winner from Spain.

The final table included two bracelet winners and top pros and to beat them, Mateos played with wisdom beyond his years. Mateos was the chip leader coming into the final table and things went well till the heads-up play against Frenchman Fabrice Soulier. Soulier picked up a series of big pots and this frustrated Mateos. The Spaniard changed his strategy and began to go for smaller pots, which worked.

The names of the 2013 inductees to the Poker Hall of Fame are out. Balloting by poker fans created a short list of ten from which living Hall of Fame members and poker journalists picked Tom McEvoy and Scotty Nguyen. The ceremonies will take place on November 3. It is not easy to become a member of this elite poker club. Both Nguyen and McEvoy had been nominated four times before and were elected only the fifth time.
McEvoy was the winner of the 1983 World Series of Poker Championship Event. He was the first poker player ever to win the event after gaining entry through a satellite tournament. Though he has four WSOP bracelets and $2.95 million in live tournament winnings, McEnvoy has been chosen for his contribution to poker away from the tables. He has written 14 books, many co-authored with T. J. Cloutier and Brad Daugherty, on a wide range of poker disciplines. McEvoy has been a great ambassador of both live tournament play and online poker.
It is Nguyen’s nomination that will set the poker world rocking because his fan base is simply phenomenal. He is known as “The Prince of Poker” and controversy is his middle […] Continue Reading…

An announcement from the New Jersey Division of Gaming Enforcement has brought Internet gambling one step closer in Atlantic City. The regulatory authority has issued its first Internet gambling permit and it has gone to the Borgata Hotel Casino & Spa, owned by Boyd Gaming Corps and MGM Resorts in Atlantic City. The Division of Gaming Enforcement said that the Borgata was the first to complete the application. The casino will have to wait until November 21 before it can offer online gambling services. All casinos that have been issued licenses till November 21 will be able to go online on that date. They will face a 5-day trial period. If there are no hitches during the trial New Jersey residents and visitors will be able to access Internet gambling from November 26. Tom Ballance, president of Borgata, responded by stating that his casino is committed to taking the lead when online gambling goes live in New Jersey.
Other operators that have applied for online gambling licenses in New Jersey include Caesars Entertainment, Donald Trump’s Trump Entertainment Resorts, the Tropicana Casino and Resort and The Golden Nugget. The online poker site PokerStars has teamed up with the Resorts Casino Hotel […] Continue Reading…

For the last few weeks the movie Runner Runner has been hyped as about being the history of online poker. It was expected that this movie will provide the same impetus for online poker that Rounders provided for live poker. The reason for this was the movie has been scripted by David Levien and Brian Koppelman, the same duo who wrote Rounders. The movie was released on October 4 and it is being reported as bad advertisement for online poker.

In an interview just before the release of the movie the writers said, “We don’t really consider Runner Runner a poker movie. It’s a thriller set against online gambling. The movie starts out centered around poker because a character is cheated by an online poker site…” That character is Richie Furst, played by Justin Timberlake (in picture). Like so many real world poker professionals, Furst enters the online poker world to pay for his education. Furst loses whatever he has, but is convinced that the online poker site was running a scam. He goes to Costa Rica, where the online poker site is located. Some of the not as reputed online gambling sites are actually licensed in Costa Rica. There […] Continue Reading…

The Full Tilt poker festival in Montreal has drawn a great response and has signaled that the beleaguered online poker site is back on stream. This poker festival, the largest on Canadian soil, began on September 21 and will run for 13 days. It is being held at the Playground Poker Club.

Though there are a number of side events lined up in this tournament, the highlight is the Main Event, which began on September 27. Though entries were available through qualifying satellites, the direct buy in was $1,000 + $100. Full Tilt Poker guaranteed a prize pool of one million Canadian dollars. The Montreal sports and entertainment fraternity was well represented. Participants included comedians Jean-Michel Anctil and Jean-Thomas Jobin, actor Jean-Nicolas Verreault, songwriters Marc Dupré and Émily Bégin and retired NHL players Matthew Barnaby and Georges Laraque.

Sponsored players from both Full Tilt and PokerStars were present, led by Gus Hansen. The galaxy of poker professionals included Dermot Blain, Martins Adeniya, Danielle Anderson, Leo Martins, Carlos Mavca, Larissa Metran, Andras Nemeth, and Hana Soljan from Full Tilt Poker and Jonathan Duhamel, Vanessa Rousso, Chris Moneymaker, Victor Ramdin and David Williams from PokerStars. Poker babe Vanessa describes herself as Professional Poker […] Continue Reading…