Tag: 2012

Numbers for Big One for One Drop Jumping Fast

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WSOP Big OneThe Big One for One Drop event is one of the hottest topics in the poker world right now, mainly because of the massive prize pool and the incredibly well-known poker players that this tournament is going to include when all is said and done.  The buy-in for it will be the largest of all-time, at $1 million.  There were questions of whether the tournament was going to hit the 22 player mark which would make it an official World Series of Poker bracelet event, but it has surpassed that number.  Even more impressive is the fact that it has hit 30 total players, and isn’t showing any signs of slowing down.

The event is capped at 48 players, and it’s looking more and more like it is going to hit that number every day.  If the tournament was to start TODAY, first place would take down an incredible first place pay day of $12.3 million, and even more incredibly is the fact that if the field hits 48 players then first place will get $18.3 million.  Either of these pay days would be the largest to go to a winner in the history of poker tournaments, surpassing the total that Jamie Gold took down back in 2006 for the WSOP Main Event.

The idea behind this tournament is that it won’t only give a great pay day to the eventual winner, but also helps a great cause in OneDrop.  OneDrop is a charity that is helping to bring clean water all around the world.  One ninth of each buy-in (right at $111,111) will go to the charity, and many are anticipating that multiple players who cash the event will be donating more most likely.

The winner of the event will also get a Platinum WSOP bracelet as well which is just another of the perks for taking it down.  The event kicks off on July 1st and while some of the names have been released, not all of them have leaked.  A few of the players who we will be seeing include players like Guy Laliberte (who is actually the creator of the event and founder of Cirque de Soleil), Gus Hansen, Daniel Negreanu, Patrik Antonius, Johnny Chan, Tom Dwan, Andy Beal, Jonathan Duhamel, Tony Guoga, Bertrand “ElkY” Grospellier, Erik Seidel, Dan Shak, and many others.

World Series of Poker Europe Schedule Released

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The 2011 World Series of Poker Europe was one of the more interesting ones out there, and one that should be incredibly interesting in 2012 as well.  Last year’s event was the first time that the WSOP Europe was held in Cannes, France, and the reviews were so good that they have decided to bring it back there for a second straight year.  As a matter of fact, the reviews of the series in Cannes were so good, that the Barriere casino (where it was held), and also the World Series of Poker Europe took down the award for the Best European Poker Tournament at the European Poker Awards.

The event will once again be held at the Casino Barriere de Cannes Croisette and the Hotel Majestic Barriere.  While it is over a half of a year away, the WSOP Europe wanted to make sure that the players could prepare, so that they could get some huge prize pools and crowds for the event.  The official dates of the series will be from September 21st to October 4th.  As previously mentioned, this is the second year that the series has been in Cannes, as the first four years were held in London.

As far as the layout of the series will go, it is going to look very similar to last year, because there will be the same seven bracelet events offered.  On top of that though, you’ll find that there are a large number of different non-bracelet tournaments offered, as well as a ton of satellites into the big time events that will be running.  Last but not least, is the fact that there will be different levels of cash games offered consistently throughout the days as well.

Below is the schedule for the bracelet events at the World Series of Poker Europe, and listed afterwards is the player who took down that event last year:

  • €2500 Six Handed No Limit Hold’em- September 21st (Guillaume Humbert)
  • €1000 No limit Hold’em- September 22nd (Andrew Hinrichsen)
  • €5000 Pot Limit Omaha- September 24th (Steve Billirakis)
  • €3000 No Limit Hold’em Shootout- September 25th (Tristan Wade)
  • €10,000 Mix-Max No Limit Hold’em- September 26th (Michael Mizrachi)
  • €1500 Six Handed Pot Limit Omaha- September 27th (Philippe Boucher)
  • €10,000 Main Event- September 29th (Elio Fox)

20 Players Remain at WPT Bay 101 Shooting Stars Event

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The World Poker Tour’s Bay 101 Shooting Stars event is down to it’s final 20 players, and the play to this point has been incredibly exciting all around.  When the day began there were 149 players remaining, and 19 Shooting Stars left in the event as well.  The 19 Shooting Stars all had $5k bounties on them, so whoever sent them home would pick up a nice bonus.  To start the action Bryce Yockey was atop the leader board, but he was unable to make it through as one of the final 20 players remaining.

Pretty early in the day we had two of the Shooting Stars going heads up against each other as Jonathan Duhamel sent Bertrand “ElkY” Grospellier home to pick up his own $5k prize.  Grospellier shoved over the top of Duhamel’s pre-flop raised for 12k, and Duhamel made the call.  Duhamel held pocket treys, while ElkY had A-Q, but the pocket threes held and sent ElkY home early on.  Another interesting match-up that we had was when Jonathan Little sent Mike Matusow home, and Mike McClain knocked off Scott Seiver.

When the action was down to the final 37 players it took about an hour for the money bubble to burst.  When it happened, it was actually two Shooting Stars who went head to head in Men Nguyen and Kathy Liebert.  Liebert shoved over top of Nguyen, who said that if it was for less than 100k, that he would call.  It was 92k and Nguyen called and turned over the A-10 of clubs.  Liebert had A-K, but the flop came down with 10-9-8 with two clubs as well.  The turn hit another club sending Liebert home on the bubble, and sent a $5k bounty to Nguyen.

A few other players who were knocked out before the end of the day included Allen Cunningham, Men Nguyen, Jason Mercier (by Jason Duhamel), Linda Johnson, and Fabrice Soulier.

Duhamel found himself sitting in 6th place at the end of the day with 751k, only about 600k behind the overall leader.  He is also playing this event for free now, after knocking out two of the Shooting Stars and taking home $10k in bounties.  There is only one other Shooting Star remaining in the event outside of Duhamel, and that is J.C. Tran.

WSOP National Championship Adds Additional Players

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WSOPThe World Series of Poker’s National Championship is one of the events that they are hoping to boost up a bit this year in terms of overall interest in the event.  While the National Championship features a nice $1 million prize pool, and also features 100 of the players who have done the best during the WSOP Circuit for that year, they have decided to up the ante a little bit by including some of the best poker players in the world in it as well.

Typically, the event offers 100 guaranteed spots for players who get to play in the National Championship for free.  These 100 spots are made up of the 34 automatic qualifiers which are made up of 17 players who won a Circuit Main Event, and 17 casino champs, who are players that earned the most points at each of the stops on the Circuit.  After that the final 66 spots that are awarded will go to that players who earned the most points across all of the Circuit events throughout the year.

As mentioned, those players get to play for free, but the new addition will offer 100 additional spots for players to take.  These spots are awarded to the top 100 overall earners in terms of points from 2010 and 2011 between the World Series of Poker, and World Series of Poker Europe as well.  These players will NOT be given a free entry into the event though, as they will have to pay a $10k entry fee into the event, but that $10k entry will be added on top of the $1 million guaranteed prize pool.

This means that we could potentially be seeing players like Phil Hellmuth, Jonathan Duhamel, Michael Mizrachi, Ben Lamb, John Juanda, Shawn Buchanan, Chris Moorman, John Racener, Frank Kassela, David Baker, Jason Mercier, Bertrand Grospellier, Tom Dwan, Men Nguyen, Sammy Farha, and many other players in this event on July 6th.

Last year, Sam Barnhart brought in his first ever WSOP cash, and it was in the form of a win and a $300k pay day at the WSOP National Championship.  After that, Barnhart went on to finish in 17th in the Main Event for another nice score at the 2011 World Series of Poker.

Pokerstars World Blogger Championship of Online Poker 2012 Coming Up

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Coming February 23rd and running through March 4th, Pokerstars is holding the 2012 World Blogger Championship of Online Poker, or WBCOOP for short, which awards prizes in the form of cash, Spring Championship of Online Poker tickets, or SCOOP for short, and live event tickets, to name a few, all by simply blogging about poker.

Here’s how it works: Simply publish a post on your own blog explaining what you’d do with $5k if you were named the WBCOOP 2012 Best Blogger. Posts must be approximately 500 words. After it’s live on your blog, submit the permalink to Poker Stars. There’s also a checkbox to tick if you want your post shared with co-sponsor Poker News.

The next step is to share the link for each post with all your friends. Every blogger’s entry earns them 10 tickets into exclusive WBCOOP online poker tournament events. There are 31 events in all in the 2012 WBCOOP, with 3 events per day, running at 10:00, 14:00 and 18:00, except on the last day, March 4, when the final, Main Event is scheduled. The WBCOOP 2012 schedule includes events in No Limit Hold’em, Pot Limit Omaha, Stud and Triple Stud, 8-Game Mix, HORSE and more. There is an equally wide variety in tournament structure as well, including 6-max, turbo, big ante, hi/lo, deepstack, heads-up and more.

Poker Stars will also be keeping a leader board for WBCOOP with big cash prizes up for grabs for the highest finishers. There are also large cash rewards for the series’ Best Live Tweeter and Best Blogger overall.

Official Schedule Released for 2012 World Series of Poker

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WSOPIt’s finally the time for poker players around the world to get excited about the biggest poker tournament series out there.  Caesars Entertainment Corporation has officially released the schedule for the 2012 World Series of Poker, and it’s one that looks more than just a little bit interesting.  For starters, when you look at the schedule you’ll see that there are now a total of 61 events, a number which is definitely higher than last year.  There have also been some interesting additions made in terms of tournament styles as well.  The action will begin at the end of May, on the 27th to be exact, and will run over a 50 day span until July 16th.  Just like normal though, it will kick off with the $500 Casino Employees event.

A few of the newer events that are featured include a $3k Heads-Up No Limit Hold’em/Pot Limit Omaha mixed event, a $5k No Limit Hold’em Mixed Max event, a $1,500 Ante only NLH event, and of course the $1 million tournament called the “Big One for BIG DROP”, which features 11.1 percent of the buy-ins to go towards the charity for ONE DROP.  Each of these events should be fun to watch, and should draw quite a bit of interest as well.  Other additions to the tournament will include the “exhibition events”, which won’t give out any gold bracelets to the winners, but will feature smaller buy-ins.  These tournaments will be $560 events and the first one will be on June 30th.  It is a Doubles No Limit Hold’em event which features two players to a team, and the players will play through each level attempting to build their stack.  The other one is on July 6th and is a bounty event which will place bounties on every player in the tournament who has won a gold bracelet before.

One last interesting thing to note about the WSOP is that the final nine players are no longer the “November Nine”, as they have decided to move the final nine players of the Main Event to the end of October, since the US Presidential Election will be going on in November. The Main Event will be have three starting days instead of four this year as well, but has added about 92 tables to the poker room in order to accommodate all of the players.

Party Poker Introduces Their February Promotion

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Party PokerThe well-known online poker site Party Poker is back at it again, and this time they are making noise from their brand new promotion which was recently released for the month of February.  This new promo is called the “Card Rush”, which gives players the chance to win many different prizes at the real money poker players, simply for doing what they do day in and day out.  Players can not only win free money, but also entries into many different freerolls, Party Points, and Card Rush Race Points.  All of the cards are given out as players play, and you will earn one card for each 15 frequent player points that you get.  Cards are awarded into the players’ accounts, where they can go then go in and see what they’ve won!

As far as the different awards that players can win, it is broken down as follows:

  • Cash Prizes- $1, $2, $3, $5, $10, $50, $250, and $5k
  • Freerolls- $2k, $3k, $5k, $7.5k, $10k, $15k, and $20k.
  • Party Points-  10, 20, 50, 100, 150, 250, 750, 5,000, or 25,000 points
  • Card Rush Race Points- 1, 3, 5, 10, or 20.

Players can earn as many as 50 total cards per day, meaning that you have the shot to win quite a bit of money/prizes in a short period of time each day!  Card Rush Race Points go towards a leader board which is evaluated at the end of the month, or win the promotion ends.  The player with the most Card Rush Race Points at the end of the promotion will win a grand prize of $9k, and the top ten will all take home prizes of over $1k.  There are also cash prizes awarded all the way up to 200th place, which will receive $100 still!  They have extended a nice $50 bonus for players who finish on each of the “20th spots” from 220th all the way to 2000th on that leader board as well.

Party Poker is giving away a total of 1.8 million prize cards, and if that number hits before the end of the month then the promotion will end a bit early.  The freerolls that players can win entry into will run in early March, ranging from the 2nd to the 5th of the month.

Two Former World Champs Win Side Events at PCA

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2012 Pokerstars Caribbean AdventureCurrently in the Bahamas, the popular talks around town are about the current PokerStars Caribbean Adventure.  Whether it is the $100k entry High Roller event that drew in a first place prize of over $1 million, or the PCA Main Event which is nearly its way down to the final table, people are talking about this incredibly popular tournament series which has started 2012 off with a bang.  What many people aren’t talking about though is the fact that we have now seen two former World Series of Poker Main Event winners take down side events at the PCA this year as well!

The first big time player to take down a win was Jonathan Duhamel, who was in the news just a few weeks back for some non-related poker news, as his house was the target of a home invasion and a robbery.  Duhamel has recovered from everything though, and has pulled in some nice results at the 2012 PCA.  First off, Duhamel had a nice fourth place finish at the High Roller event, in which he took home a payday of $313,600.  Then came his win at the $5k No Limit Hold’em 8-max event this week, in which he had to beat out a star-studded final table that included Jason Mercier, Pius Heinz, gold bracelet winner Kevin Stammen, and two online poker pros in Owen Crowe and Laurence Houghton.  Duhamel beat out 157 other players, and won the first place prize of $249,830.

Cada’s win on the other hand came from the $2k No Limit Hold’em event, that drew in 348 players.  Cada won $175,550 for his strong run, and he beat out a player who many people feel is on the rise in Michael Telker in the end.  The final table of this event also included two well-known pros in Shannon Shorr who finished in 4th place, and a PokerStars pro in JC Alvarado who wound up in 6th.

Both Cada and Duhamel are two of the more liked poker pros in the game, and also two players who could be looking at having some impressive years in 2012.  Keep an eye out for them at some of the coming poker tournament series’ in the next few months, including the WSOP!

John Dibella: Winner of 2012 PokerStars Caribbean Adventure Main Event

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John Dibella was declared winner of the PokerStars Caribbean Adventure 2012 main event. For his accomplishment, he claims a $1,775,000 grand prize, along with 2,400 points toward Card Player Magazine’s Player of the Year Award.

Dibella avoided the $10,000 buy-in into the 2012 PCA main event through a live satellite that cost $1,000 to enter. This made him one of three amateur players to make it to the final table. Considering there were only 8 players at the final table, that meant amateurs made up almost half the final table.

Runner-up in the event was Kyle Julius who claimed $1.5 million and 2,000 Player of the Year points for his accomplishment. Franz Jaka came in third place, for $775k and 1,600 POY points. Xuan Liu came in fourth place for $600k and 1,200 POY points. Mark Drover came in fifth place for $468k and 1,000 POY points. Anthony Gregg came in sixth place for $364k and 800 POY points. David Bernstein came in seventh place for $260k and 600 POY points. And Ruben Visser came in eighth place for $156,400 and 400 POY points.

Dibella claims this as his biggest cash win in live poker. His prior winnings include tenth place in a 2006 WSOP event ($1.5k NL Holdem) and he cashed for $16,000, previously his biggest win to date, as coincidence would have it, in the ’08 PCA main event.

Before taking down the 2012 Poker Stars Caribbean Adventure main event, John Dibella’s total poker career winnings was $42k.

888 Poker Starts 2012 WSOP Satellites

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With the start of 2012 comes the anticipation for the 2012 World Series of Poker. And 888 Poker is wasting no time in pooling players to send to the next WSOP Main Event.

Every other Sunday, 888 Poker holds a 2012 WSOP qualifier at 20:05 GMT. The buy-in is $500 + $25.

Players can avoid that direct buy-in and win their way into the qualifier through any number of lower cost satellites. Satellite buy-ins start at just $1 + $0.10 where one player for every $25 in the prize pool will advance to the next stage. There’s also a $5 + $0.50 stage 1 event that advances one in five players to the next stage.

Step 2 satellites cost $23 + $2 to buy-in directly and advance 1 in 5 players to step 3, which in turn costs $105 + $10 to buy-in directly and advances 1 in 5 players to the 2012 WSOP 888 Poker Qualifier.

At each 888 Poker World Series of Poker 2012 Qualifier, one prize package worth $15,000 will be awarded. That value includes the $10,000 buy-in for the 2012 WSOP Main Event, $2,000 cash to apply toward travel expenses, $500 more in cash to apply toward other expenses, 8 nights of accommodations during the event, access to a special 888 Poker player lounge, an invite to a special 888 Poker VIP party, and an 888 Poker live event merchandise kit.

The prize pool for the 2012 WSOP Main Event is projected to be around $180 million.